I asked Dr John MacDougall, the low fat, high carb doctor the following
question.

> Have you any comment on the references listed below? If these references,
> from peer reviewed journals, are valid, is there not a possibility that
> your diet is dangerous?
>

I then listed Dean Esmay's excellent list of journal reviews on dietary fat
 that he posted to the Paleo Symposium titled "On the subject of Fat". I
hope you do not mind the liberty Dean!

http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A1=ind9705&L=paleodiet#37

Dr MacDougall very kindly posted this reply:

>Great review of the literature.  However, every health organization that
has reviewed the scientific literature has come to the conclusion that
we should eat less fat and more unrefined carbohydrates in the form of
starches, vegetables and fruits.  If you look at the world picture it is
kind of hard to come to the conclusion that high carbohydrate diets make
you at higher risk of disease and obesity. If carbohydrates were bad for
people then the Japanese living in Japan on a rice-based diet would be
fat and sickly.  When they moved to the US and switched to a
lower-carbohydrate, higher-fat and -protein diet they would become
thinner and healthier.  The truth is the Japanese are among the
slimmest, most energetic, longest lived, healthiest people on earth.
Furthermore, they take on common American diseases when they change to
the American diet.  If high-protein diets, which means meat, egg, and
dairy products, were so good for us then people who subsist on these
foods (most Americans) would be the thin and healthy, and vegetarians
would be fat and sick.  In general, the opposite is the case.

You can design such experiments to show triglycerides go up by feeding
refined carbohydrates to subjects, and by overfeeding subjects
(cholesterol still goes down.  When subjects are allowed to eat only
until they are full (not force-fed) their cholesterol level falls, their
triglyceride levels don't go up significantly, and they lose weight
(Ernie Schafer, JAMA 274:1450, 1995).  A study of 1250 of my patients
shows triglyceride levels decrease an average of 10 mg/dl, and people
who start with levels over 600 mg/dl have a 311 mg/dl reduction in 11
days.  Therefore, eating as much as you want (but not more than you
want) of a healthy low-fat, no-cholesterol diet lowers three important
risk factors for heart disease--cholesterol, triglycerides and body
weight.

Please keep the discussion going.  I had a chance to recently debate
presently the leading carbohydrate basher--Barry Sears in Las Vegas.
From my view point I don't think his arguments stood up very well.  You
can order a copy of that tape from my office and judge for yourself.<

I think the Japanese example is interesting, and I have asked Dr MacDougall
if their health may be attributed to their relative lack of gluten and
lactose and the abundance of fish in the diet, rather than the
macronutrient composition of the food. I also referred him to the Paleo
Symposium list archives. Has anybody seen the debate with Sears? I have not
told him that I was posting his replies to this list, but I figure the more
we can cross reference diet ideas from all quarters, hopefully, the better
off we shall all be.

Gary