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Show 958: Flipping the Food Pyramid Upside-Down

The old-style food pyramid with lots of starches and sugars at the base and fats at the tip may not be the healthiest way to eat.
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Flipping the Food Pyramid Upside-Down

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People often hold fast to their favorite dietary dogma and get annoyed if it is challenged. But lately there has been a great deal of controversy about the best diet for good health, especially for people with diabetes or heart disease.

One sign of a possible paradigm shift is the publication of three different articles in The New England Journal of Medicine this week. Although all were focused on the health implications of sodium intake, they came to rather different conclusions.

The Low-Down on Low-Fat Diets

The usual recommendation for people with diabetes is to follow a low-fat diet and avoid saturated fat in particular like the plague. The natural consequence of following these rules is a diet for diabetes that is high in carbs, sometimes highly processed carbs, though it may be low in fat. Is this truly the healthiest way a person with diabetes can eat? Or should the food pyramid be turned upside-down so that grains are the smallest proportion of the diet and fats provide the most calories?

We talk with Dr. Eric Westman about the benefits of a ketogenic diet for a variety of health problems. He’ll tell us why he often recommends such a diet for his patients, and he will answer your questions.

This Week’s Guest:

Eric Westman, MD, MHS, is an associate professor of medicine and director of the Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic. He is medical director of the Duke Center for Smoking Cessation and co-author of the books, The New Atkins for a New You and KetoClarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet. The website is http://www.KetoClarity.com. His scientific article on “Dietary carbohydrate restriction as thefirst approach in diabetes management” has just been published online in Nutrition.

Listen to the Podcast

The podcast of this program will be available the Monday after the broadcast date. The show can be streamed online from this site and podcasts can be downloaded for free.

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About the Author
Terry Graedon, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and co-host of The People’s Pharmacy radio show, co-author of The People’s Pharmacy syndicated newspaper columns and numerous books, and co-founder of The People’s Pharmacy website. Terry taught in the Duke University School of Nursing and was an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Fellow of the Society of Applied Anthropology. Terry is one of the country's leading authorities on the science behind folk remedies..
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