If you’re a low-carber, a fat-phobe, or subscribe to pretty much any of the current screwball diet fads, you’re not going to like this.
Before I explain why, let me sidetrack a little. Last week I posted a video of Michelle Jenneke, the bubbly 19-year old Aussie hurdler who recently performed a rather unconventional warm up routine at the Barcelona Athletic Championships that caused men worldwide to go flat-out bonkers.
Most of the videos of Michelle that went viral feature a catchy little Eurodance ditty titled "Boys (Summertime Love)
This got me thinking, in one of my deeply profound and contemplative moments: I wonder what Sabrina Salerno looks like nowadays? Has the aging process and a lifetime of pasta been kind to her?
You bet it has. Here she is in 2000, and again in 2012 at the age of 44:
Sabrina Salerno performing her trademark hit in 2012.
So much for the theory that carbs will make you fat.
What's that you say?
That Ms Salerno indeed remains an attractive woman for her age, but the experience of a single Italian female doesn't mean much when it comes to nutrition and weight loss?
Well, how about the experience of the entire Italian female population?
Italian cuisine is to low-carb what Lamborghinis are to speed limits, but that hasn’t stopped Italian women from being among the slimmest in Europe, second only to Swiss females.
Yep, researchers at the Imperial College of London teamed up with investigators at Harvard to study the average Body Mass Index (BMI) of adults 20 years and older in every country of the world. The results, published in the Lancet, found that Swiss women had the lowest mean BMIs in Europe, followed by Italian women in second place[1].
In fact, Italian women join Singapore females as the only female populations of wealthy nations to have experienced a probable decline in BMI (of high-income countries, women in the USA, New Zealand, and Australia had the greatest increases in BMI).
Stop and think about that for a moment. Italian cuisine is the antithesis of carbohydrate restriction, and rumour has it that if you try and sell copies of Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution in Naples or Southern Italy, you’ll get whacked by local mobsters. Pasta, pizza, panettone, calzone, bread, risotto, biscotti, gnocchi are staples of the Italian diet. And I should note that these high-carb staples are all made from white flour and refined grain – I repeat, REFINED GRAIN AND WHITE FLOUR - so all you revisionist authors and ‘experts’ who recommend 'Mediterranean Diets’ featuring whole-grains, grab a "DUNCE" cap and go sit in the corner alongside your low-carb brethren.
Switzerland, meanwhile, is to low-fat diets what politics is to honesty. Check the historical FAO data and you’ll see that Switzerland has long had one of the highest average national fat intakes in the world. Then check the historical life expectancy stats and you’ll see that Switzerland has consistently ranked amongst the longest-living nations in the world (Switzerland is currently 4th in world life expectancy rankings, behind Japan, Hong Kong and Iceland[2]). Speaking of Iceland, which has a similarly mean high fat intake as Switzerland, blokes in that country actually enjoy the longest male life expectancy in the world, ahead of Japan, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Australia.
If fat makes you fat, someone clearly forgot to tell the women of Switzerland, because they officially rank as the slimmest women in all of Europe.
The picture isn’t so rosy for Maltese and British women. Maltese ladies weighed in as the plumpest in Europe with a BMI of 27, followed by the UK (26.9).
British men fared little better, with their BMI rising from 24.7 to 26.6, taking them from 17th to 5th place. Of the major Western European nations, only Spanish men are fatter.
The chubbiest European men can be found in Ireland and Malta, where both countries have an average male BMI of 27.7. Italian blokes didn’t rate too well either, tipping the scales with a BMI of 26.5. The thinnest men can be found in France - where saturated fat consumption just happens to be the highest in Southern Europe.
And the Rest of the World?
Globally, an estimated 1·46 billion adults worldwide had BMI of 25 or greater, of these an estimated 205 million men and 297 million women were obese. The USA had the highest BMI of high-income countries while, not surprisingly, the lowest BMIs were seen in impoverished nations. Female BMI was lowest in Bangladesh (20·5 kg/m2) and male BMI in Democratic Republic of the Congo (19·9 kg/m2). BMIs less than 21·5 kg/m2 for both sexes were observed in a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and east, south, and southeast Asia.
Yep, while us spoilt, self-absorbed Westerners struggle with an obesity 'epidemic', it's worth remembering that a lot of people around the world still struggle every day to find enough food to eat. Think about that next time you shovel a load of high-calorie slop into your gullet while sitting on your vastly under-utilized rump, wondering how on Earth you got to be so fat. While you ‘battle’ with obesity caused by an abundance of cheap, plentiful and readily available calories, someone on the other side of the planet is about to die of starvation. Guess who I really feel sorry for?
Take Away Points from this Article
- Carbs don’t make you fat.
- Fat doesn’t make you fat.
- Too many calories make you fat, regardless of whether they come from protein, fat, carbohydrate, alcohol, or the hogwash you swallow hook, line and sinker from your favourite diet guru.
- Saturated fat from meats and whole dairy products won’t shorten your lifespan. The only place where these foodstuffs shorten life expectancy is in the shrill, alarmist books and YouTube videos of whiny, nutrient-deficient, reality-hating vegans. But who the hell wants to be like them, anyhow?
References
1. The study citation is: Finucane MM, et al. National, regional, and global trends in body-mass index since 1980: systematic analysis of health examination surveys and epidemiological studies with 960 country-years and 9·1 million participants. Lancet, 12 February 2011; 377 (9765): 557-567. However, to get the BMI data for individual countries, you need to visit the following URL:http://www5.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/metabolic_risks/bmi/
2. See Table 16A, on page 97 of this PDF of World Population Prospects. The 2006 Revision: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf
—
Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher, physical conditioning specialist, and author of The Fat Loss Bible and The Great Cholesterol Con. For more information, visit TheFatLossBible.net or TheGreatCholesterolCon.com
Copyright © Anthony Colpo.
Disclaimer: All content on this web site is provided for information and education purposes only. Individuals wishing to make changes to their dietary, lifestyle, exercise or medication regimens should do so in conjunction with a competent, knowledgeable and empathetic medical professional. Anyone who chooses to apply the information on this web site does so of their own volition and their own risk. The owner and contributors to this site accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for any harm, real or imagined, from the use or dissemination of information contained on this site. If these conditions are not agreeable to the reader, he/she is advised to leave this site immediately.