Many books have been written on diet. Can we look to these authorities for consensus? Ten popular diets were compared in an attempt to find consensus. These diets ranged from Dr. Ornish's diet with 6% calories from fat, 16% from proteins, 78% from carbohydrates and 54 grams of fiber, to Dr. Atkins' diet composed of 56% calories from fat, 30% from proteins, 13% from carbohydrates and 11 grams of fiber, with lots of variance in between! We find little consensus in these "authorities."

What about the "experts"? The American Heart Association, the American Dietetic Association, American Cancer Society, most weight loss experts and most nutritionists agree on a high carbohydrate, low-fat diet. But are they right?

Studies of dietary fat intake show a trend in lower fat intake from 1955 to the present. Yet the percent of the population that is overweight has gone from under 25% to about 30% in the same length of time. These trends are near mirror images. Another interesting phenomenon is the relationship of Type II Diabetes and fat intake. As the dietary fat has fallen since 1955, Type II Diabetes has risen from less than 3% of the population, in 1955, to greater than 10% today. There is a mechanistic underpinning for this problem. A high carbohydrate diet results in larger amounts of circulating insulin levels. High insulin levels result in down regulation of insulin receptors and the development of insulin resistance. "Resistance to insulin stimulated glucose uptake is a common phenomenon occurring in approximately 25% of the population, associated with a number of risk factors for cardiovascular disease…including hyperinsulinemia, abnormal glucose tolerance, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, increased plasma triglycerides and decreased HDL, denser LDL particles, hypertension, and abnormalities of fibrinolysis" according to the Journal of Internal Medicine, 235, 13-22, 1994. Studies show that as energy from carbohydrates goes up, HDL goes down. Other studies point out that as insulin levels go up, coronary artery disease also goes up.

Carbohydrates, it seems, have been in the human diet as a significant source of calories for only about 10,000 years. Prior to that we did not possess the social structure to harvest grains. We were hunter-gatherers. We subsisted primarily on fruits, vegetables, roots and lean (wild) meats. The fat composition of the diet was quite different as well. Studies done on free range fed animals vs. grain fed show great differences in the type of body fat. Grain fed animals have a higher percentage of Omega-6 fatty acids while free range animals have higher Omega-3. Omega-6 fatty acids, in general, result in the production of inflammatory mediators while Omega-3 fatty acids typically produce anti-inflammatory mediators.