Decades of Diet Deception and the Spread of Non-Communicable Chronic Diseases

By George Bekes

What are non-communicable chronic diseases? Why are we developing them in our own bodies? Why are epidemics of these diseases spreading in the population?
How did the official 'healthy eating' advice develop? Why is it based on 60-year-old scientific beliefs? Why do most non-communicable chronic diseases develop in obese patients? Why are we impotent in the face of the relentless rise in obesity? Why can't the NHS put a stop to this epidemic? Why does the medical establishment recommend starches and sugars in carbohydrate as the preferred sources of energy in food when it is a scientific fact that there is no weight gain without high levels of insulin in the bloodstream that is triggered when consuming these nutrients? Why is the medical advice to lower blood cholesterol by food selection and drugs when this can lead to metabolic mutilation? Why are plant-based polyunsaturated oils, known to impair the human immune system, recommended to replace stable fats from animal sources? THIS BOOK PROVIDES THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS

• Language: English
• Publisher: Panarc International
• Release date: May 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780995680159

Book preview

DECADES OF DIET DECEPTION

and the Spread of Non-Communicable Chronic Diseases

George Bekes

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

STATEMENT OF CONTENT

ABBREVIATIONS

PROLOGUE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: The Development of Policies about Dietary Advice and Its Health Implications

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: How Sick is the UK Population at Present?

CHAPTER TWO: Health Survey Statistics for the UK

CHAPTER THREE: Start of the Dietary Advice in the USA

CHAPTER FOUR: Start of the Dietary Advice in the UK

CHAPTER FIVE: Impact on Public Health by the Food Industry

CHAPTER SIX: Impact on Public Health by the Drugs Industry

CHAPTER SEVEN: The World Health Organisation on Dietary Advice

PART TWO: Dietary Advice and Its Health Outcomes

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Biochemical Processes Involved in Obesity

CHAPTER NINE: The Diet/Heart Hypothesis and Healthy Eating

CHAPTER TEN: Cholesterol

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Fats

CHAPTER TWELVE: Sugars in Carbohydrates

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Exercise

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Consequences of the Current Dietary Advice

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Obstacles to Change

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Personal Escape Route from Created Diseases

APPENDIX ONE

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright © George Bekes 2019

First Edition

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Published by Panarc International 2019

www.panarcpublishing.com

Paperback: 978-0-9956801-4-2

Epub: 978-0-9956801-5-9

Kindle: 978-0-9956801-6-6

This book is dedicated to my tutor and friend, the late Dr Barry Groves, PhD, without whose guidance I would probably not have lived to a healthy 80.

STATEMENT OF CONTENT

The content of this book is concerned with the development of non-communicable chronic diseases and their biochemical causes, based on a compilation of information from the following sources:

Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (UK)

Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (UK)

American Heart Association

British Heart Foundation

British Medical Association

British Nutrition Foundation

Centers for Disease Control (US)

Committee on Toxicity (UK)

D. Voet, Emeritus Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (UK)

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (US)

Diabetes UK

Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (US)

Dr A. Keys, physiologist, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota

Dr A. Windaus, Professor of Chemistry, University of Göttingen

Dr B. Groves, researcher and author

Dr C. Shanahan, MD, science director of the LA Lakers’ PRO Nutrition program

Dr D. Lundell, past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery, Banner Heart Hospital, Messa, AZ

Dr G. V. Mann, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health

Dr J. Armitage, Professor of Clinical Trials and Epidemiology, and Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine

Dr J. W. Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California

Dr K. Landé, Department of Forensic Medicine, New York University

Dr M. Angell, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Dr M. Kendrick, GP, author, European Society of Cardiology

Dr Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO

Dr N. Anitschkow, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Ulm

Dr R. Horton, editor of The Lancet

Dr R. Lustig, Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology, University of California

