LowCarb Monthly Magazine

Throughout the 80’s and 90’s and on into the early part of this century, eating meat, particularly red meat, was considered a no-no by many in the diet fashion industry.

No, the thing to eat then was lots of healthy pasta, lots of wholemeal bread, and of course no FAT.

Eating in that manner was thought to be the absolutely best way to lose weight. Not only that, the folk who followed that sort of diet were considered to be the healthiest people around. The thing is, all those advocates of this pseudo science either willingly or in error, overlooked the reams of research showing clearly that everything they believed in was not consistent with the facts.

In reality, the controlled carbohydrate diet, rich in quality lean protein, balanced with healthy fats, is far and away the best way to lose weight as well as being the healthiest way to eat. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has recently published an Australian study in which the diets of men and women with high blood pressure were altered slightly, to see if this would influence their high blood pressure.

What the researchers did was to replace 40g of the starchy carbohydrate part of their daily diet with 40g of protein in a trial lasting eight weeks. During this time, nutritionists monitored the subject’s diets to ensure that they were getting almost 25% of their daily calories from protein – and only a maximum of 40% from carbohydrates.

At the end of the study, researchers found that even with just this slight substitution of carbohydrate intake for red meat, caused a reduction in blood pressure by the same amount as leading blood pressure medications. As an added bonus, this also reduced the likelihood of other cardiovascular disease risk.

The bottom line is what we all know already, but it is nice to have it proven by an independent clinical study, and that is the best way to eat healthily whilst optimising your weight, is simply to reduce the amount of carbohydrates that you eat. So out go the bread, the pasta, the potatoes, and the rice, and in comes the nice juicy red steaks, or whatever other meat and proteins you like to eat! But don’t forget, these should all be balanced up with good quality vegetables such as peppers, broccoli, asparagus and Popeye’s favourite – spinach.