Today, we're going to be reviewing some of the diet trends over the past 20 years.
Now this is going to be a two-part series.
So today in part one, we're going to be focusing on the zone diet, the low fat diet, and the
blood type diet.
Now we're not going to go into exquisite detail, but we're going to outline what these diets
are, and then we're going to simply showcase some pros and cons.
Now, who am I to tell you what's good and bad?
You have to make a decision for yourself, and if you're looking to make a healthier
lifestyle decision, then kudos to you anyway, but I want to be able to lay out what's good,
and what's bad about each of these, let's call them diet trends.
But realistically they're just different lifestyles that people have adopted over time.
My name is Thomas DeLauer and I'm here with Antler Farms.
So we're going to be breaking this stuff down, and you're going to have some knowledge dropped.
The first thing I want to focus on is The Zone Diet.
The Zone Diet was created by Dr. Barry Sears, interesting fellow that really had a good
heart when it came down to this whole thing.
His whole focus with The Zone Diet was modulating inflammation.
So he did a lot of research on how to reduce inflammation via different pathways, and he
did a good job.
So the premise of The Zone Diet is actually really, really good.
The macronutrient breakdown of The Zone Diet was 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30%
fat.
So, at the end of the day it really wasn't too bad of a macronutrient profile.
In my opinion, when it comes down to pros and cons of this, the pro of this kind of
macronutrient profile is you're still getting adequate amounts of protein.
It's not telling you that your protein should be reduced.
You're getting plenty of protein that's going to allow you to recover, allow you to build
muscle, the one con that I would say in the macronutrient profiles, it's a tad low in
the fat department.
I think when this diet was really coming to light, it was before the demonization of fats
had really stopped, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, we were still thinking that fats
were really bad, and that we needed to control them, and they were so calorically dense.
I think nowadays we could find ourselves kind of migrating The Zone Diet to a little bit
more of a modern day paleo, which is still lowish-carb or carb-conscious, you could call
it.
The big piece of The Zone Diet was talking about what he called the hand-eye method.
He was a big fan of not having to use any kind of scales and not having to weigh out
your food.
Basically, you could look and say your protein should be about the size of your fist.
Your starches should be about two fists, and fat should be sparingly.
He also used something known as food blocks, so these food blocks or zone blocks were sort
of these categories of how he sized up food.
So he was really big, again, on when you looked at a plate of food, one third of your plate
should be your healthy proteins, two thirds of your plate should be your starches, your
carbohydrates, and then again, fats just sparingly weaved in-between.
Now, if you look at that, that is going to probably put you at like a 20 to 30% of your
fat breakdown.
But really, when you break it down, you're kind of leaning on the low side of fat.
So the con that I have here is the contradiction.
You say 30% fats, but if you use that hand-eye method, you're going to end up coming in closer
to 20% fat, which means that you're going to be leaning higher towards the carbohydrate
level.
The other thing is, there's no elimination of specific grains.
When we talk about inflammation, we really should be reducing grains coming in, and we
should be reducing gluten.
We should be looking at these things, because that's very important for inflammation.
So where The Zone Diet was really strong, however, was focusing on eliminating processed
foods, eliminating sugar, and even eliminating coffee and tea.
Now that also serves as a con, because recent science is showing that the polyphenols in
coffee and tea are exceptionally anti-inflammatory, and the flavonols are actually very, very
powerful at modulating inflammation in the body as well.
So again, the premise was good, but I think it came down to people were measuring their
food a little bit more with their hand-eye, and therefore they were eating less, and their
calorie intake was quite a bit less.
So I think that's what breaks down The Zone Diet.
Now let's talk about the low-fat diet.
The low-fat diet, to be completely honest, it's hard for me to not say negative things
about the low-fat diet, because so much of the science from 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago
has now completely been flipped on its head.
But the low-fat diet was a very simple premise.
It was all based around Ancel Keys, who in the 1950s had basically said that fats are
going to kill us, and saturated fats are bad.
His intentions were questionable.
However, when we looked at it from a simple caloric standpoint, it made sense, reduce
the fat, massively reduce the calories, get the weight off.
However, what we didn't realize was going to happen was potentially hormone issues that
would occur simply because the fats weren't there.
But now we start finding out later into the 21st century that these fats were required
for brain health, for myelination of our nerves.
So the low fat thing was all about the demonization of fats.
Where was it powerful and beneficial?
It gave you some strength.
It definitely gave you some power in terms of the initial surge.
You felt like you had energy, you felt like you could get through the day.
But the cons were that a month, two month into that you would end up in this point where
you didn't have enough fats to really satisfy your body from the hormonal standpoint.
So you'd run into these issues with the endocrine system that would eventually plummet your
strength level.
So it kind of led people to believe that they were feeling good and then as time went on
they weren't feeling so good.
And we're noticing that it allowed a lot of companies to add sugar into their products,
because they were reducing fat, therefore getting rid of flavor, so sugars were added
in to substitute and give more a full-bodied taste.
Okay.
The next one that I want to talk about is the blood type diet.
This one was really interesting, and quite honestly I believed a lot of it for a long
period of time, and there's still components that I think are attributable to a lot of
people.
The blood type diet said, hey, if you have a specific blood type, there's going to be
specific foods that are going to work for you, and specific foods that are not going
to work for you.
And when you look at it, it makes sense, type A, type B, okay, some of these people can
eat red meat, some of them can't.
I loved it because the amount of work that went into it was truly, truly phenomenal.
And I think people had a lot of benefit with it simply because it restricted their foods
again.
So when we look at the diet and we look at just how people respond to diets in the first
place, whenever there's some caloric restriction or food restriction, people lose weight and
have success.
And when you lose weight, you reduce C reactive protein levels and you lose inflammation and
you ultimately end up dropping your blood cholesterol levels.
Anytime you have a break from food in your bloodstream, inflammation can go down and
your body can heal.
So when you restrict people's food, and you tell them they can only eat XYZ, you're eliminating
and alienating a certain amount of food from them, so they start to lose weight.
So nothing bad to say about the blood type diet, except for the fact that as we've progressed
with science, we've found that it's more so people's immunoglobulins, IgG, IGA, all these
different immune systems, and these immune system properties, I should say, that react
with specific foods that are independently operating outside of a blood type.
So it's not necessarily your blood type, it's more so what do you have food sensitivities
to, so that's sort of the next evolution of the blood type diet.
However, there is still some merit when you start looking at mineral contents, you start
looking at things like that, there is some degree of food that has to associate with
our blood and mix with our blood.
So I'm not wanting to say that it's good or bad, but I will say that it really adds a
lot of complexity to the dietary patterns that people are trying to embark on.
If you have this kind of complexity, you're a lot less likely to stick to it, because
you can't carry a chart with you all the time to make sure you're eating the right thing.
And if you go to a restaurant and you say, hey, try to hold this off of this and hold
this off of this because I can't have this spice or this oil, you're just destined for
failure.
Anyhow, I invite you to join me for part two as we investigate the South Beach Diet, and
Atkins, and a couple of others as well.
I'll see you soon, and thanks for keeping it locked in here with Antler Farms.