A good personal story

[Guest guest]

[i like this person's approach, and like how he deals with people who

challenge his knowledge because he doesn't have any advanced degrees.]

 

So who is this Omnivore guy, anyway?

http://www.theomnivore.com/my_story.html

 

by Anthony Colpo,

April 18, 2004

 

A couple of my valued newsletter rs have e-mailed suggesting that

I include a page on my site where I tell readers a little bit more about

myself. Because I value reader feedback, and because it is customary to

have some such page on one's site, this week I finally got around to

writing something up.

 

Rather than the usual " Name; Jim Smith; Occupation: Gastroenterologist;

Interests: Bullfrog racing; Career Achievements: 1996 AMA award for

advancing knowledge in the field of adenomatous polyp research " bio-type

format, I figured I would simply tell the story of how and why I came to

set up TheOmnivore.com...

 

Here goes...

 

Ever since a young age, I have had an ongoing love affair with strenuous

physical activity, one which paused only briefly between the ages of

nineteen to 21 after the lure of 'hanging out' with friends and the

opposite sex got the better of me.

 

In 1989, at the age of 21, after a couple of years of inactivity, I took a

visit to the doctor and had some blood tests done. I found out that I had a

cholesterol level of 213 which, according to the doctor, placed me at

" moderate risk " for heart disease. After asking me about my dietary habits,

he gave me some nutritional literature which, among other things, advocated

the restriction of saturated fat.

 

 

The Omnivore unmasked!

 

 

To me, good health had always been about physical fitness; how much weight

I could lift, or how easily I could climb a steep hill on my bike. I began

training again, hitting the weights, studying martial arts, and returning

to the hills on my road bike, but I also started paying a lot more

attention to what I ate. I began reading everything about nutrition I could

get my hands on.

 

At the time, everything I read appeared to be reiterating the same message:

" Fat is BAD, complex carbohydrates are GOOD! " The message appeared to be

unanimous, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

 

When my father, an active, muscular builder who appeared to be of above

average fitness for his age, experienced a heart attack in 1990, my resolve

to eat what I believed was a heart-healthy diet was only strengthened further.

 

I read books by numerous low-fat authors, all of whom proclaimed that the

optimal diet was one that was low in fat, especially animal fat, and one

that revolved around foods such as whole-grains, legumes, and tubers. These

low-fat advocates appeared to be in good company - the American Heart

Association, the USDA food pyramid, and the Australian National Heart

Foundation, were all issuing similar admonitions.

 

Following such advice, I began eating only the leanest meats - skinless

chicken and turkey breast, kangaroo, veal - along with low-fat fish.

Because my intense daily workouts required a high energy intake, I began

consuming copious amounts of rye bread, brown rice, sweet potato, wholemeal

pasta, rolled oats, buckwheat, and millet. This of course, was perfectly in

keeping with the common advice still given to athletes to eat lots of

'healthy' complex carbohydrate foods.

 

I began shunning any food that contained more than a few grams of fat. I

started separating egg whites and throwing away the yolks, even though I

knew deep down inside I was throwing away the best-damn-tasting part of the

egg! I began partaking in the gastronomic delights of butterless toast,

salad without oil, and water-packed tuna. If I was at a restaurant or at a

friend's place where I had been served meat that had - shock, horror, gasp!

- visible fat, I would surgically trim all the offending fat away before

taking even a single bite. When shopping, I wouldn't even think of buying

any new food item until I had scrupulously examined the nutrition label.

Any food that did not meet my stringent low-fat standards was promptly

thrown back on the shelf in disgust.

 

One day, I sat down and calculated the average amount of fat calories that

I was taking in. A proud smile appeared on my face when I realized I was

consistently consuming less than ten percent of my calories as fat every day!

 

Yep, I hate to admit it, but I had turned into your classic textbook case

of a neurotic low-fat, high-carbohydrate wanker! I had been fed way too

much anti-fat propaganda, and like a good little automaton, I had swallowed

it whole!

 

This madness continued for several years, during which time I misguidedly

wore my low-fat habits like a badge of honor.

