Which is worse? Is it fat or is it sugar when it comes to our diet.
Is it fat or is it sugar which is a bigger culprit, you know with heart disease or just in general? Yeah, we have really focused, well it's been up and down over the years right? There's the low sugar and then there's the low fat and we go back and forth. The research is really coming out in just really quite recent years here talking so much more about how sugar is really one of our bigger problems and the fat hasn't been as much of it, as much of a concern as far as heart diseases we once thought. The way I look at it is we we can improve we can improve in so many ways. So the typical American diet is actually not a super high fat diet it's just the quality of our fat is really poor so we tend to, I mean, processed foods tend to have more trans fats more saturated fats which are not as good for our heart health. We don't get as much seafood and nuts and seeds and things like a Mediterranean kind of diet that is really one of the best in the world as far as heart health and disease prevention. So it's really not that quantity of fat isn't the problem is just that we're getting really poor qualities of quality of fat and then from a sugar side, you know again, carbohydrates aren't a bad thing fruits and vegetables are, you know, some of our main source of carbohydrates, whole grains, brown rice and whole wheat and you know barley and bulgur and rye. I mean there's lots of different wonderful whole grains that provide great nutrition. We tend to a have a diet that's very heavy in refined grains, you know, white breads and white pastas and pastries and crackers and those things.
So getting people away from you know the quantity of those but also shifting the qualities that are getting high fiber and lots of vitamins and minerals in the whole grain. I do think just as a population we've shifted so much more to a carb heavy diet and I think we're learning more and more that that's really not the answer to to weight management, to heart disease prevention or management, to diabetes prevention. You know there's just all the chronic disease conditions we're not seeing that that's having tremendous benefit. I think we know so much more. It's really getting good quality fats, lean sources of protein lots of fruits and vegetables not thinking so much about low-carb or no fat.
