The NoSDiet

Dan’s blog today has a link to the NoSDiet. A very simple and seemingly good way of eating. It is, of course, little more than your mother told you to do (eat three square meals a day, and don’t be piggy with snacks) but as usual it seems the internet has more brains than big diet book publishers.

My only negative comment about these folk diets is that people have a terrible time understanding that fats in foods have little to do with fatness as in weight gain. So, the NoS guy, predictably, blows off low-fat eating as a fad diet:

[regarding diet systems] It’s funny that these diets masquerade as scientific, because psychologically they rely on the most primitive magicism: magic potion foods that are good for you and can be gorged with impunity, and cursed poison foods that explode with a mouthful (carbohydrates and fat are the two biggies, alternating roles).

What makes you fat is consuming more energy (calories) than you need, and burning not enough of it off, resulting in the storage of the excess as chemical potential energy in fat cells. Since dietary fats are high in calories, that means that reducing dietary fats is a sensible way to lower your calorie intake, and thus a way to avoid becoming corpulent… but this is not the primary benefit of a low-fat diet.

Fats in foods are bad because they are bad for your circulatory system (arteries, veins, heart). Efforts to push low-fat cooking are generally spearheaded by the heart disease people.

In other words, a low-fat diet is important for preventing heart disease. It may, as a side benefit, shave off some calories, but any diet claiming to be beneficial should not be slagging off low-fat eating.

The NoSGuy grudgingly admits that there may be something to eating less fat, and that some fats are required. This is true, and it’s not so complicated to understand. Here is a good reference site that I find myself going back to time and again. They have a very good Healthy Body Calculator (which, incidentally, tells me that I should not miss the start of this year’s running clinics).

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› health     2004-02-29 17:36   ...1