 

Reality began to bite halfway through the nineties. Despite my 'healthy'

diet, and my daily strenuous training regimen, my blood pressure had risen

from 110/65, a reading characteristic of highly-conditioned athletes, to an

elevated 130/90. I noticed it was becoming increasingly harder to maintain

the lean, " ripped " , vascular look that I had always prided myself on.

Instead, my physique was becoming increasingly smooth and bloated. My

digestive system became progressively more sluggish, my stomach often

feeling heavy and distended after meals. I frequently felt tired after

meals. I showed signs of leaky gut syndrome, racking up a rather impressive

list of irreversible food sensitivities. I had never been much of a coffee

drinker, but I was now frequently trying to fight off increasing fatigue by

sipping a strong black or two before training sessions. My fasting blood

glucose level was below the normal range, indicative of reactive hypoglycemia.

 

In short, I felt like crap!

 

To say I was disheartened would be somewhat of an understatement. Despite

monumental effort and discipline, my supposedly wholesome low-fat diet had

raised my blood pressure and left me with a screwed-up blood sugar

metabolism. Ironically, these changes increased my risk of the very thing I

was trying to avoid, the reason for changing my diet in the first place:

heart disease!

 

The sad truth was that I actually felt better six years earlier when my

cholesterol level was 213 and I didn't really care about what I ate.

 

Time for a change

 

As my faith in low-fat nutrition started to crumble, the bodybuilding

magazines I read each month began carrying ads for a new book called The

Anabolic Diet, written by Dr. Mauro DiPasquale, an expert on sports

medicine and a former world class powerlifter. DiPasquale's new book was

claiming that a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, comprised of foods like

steak, burgers, sausages, cream, whole eggs and bacon, would lead to rapid

fat loss, muscle gain, and increased strength and energy! While I had

learned to grow wary of such claims - anyone who is familiar with

bodybuilding magazines will know that they contain some of the most

hyperbolic ads ever seen in the history of marketing - I had developed a

high regard for Dr. DiPasquale's knowledge from years of reading his

regular magazine columns and articles.

 

I therefore did something that just a year or two earlier would have been

absolutely unthinkable - I decided to try the Anabolic Diet! I started

eating more fat in one day than I had previously eaten in an average week.

I was barely a week into the diet when I noticed that, for the first time

ever, I was able to pull my weightlifting belt right up to the very

tightest notch. After three weeks of this high-fat meat orgy, I was amazed

- I had stripped off several pounds of fat, and had achieved a newfound

level of leanness and definition, the likes of which I had never

experienced before.

 

That experience smashed through my most closely-held nutritional beliefs

like a wild, raging bull. Up to that point, I had uncritically accepted the

contention that " fat makes you fat " , but I had just achieved my lowest-ever

body fat level, not by cutting fat, but carbohydrates!

 

In addition to the positive body composition changes, I noticed something

else - my digestive system seemed a lot happier in the absence of all those

carbohydrates.

 

My Anabolic Diet experiment was not a total success though; while I was

delighted with the way I looked, the extremely low carbohydrate intake had

left me feeling tired and drained. In fact, I felt progressively more

fatigued throughout the three weeks that I was on the diet. I didn't know

it back then, but this problem could have been remedied with some very

minor adjustments.

 

Nonetheless, the whole experience was an eye-opener; the high-fat,

low-carbohydrate seed had been firmly planted in my mind!

 

Some time after this, I stumbled upon Dr. Barry Sears'

moderate-carbohydrate Zone diet. I figured the Zone might be a happy

compromise between my former high carbohydrate ways and the extreme

low-carbohydrate Anabolic Diet, so I gave it a shot. My first impressions

were positive, as the Zone left me feeling much more energetic than the

Anabolic Diet, but didn't produce the wild blood sugar swings of my former

high carbohydrate diet. However, the 40% carbohydrate content of Sears'

diet still left me prone to occasional bouts of sleepiness after meals. I

also found the continual calculations required to maintain the 30/30/40

ratio of the Zone diet to be, quite frankly, a pain in the ass.

