If fats and meat don’t cause heart problems as ketogenic advocates proclaim, why did American heart disease start exploding when we had a high fat/meat diet in the 40s/50s/60s? Was it just sugar? Trying keto but want that clarification.

There is a slight problem with the books, blogs and videos of most keto promoters; they mislead. That is they cherry pick information, misquote or misrepresent science and plain make stuff up. A remarkable number of keto/low carb advocates claim there is a huge conspiracy and that doctors, dieticians etc are all paid by Big Sugar and or Big Pharma to downplay the negative affects of sugar and other carb and put all the blame on fats. This is of course nonsense but some of these low carber are talented authors, they can be quite convincing.

Here are some reviews of some prominent low carb books, see for yourself:

Good Calories, Bad Calories: A Critical Review (part 1)

The Case Against The Case Against Sugar

The Big Fat Surprise: A Critical Review; Part 1

There are many more.

Whatever your views are on low carb diets try to read these reviews with an open mind and look at facts. If an author is misquoting a scientific study, this is wrong. If an author claims a scientific study says one thing, but it says another this is wrong. If an author completely ignores multiple studies that disprove their claims this is wrong. No one should accept this.

Here is a good review of the role of dietary guidelines in obesity.

The data do not support the idea that the low-fat dietary guidelines caused the obesity epidemic.

And a good article on obesity in general:

Did the Food Environment Cause the Obesity Epidemic?

I want to make it clear that there are some benefits to low carb diets and for many they will work extremely well. However, this does not excuse the multitude of false claims and conspiracy theories by far too many low carb advocates.

The above post is by Glyn Ward - a stunning post!