Dr S. Lee Weinberg, a former President of the American College of Cardiology

Dr W. Sperry, Department of Forensic Medicine, New York University

Food and Nutrition Board (US)

Food Standards Agency (UK)

General Advisory Committee on Science (UK)

Health Survey for England

Institute of Medicine (US)

J. Voet, Professor Emerita, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania

Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (UK)

National Health Service (UK)

National Institutes of Health (US)

Professor J. B. Hickie, Professor of Medicine, University of New South Wales

Professor J. Yudkin, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University College London, and Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London

Professor P. Sleight, Research Cardiologist and an Honorary Consultant Physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford

Professor Paulette Goddard, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, and of Sociology at New York University

Professor R. Collins, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Oxford

Professor Sir Charles George, Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation

Public Health England

Quality Outcome Framework (UK)

Science and Education Administration (US)

Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (UK)

Sir George Radda, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (UK)

Social Science Research Committee (UK)

United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organisation

United States Department of Agriculture

US Surgeon General

White House Task Force

World Health Organisation

ABBREVIATIONS

PROLOGUE

In September 2011, the UN General Assembly declared that non-communicable diseases were a greater threat to world health than infectious diseases, and that included the developing world.¹

Currently, the population in the UK is cursed by the epidemics of six non-communicable chronic diseases related to obesity – hypertension, diabetes, stroke, coronary heart disease, cancer and senile dementia – which emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. During the same period, ad hoc dietary advice, ‘healthy eating’ advice, was presented to the populations of both the UK and the USA.

The primary component of such advice relates to cholesterol, namely, to reduce the consumption of fat containing cholesterol and to impair the internal synthesis of it by drugs, with the aim of preventing the development of coronary heart disease. The outcome of this advice prevents the brain from obtaining adequate levels of cholesterol, impairing the communication between neurons, which in turn leads to mental disorders and the early onset of senile dementia.

The next component of the advice encourages the consumption of plant-based polyunsaturated oils and spreads rich in omega-6 linoleic acid, which impairs the human immune system and causes cancer.

The third component of the advice is to have at least 50% of daily calorie intake from carbohydrate. After digestion, all carbohydrates enter the bloodstream as glucose, fructose, or both, causing high levels of insulin secretion, leading to energy management disorder, weight gain, obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

This defunct advice is still current today, producing the spread of non-communicable diseases in the population that threatens the existence of the NHS. There is a drastic need for developing new dietary advice based on the realities of human genetic make-up and on the biochemical fundamentals that control metabolism. The new objective must be to prevent the development of non-communicable chronic diseases in the population, rather than trying to treat them.

So, this book is aimed at individuals who wish to avoid being the victims of these chronic diseases. It is also aimed at responsible law makers, opinion formers and information disseminators who have a direct input into forming regulations that control the activities of food, beverage and drug manufacturers, which affect the health outcomes of the population.

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¹

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The realisation that government health agencies and medical establishments in the UK base their public health policies relating to dietary advice on outdated, twentieth-century ad hoc scientific opinion, prompted a need to ask the question – why? Why are we still demonising dietary cholesterol and saturated fat and recommending instead the use of linoleic acid-rich polyunsaturated oils? Why are we still insisting on recommending that 50% of daily calorie intake should come from glucose and fructose, the critical sugars in carbohydrate? Why do we not acknowledge the disastrous reality that, since these elements of public health policy became the accepted norm over the past 50 years, millions of people have fallen victim to several non-communicable chronic diseases? As you will see, it is neither too complex nor too costly to stop and reverse this process. Yet, so far, this has not been done. Why not? I hope to provide some of the answers to these questions.

