This level of national obesity is new. In 1960, rates were about 10 percent for men and 15 percent for women. They drifted up a little for the next few years, then in the late 1970s inflected upward in a steady rise to their current levels. //

So what caused this national epidemic of obesity?

The most persuasive answer is that in the late 1970s, the U.S. government, acting under pressure from such senators as former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, launched a nutrition campaign that resulted in the 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and, a decade later, the “Food Pyramid.” Bread, cereal, rice, and pasta were the base of the pyramid. Then in order upward were vegetables; fruits; milk, yogurt, and cheese; meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, and nuts; with fats, oils, and sweets in the small apex.

The guidelines are reviewed periodically, but the latest version (2015) continues the anti-fat, anti-meat, pro-carbohydrate basic philosophy. //

Philip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences, asked McGovern in 1977, “What right has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good?”

But the skeptics were drowned out and left stranded without research money or institutional support, and clinicians who tried a different approach, such as Dr. Robert Atkins, were traduced viciously. A huge body of respectable clinical observations that contradicted the guidelines — see, for example, “Treating Overweight Patients” from a premier medical journal in 1957 — went down the memory hole. Also unnoticed was the similarity between the guidelines and the recommendations in a 1930 Oregon pamphlet on “Fattening Pigs for Market.” //

The failure of the guidelines to improve public health was not bad news for everyone. The more the weight-challenged fail, the higher the rates of Type II diabetes, which is accompanied by a rise in blood sugar and consequent insulin prescriptions, and the more the money that can be made from substituting cheap vegetable oils for natural fats, from weight loss programs, and from drastic surgical remedies. Good times for Big Farm, Big Pharma, Big Medicine, and assorted other major players. //

In 2001, investigative journalist Gary Taubes published “The Soft Science of Dietary Fat” in the peer-reviewed and prestigious journal Science. The article, and his subsequent book “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” argued that the food pyramid was almost totally wrong.

Taubes cited both solid metabolic research, which was being ignored, and extensive medical history, which had been amnesia-ized, to the effect that overconsumption of carbohydrates eventually leads to insulin resistance, which skews appetite regulators and turns off the ability to burn fat. The eventual result is a cascade in which the body is taking in excessive amounts of food and storing it as fat, but cannot access the fat for energy. The lack of available energy then reduces metabolic rates, which makes losing weight still more difficult. The solution is to cut carbs to decrease insulin, and add fat. //

The rebels agree with the conventional wisdom on one crucial point: The refined-sugary fast foods that permeate the current American diet are terrible. Otherwise they conclude weight loss can be achieved by inverting the food pyramid, creating a diet of 70 percent healthy fats (not vegetable oil or saturated fats), 25 percent protein, and 5 percent or less carbohydrates, an approach abbreviated as “low-carb” or “ketogenic,” a term based on the fact that burning fat produces substances called “ketones.” Red meat is favored, the fattier the better.

The rebellion is reinforced by numerous clinicians who struggled with personal weight issues as well as with frustration over an inability to help patients. //

The moving force behind EAT-Lancet is a vegan Norwegian billionaire, but it is also a darling of the corporate world. Among its sponsors are 20 Big Food companies, 7 Big Pharma, and 14 Big Chemical. All of these have their own interests, which do not necessarily include our health. As Teicholz says about Big Food:

The vast majority of packaged foods sold on the inner aisles of supermarkets — cookies, crackers, chips (crisps), candy, cereals — are made up of the same basic ingredients: soy, corn, grains, sugars, and salt. This is vegan.