I’m a 84 year old widow and trying to eat healthy. Upon reading your article stating that it is not good to eat fat and carbohydrates at the same meal. Could you explain this further to me?
Dr. Wilson answers:
That’s an excellent question. These views were expressed by my friend Dr. Robert Lustig in his article “The Diet Debacle”. I think the point he was trying to make is that when you eat real unprocessed food, you usually don’t eat both fat and carbohydrates at the same time. If you were to eat vegetables which contain carbohydrates and meat that contains both protein and fat, I don’t see a problem.
When you combine starchy grains and fats together as we see with many processed foods, things start going downhill. When you combine sugar with anything you are headed for trouble. That’s because sucrose (sugar) contains a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose. Glucose stimulates insulin and insulin pushes cells to store fat. Excessive fructose is converted directly to fat. They best way to avoid these metabolic problems is to eat real food and eliminate processed foods loaded with sugar, HFCS and high glycemic carbohydrates, especially from grains.
Im sorry to tell you but the second part of your answer is faulty logic because it makes fruit sound bad to eat. All fruits contain fructose and all fruits are
Loaded with the essential nutrition our bodies need. Im on a high fruit diet and i havent gained a single pound of fat. Ive actually lost weight.
I agree with you. Nobody gets in trouble by eating fruit as long as they are also eating a whole foods diet. The problem is, today many folks are eating tons of processed food loaded with sugar and HFCS and then they add some fruit–not such a good idea. Humans likely do best if they keep their fructose intake less than 24 grams daily. This should come from fruits, not added sugars.
Dr. Bill Wilson