 

With no other worthwhile option to avail myself of, I figured I would stay

in 'The Zone' until something better came along.

 

In 1998 I had moved to Melbourne, eventually establishing a personal

fitness training business. During the early part of 2000, I got talking

with another trainer who had been having great success on the Atkins Diet.

I went out and bought myself a copy of Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution,

which I proceeded to read from cover to cover within 48 hours.

 

Atkins' book advocated an initial two week phase where less than 20g of

carbohydrates were consumed each day, something that I knew from my

previous experience on The Anabolic Diet would not work for me. I jumped

straight into the 'maintenance' phase of the Atkins diet, consuming not

only high-fat protein foods but small amounts of carbohydrates at every

meal. The difference was amazing - my energy levels quickly stabilized, my

mental focus sharpened, the carbohydrate-induced bloating vanished, and I

stopped getting that sleepy feeling after meals. My blood pressure returned

to its former levels and my blood sugar settled right in the middle of the

normal range. By including small amounts of carbohydrates at each meal I

was able to power through intense training sessions with energy to spare.

 

There was another aspect of my new diet that I especially appreciated: the

extremely liberating feeling of finally being able to eat REAL food again!

I had always loved fatty meats like lamb, and the succulent, juicy portions

of freshly roasted chicken, but had sworn myself off them years ago because

their high saturated fat content was supposedly unhealthy. Hey, I don't

care how many clever ways you find to dress up skinless chicken breast, it

will never even begin to compare with a roasted drumstick covered in

crispy, golden skin!

 

I began recommending the diet to my personal training clients who, in

addition to reporting similar benefits to those I had experienced, also

noticed that they felt a lot less hungry throughout the day. They too

expressed delight in being allowed to eat real food again!

 

These overwhelmingly positive experiences with the Atkins diet contrasted

strongly with the numerous doomsday predictions being made by opponents of

low-carb diets who - surprise, surprise - usually happened to also be

advocates of low-fat, high-carbohydrate eating, a mode of nutrition whose

validity was being directly challenged by the success of the new low-carb

paradigm.

 

Because of my highly positive experiences with low carbohydrate eating, and

my dismal outcome on the high-carbohydrate diet, I began to develop a

rapidly growing distrust of the low-fat movement; a movement who only a few

years earlier could have counted me as one of its most diligent, faithful

supporters.

 

From Trainer to Intrepid Diet Sleuth

 

I have always had a curious, inquiring mind. If I take a sincere interest

in a subject, then I want to know every possible thing about it. As such, I

wanted to know if there was any way I could tweak my new low-carb diet to

gain even further benefits. I also became hell-bent on learning why my

low-fat diet had been such a dismal failure.

 

I began my investigative journey, like many folks, by reading

popular-format books. I soon realized, however, that if I was to ever

progress beyond a reliance on second-hand knowledge, I would have to begin

scouring the published research for myself. By doing so, I could come to my

own conclusions, and not have to rely on the competency, accuracy, and

honesty of other commentators.

 

As such, my journey eventually led me to Melbourne's medical libraries,

where I began reading one journal article after another. I read papers that

helped me retrace the development of the diet-heart hypothesis. I tracked

down the epidemiological studies that supposedly showed a " strong, positive

association " between saturated fat, cholesterol, and coronary heart disease

(CHD) - and those that did not. I got hold of every paper I could find that

reported on randomized dietary CHD intervention trials. I similarly

searched for reports of trials in which the weight loss effects of low- and

high-carbohydrate diets were compared with each other. I began searching

out articles on statin drugs, the only cholesterol-lowering strategy that

had produced any noteworthy reduction in CHD mortality, to see if their

mechanism of action was in fact cholesterol-lowering.

 

I also began reading articles and texts on archaeology and Paleontology in

order to gain insight into the diet that human beings did in fact evolve to

eat. After all, when all is said and done, the ultimate diet for any animal

- human or otherwise - is the one they were designed by nature to eat. Any

veterinarian could readily tell you this, but most 'human veterinarians'

(doctors), and the authorities they look up to for guidance, appear to be

totally blind to this simple fact.

