Sweden goes low carb....

[juanitacarlos]

Mamma mia! Not sure if someone has posted this yet, but very disturbing.

Sweden's new national dietary recommendations: Low-carb, low-glycemic foods

Will be interesting to see the long-term results. Which I'm sure will be disastrous.

 

[Mittir]

That site does not give a good summary of the diet Sweden is promoting for weight loss.
It seems like they got most things right. RP recommends carbohydrate 33 to 50 percent and
saturated fat up to 50 percent. Swedish scientist are recommending 20 to 40 percent
carbohydrate with high fat consumption.
They think saturated fat is healthy and recommending butter,cream
and bacon ( i think they are assuming bacon fat is mostly saturated)
I did not see if they are recommending against PUFA.
Without PUFA , dairy based high fat diet can be quite healthy.
They also recommend a lot of coffee drinking for disease prevention.
This whole report is on obesity and they promote increased dairy consumption
for weight loss.
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... id-fetma-/

I like this quote on exercise and weight loss.

Exercise may be very good for health, but: Systematic reviews of the literature show that the addition of physical activity to a dietary intervention for individuals with obesity have, if any, a marginal effect on weight loss at the group level
http://www.dietdoctor.com/swedish-exper ... eight-loss

 

[juanitacarlos]

For weight loss, basically they are saying long-term, there is no difference between any diet no matter what the make-up of that diet is. I think that is true. They admit they don't know how to prevent weight gain after weight loss. Glad they admit that, but sort of makes their advice a bit useless, even dangerous. It's much healthier to maintain your weight, then to go on endless rounds of dieting, losing weight, and then rebounding.

For heart disease they recommend the Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil and/or nuts. Not great in terms of PUFA.

"Knowledge gaps. Unable to determine whether other types of diet or drink have significance for morbidity and mortality in people with obesity. The scientific evidence is insufficient. Documentation is also insufficient to determine the effect on mortality, morbidity or weight loss in obese individuals by studying the following foods: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, potatoes, soy products, meat and meat products". Huh?

I think they mostly get it wrong and get a few minor things right e.g. milk and coffee.

I've also heard Peat say that a diet of 33/33/33 CPF, is acceptable. But in reality, is eating like that long-term really beneficial? Just say you eat 2400 calories, 33% protein would almost 200g of protein. Is anyone eating that much protein?? And I thought you needed a fair bit of carbohydrate to balance that amount of protein. I heard or read Peat say that he thinks he needs about a pint/litre of OJ to balance the protein in one egg. Hard to do that with low/moderate carb.

Even if you are actively trying to avoid PUFAs (which I'm assuming the general population isn't), then if you are eating close to 50% fat you are eating a substantial amount of PUFA.

And I'm sorry, 20% carbohydrates is ridiculous. Let's hope you don't have a thyroid problem. That's just plain old low-carb. Whenever I eat a fairly clean 'Peat' day, my ratios hover around 45-50 carbs, 30% fat, 20-25% protein. So that's eating mostly milk and OJ, watermelon, carrot salad, oysters, cheese, coffee and gelatin.