Howard Jacobson

Despite decades of evidence, from observation to epidemiological studies to large dietary surveys to clinical trials, the presupposition that protein is good, and more is better, is still firmly implanted in our minds.

ME: (Using her diet log with calculated percentage of calories from different nutrients) You are actually getting a low percentage of calories from carbs, only about 40 percent. Roughly 20 to 30 percent of your calories are coming from protein, and 30 to 40 percent from fats. You’re making a mistake when you think of things like doughnuts and pizza as carbs. In fact, they have more fat calories than carb calories

PATIENT: (persistent) But isn’t it our sugar consumption? Didn’t the low-fat diets fail?

ME: We never actually ate low fat. Yes, sugar has risen and our total daily calories have risen, and that is in fact bad. But the rise in sugar was due to a “low-fat” diet ideology that arose in response to an already failing high-protein diet plan. Because we started hearing that fat was the culprit, Americans turned to “fat-free” junk foods like Snackwells that were loaded with sugar. And to add insult to injury, we didn’t reduce our fat consumption. We just added sugar. Instead of going on a supposedly low-fat, high-processed-carb diet, we should have switched to a high-fruit-and-veggie, high-starch, low-protein diet.

Before people get to that point, their unquestioning belief in the value of animal foods doesn’t reach consciousness until they are confronted by a person who doesn’t eat any

The ascendence of protein from necessary macronutrient to the “stuff of life itself,” the one nutrient that was so good for you, the more the better, created a fertile environment for anyone trying to get rich promoting a high-protein diet.

Dr. Alfred W. Pennington, who in the 1940s got 20 obese DuPont employees to lose an average 22 pounds in 14 weeks on a calorically unrestricted low-carb diet. This concept of lowering carbs goes all the way back to the mid-nineteenth century when William Banting, a well-known, and obese, undertaker at the time, changed his diet based on the recommendation of his doctor and lost weight; he wrote and published Letter on Corpulence describing his experience with the low-carb diet.

In 1961, Dr. Hermann Taller published a book, Calories Don’t Count, that promoted a low-carb diet. It sold two million copies, despite the fact that Dr. Taller was charged with fraud by the FDA, for using the book to push sales of his proprietary safflower pills.

Problem is that Atkins, and all the current low-carb evangelists, miss one gigantic, important scientific fact: protein, as well as carbs, causes insulin to rise!

One in-depth study of insulin response to different kinds of food gave a group of volunteers equal calorie servings of thirty-eight different foods, then measured their insulin response through drawing blood. If Atkins was right, then the highest-carbohydrate foods would cause the biggest spike in insulin. Instead, the researchers found that protein-rich foods elicit a disproportionately higher insulin response than would be expected given the sugar content. In other words, while a protein meal might not raise blood sugar, it substantially increases insulin, the evil hormone we are supposed to be avoiding by eating a high-protein diet

There are several reasons for the dramatic weight loss. Once you understand these details, you might not be so enthusiastic about it. After all, one way to lose ten pounds quickly and permanently is to cut off your head. The fine points matter here

Defying a fundamental law of physics, he argued that calories don’t count. He claimed that by eating his diet you would magically burn more calories than you consume