Are you ready? with Leigh Elder

I have always had Michael Moseley down as a relentless self promoter with not too much substance. Recently, I have changed this view and now regard him as someone with great vision and really worth following.

For the uninitiated, Michael is an Oxford educated BBC television journalist, writer, producer and presenter. He regularly appears on The One Show and well known for his programmes and books on nutrition, weight loss and diabetes.

His best selling books include The 5:2 Diet and The 8 Week Blood-Sugar Diet. What finally sold me was how, in about 1000 odd words he has been able to sum up the whole worldwide weight and diabetes nightmare hitting many of the key scientific landmarks around this 50 year period.

The title is 'I'm living proof that eating fat can be good for you.” He told various friends and family, including his father, who had type 2 diabetes that 'eating fat would clog your arteries as surely as pouring lard down a drain.”

His father faithfully followed this advice, put aside the fats, ate more carbohydrate-rich starchy foods, gradually put on more weight, increased his medication and sadly died aged 74 from heart failure.

He tracks the origins of this low-fat era back to the 1950's where American Scientist Ancel Keys hoodwinked the health authorities with a fudged study which wrongly hypothesised that eating fat was strongly associated with heart disease.

The low-fat era was born, and despite a number of top nutrition experts regularly criticising this approach, it has unfortunately persisted until quite recently. The UK National Obesity Forum, American Heart Association and other influential health organisations around the world have all come out demanding a complete overhaul of the current guidelines and claiming that the focus on low-fat diets for over 40 years has been a mistake. Quite an understatement, considering the massive number of people who have suffered from obesity and diabetes over these 4 decades.

Moseley quotes various other key markers throughout this low-fat era and talks about his own experience of being diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic in his early 50's. By this stage he had become aware of the benefits of following a more balanced regime like the Mediterranean Diet and invented his own along these lines. With his 5:2 diet he lost 10 kilos and reversed his diabetes.

Despite many of the clues and studies handed out over all those years, the 'War on fat” continued to gain momentum. The incredible growth in obesity and diabetes numbers was the chief clue that we were on the wrong track and despite this, the myth would not die.

What we have seen recently is very encouraging and our own Heart Foundation has even deigned to increase its recommendation on the number of eggs we should eat per week. We need to all pay attention to this new trend, which is after all, only a move back to what former nutrition basics used to preach.

It's very simple, follow a balanced diet which includes healthy measures of the 3 main food categories protein, fat and carbohydrate. Eat For Keeps have been practicing this for about 14 years now and once people understand this basic concept and learn some basic food and life skills, most of their problems disappear.

If you would like to get the full story I highly recommend reading Moseley's opinion here.

Contact: leigh@eatforkeeps.com 0272941980.