 

What I found truly stunned me. The whole low-fat, high-carbohydrate

paradigm was basically a complete crock. It began in the early 1900's when

Russian researchers noted that feeding rabbits cholesterol caused a

build-up of fatty deposits in their arteries. Unlike humans, rabbits are

herbivorous creatures, and are not metabolically equipped to eat animal

products (plant foods do not contain cholesterol). In the mid 1950's,

health authorities were at a complete loss to explain the widespread

prevalence of CHD. Inspired by the utterly irrelevant findings of the

Russian rabbit experiments, scientists began examining possible links

between fat, cholesterol and CHD in humans. One of these individuals, a

gentleman by the name of Ancel Keys, plotted the coronary heart disease

(CHD) death rates from a mere six countries on a graph, and was able to

show an almost perfect correlation between fat consumption and CHD

mortality (1).

 

However, Keys had hand-picked his countries; data was actually available

for 22 countries at the time! Other researchers objected to this

highly-selective analysis, and showed that when data from larger numbers of

countries were included, the alleged association between fat and CHD

vanished.(2,3) Keys, however, was on the nutrition advisory committee of

the powerful American Heart Association, and his erroneous theories were

officially incorporated into AHA dietary guidelines in 1961 (4) From these

extremely dubious beginnings, the nonsensical 'lipid hypothesis' evolved

into a central fixture of mainstream health policy.

 

I also came to realize that the repeated claim that a low-fat, grain- and

legume-based diet was the optimal eating regimen for the human animal was,

quite simply, one of the stupidest assertions ever made in the field of

nutritional research.

 

Going back to our roots

 

I found out what Paleontologists have long known: that ever since the

earliest members of the Homo species appeared around 2.4 million years ago,

meat has formed an important part of the hominid diet. I read the stories

of anthropologists and explorers who observed first-hand the culinary

habits of isolated hunter-gatherers - folks like Weston A. Price, Professor

George Mann, Vilhjalmur Steffanson, Samuel Hearne, Leon Abrams, to name but

a few. All discovered that primitive peoples placed great value on fatty

animal foods. To anyone not indoctrinated with anti-animal fat propaganda,

this would come as little surprise - after all, the fatty portion of animal

foods is where one finds crucially important fat-soluble vitamins and

important fatty acids.

 

These explorers observed how, in times of plenty, isolated peoples like the

North American Indians and Australian Aborigines would eat only the

fattiest portions of freshly-killed animals, leaving the rest to rot. The

recent findings of what are believed to be the earliest Homo sapiens,

dating back 154,000-160,000 years ago, along with dozens of stone tools and

the remains of butchered hippopotamuses (animals that carry a hefty layer

of body fat for thermal insulation) in Ethiopia, further highlight the

stupidity of the anti-animal fat theory. So too do the numerous randomized

CHD dietary intervention trials that have completely failed to show any

mortality benefit from saturated fat restriction.

 

As for cereal grains, humans did not begin to consume these in any

meaningful amount until around 10,000 years ago, with the onset of the

agricultural revolution. Ten thousand years represents a mere blip on the

time scale of human evolution. It is in no way long enough for our species

to have genetically adapted to a grain-based diet, as evidenced by the high

proportion of individuals with gluten sensitivity and celiac disease. Why

on earth human beings should base their diet on foods to which they have

not yet fully adapted has never been coherently explained by our health

authorities.

 

I found out that no population has ever been able to remain healthy on a

diet comprised entirely of cereal grains, but that a number of populations

have thrived on diets comprised entirely of animal foods (Masai, Samburu,

Lapps, Eskimo), further highlighting the unsuitability of cereal grains as

foundational foods in the human diet.

 

In light of these findings, I realized it was no great surprise why I had

done so poorly on a low-fat, cereal-based diet. Basically, I had been

consuming a diet that humans were never meant to eat! I promptly modified

my low-carb diet so that it was now based entirely upon Paleo-style food

choices.

