Diet, Drugs and Diabetes - One Hundred Years of Missed Opportunities John McDougall

[montmorency]

I posted about this in another thread, but I think it merits its own thread.

Not because I agree with it - in fact it challenges a lot of things I thought I knew - but it raises some questions I can't quite ignore.


Diet, Drugs and Diabetes - One Hundred Years of Missed Opportunities
John McDougall


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iosoXlr3ZVI

I have some possibly minor quibbles with what he says:

1. One of his successes is shown, along with a data list, showing blood pressure with quite a hypertensive systolic pressure (diastolic is only slightly above normal). That could be a mistake, or his "before" blood pressure.
2. At one point he says there can be fat vegans, but what he proposes seems to be a vegan diet (it's high starch and low or no fat, or no added fat at least). He never really explains why some vegans get fat, even though his vegan diet is apparently good for weight loss (and type 2 diabetes).
3. He admits to about 17 failures out of about 200, but doesn't talk about the nature of the failure. For all we know, they could have keeled over with heart disease or something.


The interesting thing, and what made me take it more seriously than I otherwise might have, was his claim that there was research to show that fat, whether animal or vegetable (though vegetable was worse) reduced blood circulation, and for quite a long time.

I need to view that part again to get down exactly what he was saying, but I didn't make a note of where it was in the video.

Anyway, see what you think.

Some of what he says is compatible with Peat, i.e. that sugar is good for diabetes. He also says that fat tends to make us insulin resistant.

 

[montmorency]

I viewed this again, and noted the times for the points in question:

it's at 50 m where he talks about the supposedly bad effects of fat on blood viscosity and its effects on insulin activity.

At 1h 7m, he presents a "success" of his diet, who certainly lost weight, but his blood pressure is 142/84 which he calls "pretty darn good".
142 is in the AHA hypertension stage 1 range, and even 84 is in the AHA pre-hypertension stage.

He slips to the next slide before anyone has the chance to query this.

Also the person's blood sugar didn't look that great for a supposedly "cured" diabetic.


He goes on a lot about Asians on traditional diets of rice and beans not getting fat. Well maybe, but rice at least is not a native dish for those of European stock, and seems highly likely to me that the latter won't necessarily do as well on it as people who have eaten it for millennia.

Similarly with potatoes: he's Irish and may think of potatoes as "native" to his ancestors, but it's comparatively new to Europe (and used to be reserved for animals...). Native Americans might do well on it, but not necessarily Europeans.

And as for beans and grains, well they have their own problems, native or not.