* * *

On 5th July 1948, the National Health Service was born in the United Kingdom. Coming so soon after the Second World War, this was a momentous development brought about through a visionary report by Sir William Beveridge and the courage of Aneurin Bevan, the then Health Secretary. They believed that the high cost of a National Health Service would be affordable because

there exists in any population a strictly limited amount of illness which, if treated under conditions of equity, will eventually decline.¹

Those who raised objections to the high costs involved were reassured by Beveridge that the National Health Service would only be needed for three to four years, during which time the population would be rid of the infections caused by viruses and bacteria, and the cost would drop once the NHS needed to deal only with accidents and hereditary conditions. It is clear that when they created the NHS in 1948 neither Aneurin Bevan nor William Beveridge was aware of the existence of non-communicable chronic diseases, the epidemics of which the NHS has to deal with today. The reason for this is obvious. These epidemics have emerged later, during the second part of the twentieth century.

As they are non-communicable diseases, each sufferer develops them in their own body. So why, then, do these diseases become prevalent in whole sections of the population? There has to be a common cause, or causes, and these had to have emerged since1948. What these are, and how they have emerged, is the subject of this book.

The views of the creators of the NHS sound unbelievably naïve and ill-conceived to us today, but at the time they were readily accepted, as very few people discussed their level of blood cholesterol, what kind of fat they used, their need for gluten-free bread, dairy-free rice pudding, loss of memory or the need to lose weight.

This was because after the war years, there was no sign of an epidemic of any of the non-communicable diseases in the UK. Nor were there any signs of the demonization of dietary cholesterol and the consequent avalanche of naïve and ill-informed dietary recommendations relating to increased consumption of starches and sugars and unstable plant-based polyunsaturated fats.

The only issue of concern related to a rising incidence of lung cancer and arterial disease associated with high levels of smoking in the population, although smoking was not widely thought to have a detrimental effect on the immune system. The catastrophic change in the health of the population started once the diet/heart ad hoc hypothesis took hold, attacking dietary cholesterol and demonising saturated animal fat, linking it to coronary heart disease. But these effects did not start to emerge until the 1960s.

Since then, the general health of the UK population has noticeably changed, with the steady growth into epidemics of non-communicable chronic diseases such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, stroke, coronary heart disease, senile dementia and cancer, diseases which had not caused public concern during the first half of the twentieth century, or later when the National Health Service was created. This deterioration in public health has taken place after obesity became widespread in the population, despite the constant improvements in scientific knowledge, housing, domestic hygiene and healthcare provision.

There was a curious similarity between what was happening in the UK and what was happening in the United States around the same period, even though the population there faced completely different circumstances with regard to the availability of food and health provision.

It is important to recognise this because most of the nutritional advice that has been published by government agencies in the latter part of the twentieth century originated in the USA and was then adopted by the World Health Organisation and its member states.

Total mortality, caused by cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer, during the first part of the twentieth century – excluding war-related causes – was a fraction of today’s figures, even with the then prevalence of smoking.

The next questions for which we seek answers are:

What other major changes have taken place in the second part of the twentieth century that have so drastically and detrimentally affected the health of the population?

How and why did the diet/heart ad hoc hypothesis evolve?

How did the official dietary advice, promoted mainly by agricultural organisations, develop?

How did it manage to create such a substantial change in the human diet?

How did we end up with the epidemics of chronic diseases our populations face today, which the health professionals seem unable to stop?

The purpose of this book is to try to solve these puzzles.

In order to do that we shall look chronologically at the events and official guidelines that impacted on the evolution of food manufacture and consumption, and on modern lifestyles. We shall elucidate the impact of the newly developing nutritional science on public health, represented in the US by characters like Paulette Goddard, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, and of Sociology at New York University, in parallel with Dr Ancel Keys, a physiologist, and Professor John Yudkin, FRSC, a British physiologist and nutritionist and the founding Professor of the Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London.

Furthermore, we shall examine the work of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and Public Health England in relation to dietary advice and its effect on public health. We shall also refer to observations of world-renowned scientists and authors to gain as complete a picture as possible.

* * *

Most authors who write on food and public health issues quote a whole series of reports from cohort studies and randomised controlled trials carried out by universities and medical institutions. These reports are highly regarded worldwide. We shall explore why.