 

Why should we believe you, Colpo?

 

The purpose of my website is to help people realize that the bulk of what

constitutes mainstream dietary wisdom has little foundation in scientific

reality. I was fooled by such 'wisdom' during the nineties, and my health

began to suffer as a consequence. If I can help even a small portion of the

folks out there who have been similarly suckered by the low-fat propaganda

to discover the facts, to discover a way of eating that might truly benefit

their health, then I feel my efforts in establishing and running this site

will have been well worth the effort.

 

I had to laugh when one of my critics recently questioned

(http://www.theomnivore.com/Bilsborough_reply.html) my right to comment on

health matters, pointing to my lack of formal qualifications (I became a

certified fitness consultant in 1991, but have never studied at

university). Over the last few years, I have literally read thousands of

journal articles. Judging by some of the scientifically untenable theories

espoused by this particular critic, I would have to seriously question

whether he has even read a portion of the articles I have.

 

In fact, just how thoroughly scientists in general research the literature

before arriving at their conclusions is a matter of increasing debate. It

seems that not a week passes by without a report of researchers who have

been caught falsifying or 'customizing' research data, about conflicts of

interests arising from financial ties between researchers and drug

companies, or about the use of highly questionable research strategies.

 

A recent article in New Scientist, for example, discussed the rather shady

method by which many scientists apparently obtain the references they cite

in support of their arguments.(4) Anyone who regularly reads research

papers will know that at the end of the paper it is customary to include a

reference list of citations to other research papers. These are papers that

the author/s supposedly consulted before arriving at the conclusions

expressed in their own paper. According to researchers Mikhail Simkin and

Vwani Roychowdhury of the University of California, Los Angeles, who

studied the frequency and pattern of misspellings found in reference list

citations, a good deal of these citations appear to be simply cut and

pasted from other authors' reference lists. It appears that many scientists

simply trust other authors to have read the referenced papers, to have

understood them, and to have cited them in a relevant, honest manner.

Having come across numerous papers that did not concur with the inferences

of the citing author, I can say that such a practice is, at best, wishful

thinking.

 

I do not mean to imply that all researchers are mindless twits who merely

regurgitate currently accepted knowledge. Much of the information on this

site would never have seen the light of day if it wasn't for those

brilliant individuals who dared to question and actively scrutinize

paradigms that most others had already accepted as gospel truth. I'm

talking about past and present pioneer researchers like Drs. Uffe Ravnskov,

George Mann, Kilmer McCully, Mary Enig, John Yudkin, and many others. By

publishing and publicizing their findings, these individuals risked being

ostracized and derided by their peers, but the risk of ruffling a few

well-connected feathers was obviously less important to them than their

allegiance to the truth and to human health. Unfortunately, such boldly

independent researchers appear to be the exception, not the norm,

especially in the realm of nutrition research.

 

So why should people trust me?

 

I don't want anyone to blindly trust me. Having just pointed out why we

often can't trust even highly-decorated scientists, such a request would be

extremely hypocritical. Most of you reading this would not know me from a

bar of soap, and should examine my writings with a critical eye, just as

you should do with ALL other writers.

 

I want people to read what I have to say, then decide for themselves

whether what I write makes sense and whether it concurs with the empirical

and scientific evidence. If people read what I write and blindly accept it

at face value, I haven't succeeded in educating them; all I have done is to

indoctrinate another automaton!

 

So how does one validate the nutritional and health information they

receive? In the case of the information given on this website, the best way

is to take the citations I give and obtain the full text studies for one's

self. Some of the full-text studies I cite are available on the internet,

at the respective journal's website. Others will only be available at your

nearest medical library, or from document retrieval firms like Infotrieve.

 

Of course, not everyone has the time to go rummaging through medical

libraries retrieving journal articles. If you fall into this category, you

can still employ some all-too-frequently-neglected validation measures. Let

me explain.

