The New York Times has the article What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? by Gary Taubes Published: July 7, 2002. Note that this was published 13 years before the article in a previous post Four Decades of the Wrong Dietary Advice Has Paved the Way for the Diabetes Epidemic: Time to Change Course.

As I was reading The New York Times article I was wondering if they cribbed their material from the article of my previous post, and then I reminded myself which article came first.

After 20 years steeped in a low-fat paradigm, I find it hard to see the nutritional world any other way. I have learned that low-fat diets fail in clinical trials and in real life, and they certainly have failed in my life. I have read the papers suggesting that 20 years of low-fat recommendations have not managed to lower the incidence of heart disease in this country, and may have led instead to the steep increase in obesity and Type 2 diabetes. I have interviewed researchers whose computer models have calculated that cutting back on the saturated fats in my diet to the levels recommended by the American Heart Association would not add more than a few months to my life, if that. I have even lost considerable weight with relative ease by giving up carbohydrates on my test diet, and yet I can look down at my eggs and sausage and still imagine the imminent onset of heart disease and obesity, the latter assuredly to be caused by some bizarre rebound phenomena the likes of which science has not yet begun to describe. The fact that Atkins himself has had heart trouble recently does not ease my anxiety, despite his assurance that it is not diet-related.

This perfectly describes my ambivalence at trying out the low-carb diet. Our reason for trying it was mainly about blood sugar test results that showed our blood sugars to be higher than what our Doctor wanted to see. The diet seems to have immediately brought our blood sugar levels down to an acceptable range. The fact that we also lost weight was not our primary motive, but had also been suggested by our Doctor.

I will be getting a dietary consultation to see what a dietician thinks about this issue some 13 years after The New York Times article was written.

Thanks to Mary and Andy A. for sending me the link to the NYT article.