The next time you trim the fat off of a steak or pour all the grease drippings out of your frying pan, consider the starving children in the third world who could actually use that fat to improve their brain power. We live in the same world, but Americans and our third world neighbors have two varying views on fat. Americans loath it. Fat keeps us from having washboard abs and enviable waistlines, but (more…)

“Losing weight would improve your health” - I was telling my patient last week during a consultation. His light-hearted response concerned me: “I am not obese, doctor, you’re too skinny. Everybody in my neighborhood is this size. And I like being big.”

Everyone in his neighborhood is indeed getting bigger. As the average size of the typical American grows each year, so does the tolerance for being big. I am concerned that our mass media “experts” have taken the social stigma out of fatness and made people blissfully ignorant of its health risks. Advertising, television programs, and movies that promote obesity as normal directly ignore its threat to health and well being. (more…)

The 2 million - year - old hunter-gatherer diet is healthier than the Mediterranean diet, according to a new study.

Staffan Lindeberg’s research team from Lund University in Sweden, have noted a remarkable absence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes among the traditional population of Kitava, Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, where modern agrarian-based food is unavailable. (more…)