Ketogenic Diet

Updated version of Not by Bread Alone

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Pete Ahrens was objecting already in 1957: "When unproved hypotheses are enthusiastically proclaimed as facts, it is timely to reflect on the possibility that other explanations can be given for the phenomena observed."

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Ahren's own research had opened up another line of inquiry, suggesting that the carbohydrates found in cereals, grains, flour, and sugar might be contributing directly to if not actually causing obesity and disease. And he correctly predicted that a fat-reduced diet would only increase our consumption of these foods. 

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The highly controlled liquid-formula feeding experiments that he conducted from 1951 to 1964 consistently revealed that these trigylcerides shot up w henever carbohydrates replaced fat in the diet. A majority of patients showed the clouding because of a "normal chemical process which occurs in all people on high carbohydrate diets," Ahrens wrote.

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“But let’s talk about Pete Ahrens,” he volunteered. “Pete Ahrens! He was always a big roadblock on everything! I used to have vigorous discussions with Pete.”

Mockingly, Stamler proceeded to channel Ahrens: “No, We’re researching this, give us another five years. We have to do balanced studies. We have to figure it out. We don’t know.”

“He always opposed any statement. I would say, ‘Pete, what you’re saying is that the present American diet is the best diet you can conceive of for the health of the American people.’ ‘No! No!’ ‘But Pete, please, the logic!’ Anyway, he’s dead and gone now.”

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Listening to Stamler talk, I could almost picture his spear. “And Yudkin!” Stamler nearly bellowed to me, referring to the British doctor who promoted the rival sugar hypothesis. “I was part of shooting him down!” And of Michael Oliver, a prominent British cardiologist and critic of the diet-heart hypothesis, Stamler repeatedly said that he was a “scoundrel.”

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Nina Teicholz - The Big Fat Surprise - Page 59, Page 60

"The great progress in dietary control of obesity, was the recognition that meat . . . was not fat producing; but that it was the innocent foodstuffs, such as bread and sweets, which lead to obesity."

The simplest to prepare and most easily obtainable high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, and the one that will produce the most rapid loss of weight without hunger, weakness, lethargy, or constipation, is made up of meat, fat, and water. The total quantity eaten need not be noted, but the ratio of three parts of lean to one part of fat must be maintained. Usually within two or three days, the patient is found to be taking about 170 Gm. of lean meat and 57 Gm. of fat three times a day. Black coffee, clear tea, and water are unrestricted, and the salt intake is not reduced. When the patient complains of monotony, certain fruits and vegetables are added for variety. The overweight patient must be dealt with as an individual. He usually needs help in recognizing the factors at work in his particular case as well as considerable education in the matter of foods.

In 1958 William Daughaday commented on behalf of the American Dietetic Association that ‘uncertainty exists in the minds of many physicians today concerning the therapeutic role of diet in diabetes’. He could find only three arguments to support its role: first, that it is a valuable educational procedure leading to optimal nutrition; second, that it can avoid the need for insulin; and third, that properly spaced food intake can reduce the risk of hypoglycaemia. Glucose control and prevention of vascular disease are notably absent from this list of benefits. He proposed that carbohydrate should provide no more than 40% of total calories, avoided discussion of free diet, and dismissed the high carbohydrate regimen with the comment that carbohydrate restriction is an essential feature of the diabetic diet [28].

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-008-1203-9