The American Heart Association Hopes You Are Stupid

Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,

Whenever I need a good, cleansing rage, I head over to www.heart.org — the official website of the American Heart Association (AHA).

This organization, respected by millions, doles out a great deal of dodgy information.

The rest of the world is embracing the solid science indicating that we should eat more fat, especially saturated fat, and far fewer carbohydrates.

Even uber-mainstream Time magazine gets it:

Over at the AHA, however, the dieticians are still partying like it’s 1985. Here’s their official approved foods list:

• A variety of fruits and vegetables
• Whole grains
• Low-fat dairy products
• Skinless poultry and fish
• Nuts and legumes
• Nontropical vegetable oils.

Limit saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, red meat, sweets, and sugar-sweetened beverages. If you choose to eat red meat, compare labels and select the leanest cuts available.

The only good ideas here are to eat a variety of fruits and veggies and to avoid trans fats and sweets. I’d put “nuts and legumes” in the neutral category.

The rest reflects the carb-loving, fat-phobic nonsense that has driven the obesity/diabetes epidemic for over 40 years.

The recent intelligent response to these destructive recommendations is the Paleo diet. Paleo aims to approximate the way humans ate as they evolved. It has, justifiably, rapidly gained popularity over the last decade.

My High-Fat, Real Food diet is built principally on Paleo concepts.

There’s abundant, growing, evidence that Paleo-type diets are best for weight loss¹, dropping blood pressure and cholesterol², preventing and alleviating Type 2 diabetes³, and generally undoing the damage wrought by mainstream dietary recommendations like the AHA’s.

So I was curious. What does the AHA have to say about Paleo?

Just a Fad… a Million-Year-Long Fad…

The AHA website’s sole article that explores the Paleo diet is headlined:

“Is My Fad Diet Good for My Heart?”

Got that? Paleo is a fad diet, because… the AHA says it is.

Keep in mind that the AHA’s Heart-Check Food Certification Program, which costs manufacturers up to $5,000 per product per year⁴, gets the AHA logo slapped on products like packaged egg whites, in which the nutrient-rich yolk is carefully removed and discarded.

Allow me to humbly predict that these processed AHA-endorsed “foods” are the real fad, and if they don’t fade to oblivion in a few years, they should.

Regarding the Paleo diet, the article goes on to quote a dietitian:

“While it is good to eat whole foods, this diet can promote outrageously rapid weight loss, which is not always good for your body and not recommended for your heart,” [Maribet] Rivera-Brute says.

How’s That Again?

Aside from calling it a “fad,” this is the only critique of the Paleo diet the AHA offers in this article, and it’s decidedly weird. Considering that 67 percent of Americans are overweight or obese⁵, is a natural, nutrient-rich diet that offers “outrageously rapid weight loss” really a big threat?

I have no idea where this idea originated, anyway. Typically, studies show Paleo leads to a safe and sane loss of roughly one pound per week³.

Finally, the article mentions something called the Cabbage Soup Diet, in which one eats only cabbage soup and a few veggies for seven days straight.

In other words, the article lists an actual, nutty fad diet in a weak attempt to make Paleo look guilty by association.

Bottom Line

Ignore the “Heart-Check” logo on grocery labels. It has little to no value, unless you want to identify foods that generate high profits and conform to generally outdated nutrition advice.

And never take dietary advice from any organization that collects fees from mainstream food manufacturers. Whether you listen to me or someone else, make sure that the dietary advice you follow is rooted in good science and evolutionary insight rather than corporate agendas.

Sincerely,

Brad Lemley
Editor, Natural Health Solutions 

Citations

1. Osterdahl M, Kocturk T, Koochek A, Wändell PE. Effects of a short-term intervention with a paleolithic diet in healthy volunteers. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2008
2. Frassetto LA, Schloetter M, Mietus-synder M, Morris RC, Sebastian A. Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2009
3. Lindeberg S, Jönsson T, Granfeldt Y, et al. A Palaeolithic diet improves glucose tolerance more than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischaemic heart disease. Diabetologia. 2007
4. Heart Check Food Certification Program Application Packet
5. Available here. Accessed November 14, 2015.