 

The main thrust of this website is that a diet comprised of a wide variety

of free-range meats, poultry, eggs, fruits, nuts, vegetables, seafood and

cultured dairy products, but void of liquid milk, cereal grains, legumes,

white potatoes, and highly-processed convenience foods is the optimal

eating pattern for the human species.

 

Because an increasing percentage of the population is suffering from

impaired glycemic control - insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and

full-blown diabetes - I also believe that a carbohydrate-reduced diet (not

necessarily ketogenic) is the superior format of this diet for most people

to follow. That means a moderate- to high-fat intake, coupled with a

moderate- to low-carbohydrate intake.

 

People can easily verify if my contentions are correct by performing their

own short-term experiment. They can try such a diet, fine-tuning the

macronutrient ratios and specific food choices until they have something

they can live with for a few months. During this time, they should keep a

close note of how they feel, changes in weight, energy level, digestive

efficiency and so on. Blood pressure and fasting blood glucose

(glycosylated hemoglobin, and if possible insulin function, would also be

useful) should be measured and a general blood work-up performed before one

starts their new diet, and again after a couple of months on the diet.

Anybody with any sort of medical condition should keep in close contact

with their doctor when changing their diet. Diabetics, for example, will

often need to adjust their medication downwards, in response to the blood

glucose-lowering effects of a low-carbohydrate diet.

 

If like myself and so many others, you feel much better after adopting the

above eating pattern, and your follow-up blood pressure, blood glucose and

blood tests come back vastly improved, you will then know that there is

something to this whole reduced-carbohydrate/Paleo-diet phenomenon after all!

 

The 'experiment of one' that I have just described is the exact same

procedure that millions of people around the world have already performed

by trying reduced-carb diets for themselves. It is the reason why these

diets have continued to grow in popularity despite the repeated, incessant

efforts of mainstream authorities, vested industry groups, and misguided

vegan organizations to virulently attack these diets with every bit of

scare-mongering propaganda they can muster.

 

These diets have continued to flourish despite such rabid opposition for

one simple reason: personal experience, positive or negative, is far more

convincing than establishment bullshit!

 

To wrap up...

 

The information presented on this website is compiled by someone who was

once a fervent supporter of the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet principle.

I abandoned this diet because of the numerous deleterious changes it had

produced in my health status. I began thoroughly researching the diet and

nutrition arena for myself, in the process discovering that much of what

the health orthodoxy tells us is utter garbage. I also came to realize that

it is imperative for each and every one of us to cast over the health and

nutrition information we receive with a highly critical eye.

 

One thing I have noticed is that people always seem to be looking for

'gurus' who can impart them the knowledge that they believe will make their

lives that much better. However, to blindly trust someone on the basis of

impressive-sounding credentials, a charismatic personality, the number of

other people who believe said guru's teachings, or the amount of media

attention given to said guru's claims is hardly an optimal way to acquire

knowledge, no matter what the subject.

 

Thinking for one's self is hard work, which is probably why so many of us

don't do it. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, " Nothing pains some people

more than having to think. " Nonetheless, the benefits can be enormous. To

quote George R. Fitzpatrick:

 

" Nature gave man two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever

since, man's success has been dependent on the one he uses most. "

 

References

 

1. Keys A. Atherosclerosis: a problem in newer public health. Journal of

Mount Sinai Hospital, Jul-Aug, 1953; 20 (2):118-139.

 

2. Yerushalmey J, Hilleboe HE. Fat in the diet and mortality from heart

disease. A methodological note. New York State Journal of Medicine, 1957;

57: 2343-2354.

 

3. Yudkin J. Diet and coronary thrombosis. Hypothesis and fact. Lancet,

July 27, 1957; ii: 155-162.

 

4. Page IH, et al. Dietary fat and its relation to heart attacks and

strokes. Circulation 1961; 23:133-136.

 

5. Muir H. Misprinted citations finger scientists who fail to do their

homework. New Scientist, Dec 14, 2002; 176 (2373): 12.

 

Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher and certified fitness consultant

with 20 years' experience in the physical conditioning arena. To contact:

contact