If you’ve looked into the trendy diets of today, you’ve probably come across at least one diet that focuses on getting enough protein and minimizing carbohydrates. The truth is that there are many high protein and low carbohydrate diets that have been trendy over the last few decades. Today’s ketogenic diet is just one of the latest iterations of the high protein, low carb diet trend that started in the 1970s. While some benefits can be gained from any diet that eliminates processed foods like candy, cake, cookies, and fried food, there is only so far a high protein, low carb diet can take you when it comes to healing your body. In truth, this way of eating is as misinformed—and nearly as harmful—as it was when it started decades ago. I know you might have read or heard that high protein and low carbohydrate diets are beneficial, but today I will share why they are problematic, especially for someone with a chronic health condition or symptom.
Following a keto diet is damaging for your body and brain whether you eat an animal-based keto diet or a plant-based keto diet. Some people experience temporary relief or weight loss on a keto diet, but it’s important to understand that these improvements are short-lived. Especially if you suffer from chronic illness, autoimmune disease, neurological conditions or mysterious symptoms, you’ll want to run the other way from anything close to the keto diet.
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Inherently Flawed
The entire premise of the keto diet is incorrect to begin with. The diet involves restricting carbohydrate intake while focusing on high protein and fat intake. The theory is that this way of eating causes your body to go into a metabolic state called ketosis, where you efficiently burn fat as an energy source for your body and brain.
The reality is, it’s not possible for your body to go into ketosis if you’re eating any amount or form of sugar whatsoever, including the natural sugars found in most foods. That means anyone eating even a tiny bit of nuts, seeds, avocado, cheese, butter, tomato, or green juices is taking in natural sugar. Unless someone is eating only bacon three times a day (in which case they’d feel terrible and cause even more damage for themselves down the road), they’re not entering ketosis.
The idea that your body can switch to burning fat as fuel is also flawed. We don’t run on fat. We run on glucose, which is sugar. If it were true that our bodies could flip from burning glucose for energy to burning fat for energy, as the keto diet suggests, then it would be impossible for someone who was overweight or obese to starve. If the ketosis theory is correct, you could take away an overweight person’s food completely and they’d continue to live for a long period of time, using their fat as energy. But that’s not how it works. Fat does not convert to usable material for our bodies.
Anyone of any weight can starve or be malnourished without the glucose and nutrition their body needs, that is, without the glucose and nutrients that are bountiful in carbohydrates such as fruits and starchy vegetables, and without the nutrients found in leafy greens and herbs. These are what I call the CCCs, which stands for Critical Clean Carbohydrates. I detail why these foods are necessary, helpful and healing in Liver Rescue and share how dozens of the foods in the CCC category bring healing to the body.
The Old Roots of High Protein, Low Carb Diets
To everyone’s detriment, the world has become anti-sugar and anti-carbohydrate. Shunning fruits and starchy vegetables is taking away people’s ability to heal. How did we get here? The answer requires a quick history lesson and an open mind. In the early 1930s, the meat packing industry and the government joined forces to promote protein. Around this time, instead of going to the farmer and the butcher shop for meat, animal products were becoming industrialized. They were made cheap and available in mass. They were promoted as critical. Monetary interests were put ahead of people’s health.
The idea that protein is more important than anything else was pushed by the partnership of industry and government. This belief was indoctrinated into the conventional medical model and taught in grammar schools. It got drilled into everyone’s thinking and consciousness (and has remained there in the decades since).
Before this colluding effort to push protein, health practitioners were not focused on protein and meat. Protein wasn’t the top choice to sustain people. Alternative practitioners and healers especially believed in fruits, leafy greens, vegetables, herbs, potatoes, nuts and seeds. And although they weren’t focused on protein, the reality is there’s some protein in everything you eat. It’s in spinach, it’s in berries, it’s in bananas. It’s everywhere. Nonetheless, the baseless but calculated decisions to promote heavy protein intake continue to influence and confuse our thinking today.
Taking Aim at Fats...and Missing
People who are in the health industry have always been in search of the best diet. In the 1970s, doctors were seeing the rise of heart disease, high blood pressure, liver disease, cholesterol and diabetes. People were cutting out fast food, processed food and greasy foods, yet they still were experiencing all kinds of symptoms and conditions. In the 70s, doctors and the medical system had correctly recognized that too much fat, too many animal products and too much red meat was contributing to disease.
All that fat intake leads to higher fat content in the blood, which leads to a lack of oxygen in the blood. Over time, diminished oxygen levels getting to the heart and brain contributes to problems like strokes and heart attacks. Too much fat in the bloodstream also triggers the adrenal glands to shoot off adrenaline as it tries to clean up your blood to protect you.
Unfortunately, the realization that fat was harmful to our health didn’t translate into an effective response. Instead, grocery shelves filled up with low-fat and fat-free products (which often contained unhealthy, processed ingredients or trans fats). People began eliminating fats that actually had healthy properties, such as coconut oil, avocado, nuts, seeds and olives. And on top of that, people continued to eat lots of animal protein. People didn’t realize that animal protein translates into animal fat, which means they were still eating high fat diets even if they thought they had a “lean cut.” They were still consuming way too much fat—and often even worse types of fat than before—on their low fat diets.
With this flawed approach, any progress that could have been made fell apart. Health professionals realized the low fat diet trend wasn’t working. Eventually, the only thing left to do (because protein remained untouchable due to the agenda and money behind it) was to go after carbohydrates. That was the birth of the keto diet.
Since then, it’s been one version after another of a trendy low carb, high protein diet. The same concept has been repackaged into different names over the decades with just a slight twist to market it as its own unique diet program. One thing that has altered slightly is today’s high protein diets have a little more carbohydrates. Modern versions allow in some leafy greens, a bit of avocado, or a few berries and nuts. That’s because the older versions that allowed none of these healing foods destroyed people’s health. Our bodies and brains need the nutrients, antioxidants, phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals that are packed into leafy greens, fruits, berries, vegetables, coconut water and raw honey. Sprinkling these healing foods into today’s high protein, low carb trends makes these diets a little less harmful.
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