While studying some of these reports I have made two observations. Firstly, they are invariably designed and funded by food or beverage manufacturers, or organisations representing agricultural and pharmaceutical interests.

Secondly, some establish ‘links’, ‘associations’ or ‘implications’ between one food ingredient and a health outcome. Others go further and show the causal role of food ingredients in a chronic disease or diseases. About an equal number of these reports provide diametrically opposite findings, discrediting the scientific validity of all other reports. Anyone can pick and choose between these reports, subject to whichever prejudice or commercial interest they wish to support. These are the twin pillars on which modern dietary advice has been developed.

Worse still is the fact that many of the trials and studies available for scrutiny have Executive Summaries or Abstracts. These are the only bits most people bother to read. These Abstracts sometimes report findings in total contradiction to those indicated by the raw data obtained during the research. This practice is entirely familiar to most research staff – it is a regular occurrence. The funding partners wanted to prove the validity of a hypothesis but the raw data did not support it. Ah well, let’s just publish bits of the findings in the Executive Summary that can be said to prove an ‘association with’, an ‘indication’, a ‘probability’, and the press and media will publish that without question. If anyone bothers to analyse the raw data after publication, it will be too late – that is, if the raw data is made available at all.

That process does not support the purpose of this book. So, in this book we are only going to refer to those reports when they reveal chronological developments or improved application of the fundamentals of biochemistry and genetic realities that control our metabolic processes and human behaviour.

My observations centre around the fact that it is almost impossible to find any credible reference in these reports about food ingredients and their impact on health in the context of these biochemical fundamentals – or our genetic make-up.

Rabbits, cows, horses, lions, hyenas, elephants, birds, giraffes, fish, sharks and we, Homo sapiens, have taken millions of years to develop our respective genetic make-up that controls our metabolic functions. Yet no credible reference can be found in such reports as to the genetic selection between food ingredients that are acceptable to us as nutrients and those that are alien, or even poisonous, to us as humans.

The foods we choose to eat are naturally based on what is available and viable for us and we reject those that are unsuitable and alien to our developed metabolic systems. In the case of Homo sapiens, this cannot be changed from consuming the fresh natural foods we used to eat in history to processed, manufactured foods – containing a range of alien chemicals – in less than 80 years without diabolical consequences to our health. It doesn’t matter how many people with PhDs set up, control and analyse cohort studies and randomised controlled trials in the hope that they will find evidence to suggest that this can be done, or is even good for us to do. That is why the changes in human diet promoted officially in the industrialised West during the past 60 to 70 years need to be scrutinised in the context of genetic essentials and the biochemical fundamentals that control our metabolic system. This we will do.

This book explores the evolution over recent decades of food ingredients that have increasingly caused the mismatch between our food environment and our biochemistry.

The difference between examining the dietary components and their health implications, in the context of biochemical certainties rather than on the basis of cohort studies or randomised controlled trials, can be well illustrated with a mathematical example.

In mathematics 2 x 2 makes 4 and that is a certainty. Subjecting the same 2 x 2 question to cohort studies or randomised controlled trials is likely to come up with an answer 2 x 2 is somewhere between 1 and 7. Anyone can choose a number between those two, subject to their particular objectives. There is ‘insufficient evidence’ that the answer is 4! Remember that phrase.

So, in this book we are going to look at food and health outcomes in the context of our genetic make-up and the incontrovertible biochemical certainties that have evolved through human existence and that control all our bodily functions.

The content of the book is arranged in two parts.

Part One describes the chronological development of the official dietary advice – in the context of health implications – appearing in the USA and in the UK from 1917 to the present day.

Part Two describes the process of the consequent development of the epidemics of chronic diseases caused by the complete change in human diet from natural, fresh food ingredients to artificial, processed foods – containing polyunsaturated fats, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, salt and chemical additives