Preface
This is an updated version of the book I wrote ten years ago to help as many people as I could to lose weight. I felt certain then-and continue to do so-that the widespread dissemination of misinformation about what constitutes a healthy diet had caused that epidemic of weight gain in this country.
The book made a greater impact than anyone might have predicted. Its sales exceeded ten million copies, and it was the number one-selling diet and health book in the U. S. for nearly five years. In fact, it has been the all-time top seller in its field. Certainly of the millions of people who ' ve read it, a large percentage followed its precepts, lost weight, kept it off and decisively improved their health.
But now something even more significant is taking place. The view of the medical world has been changing, and New Diet Revolution celebrates its tenth anniversary in a climate that is infinitely more receptive to controlled carbohydrate weight loss. Medical opinion, slowly evolving, is finally catching up with-and beginning to absorb-the vast weight of scientific evidence that supports a controlled carbohydrate nutritional approach.
And what a godsend that is, because when I first wrote this book, well-meaning but poorly informed organizations were so fat-phobic that people became convinced that so long as food was low in fat it was healthy.
People were taught to regard sugary cereals, which bore the American Heart Association ' s seal of approval, as health food, along with bread, pasta, bagels and the like. We were taught to shrink in terror from a steak or lamb chops. The low-fat craze-in vogue for two decadessignificantly lowered the percentage of fat in the American diet but simultaneously resulted in a massive increase in carbohydrate consumption. Nor did the reduction in fat intake mean people were eating more vegetables; instead, it was refined carbohydrates, sugar and flour. Such quintessential junk foods had become the staple of American cuisine.
I hope you agree with me that if you wanted to create a nation of fat, tired, unhealthy people, this would be the perfect dietary plan. Every year the statistics poured in confirming that the obesity rates were escalating. And even more frightening, the number of diabetics worldwide has escalated. As I will show you, all too often the flipside of the coin of being overweight is having diabetes.
These twin epidemics, obesity and diabetes, were clearly the result of the low-fat, highcarbohydrate diet that was being preached to the public as gospel. The same groups that championed low fat denigrated the controlled carbohydrate nutritional approach-which was the very answer to these epidemics-as exceedingly harmful.
Now that millions of people have switched from the low-fat fiasco to the controlled carbohydrate lifestyle, a growing number of them are learning with certainty the degree to which they have been blatantly misinformed. I ' ll wager that there has never been another example in modern medicine of propaganda of such magnitude than the statements made by those worshipping the low-fat dogma.
Let me give you a few examples taken from the dozens of untruths designed to keep you from making the health-promoting change to a controlled carbohydrate nutritional approach. First,
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