“We now have good evidence… If you overfeed somebody with fat you don’t increase their cancer risk at all. If you overfeed them with carbohydrates then you dramatically increase their cancer risk. And protein is half way in between”

Said by Craig B Thompson, former head of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, discussing new ways to think about cancer and how it arises in human beings.

You can see the whole video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlE1VHGA40

Note that he doesn’t just say sugar, he says carbohydrates which includes bread, pasta, cous cous, rice, potatoes, cereals (yes, even porridge) granola, cereal bars, many ‘free from’ and gluten-free foods, fruit, fruit juices, fruit drinks, smoothies, fizzy drinks, cakes (including home-baked), biscuits, confectionery…

The list is endless and it makes up about 70% of most people’s diets.

Craig Thompson is talking about all carbohydrates. He’s not singling out good and bad carbs, simple or complex, fructose or sucrose. He’s saying that the whole food group when over-represented in your diet will dramatically increase your cancer risk.

Given that most of us, for the last 40 years, have been dutifully following the advice to keep our fat intake down, it was inevitable that our proportional intake of carbs and possibly protein would increase. No one predicted just how lethal the outcome of that particular ‘healthy eating’ initiative would be.

You only have to go to the supermarket to see the vast majority of shelves are devoted to some form of carbohydrate: proteins and fats get very little shelf space (partly because they have very little shelf life). Even people committed to healthy eating tend to eat too much carbohydrate.

So what should you do?

Don’t panic! But make changes as soon as possible.

The good news is that this data ties in closely with what we know about obesity and diabetes. There’s no conflict here. Excess carbohydrate is linked to all of these abnormalities. It’s now beyond reasonable doubt that we all need to drastically reduce the carbs in our shopping trolley.

Our government advice on this one is woefully out of date. If you wait for the authorities to get with the programme you will be wasting time and prolonging the risky eating pattern. We need to take individual responsibility to shift the balance of our diets in favour of fats as a matter of urgency. Have a look at my previous blog post for more detail on how to do this.

If you would like some help to redesign your diet to take account of the new healthy thinking then let’s connect. I’ll show you a new way of eating that’s quick, easy and genuinely healthy.