What we have been told to do (and are doing) for weight management and for health is wrong. That's why overweight has increased from 25% to 65% (34% overweight, plus 31% obese) of the population over the past 20 years. That's why obesity has more than doubled over the same two decades. That's why Type II Diabetes is up 70%.

So what are we doing wrong? We were told 20 years ago to reduce our intake of fats. We were also told that carbohydrates are the best food and that we should be eating more of them. We listened. At that time, 42% of our calories came from fats. Today, our fat intake is down to less than 32% of calories. The reasons given for recommending that we reduce our fat intake included:

Sweets and starches have a long shelf life, which makes manufacturers happy. It gives them a large market, and little spoilage. In addition, if health claims can be made for consuming carbohydrates because they are low in fat, there is the probability that prices will increase as a result; and that increase will be passed along to the consumer even if the health claims are overstated. It does, however, raise profit margins.

More insidious than the profit motive is the fact that carbohydrates lead to a kind of addiction. Eating carbohydrates leads to high blood sugar. Then, in turn, the body's desperate self-defense mechanism (involving insulin) against the toxicity of high blood sugar (that can lead to a 'diabetic' coma) leads to low blood sugar accompanied by tiredness, craving, and depression, which starts the next vicious high blood sugar-low blood sugar cycle. I'll explain that in more detail below.

Overweight has many health consequences, including increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, inflammation, gall bladder problems, kidney problems and many more. The upsides of overweight are few. One is that bones become stronger from carrying the extra weight around. Dying with strong bones is small consolation for early death from the degenerative killer diseases of our time.

Overweight also has many psychological consequences. Self-esteem is the greatest casualty. People find overweight unpleasant, and treat 'fat' people badly. And many 'fat' people don't like themselves much either, because they often begin to see themselves as gluttonous victims, out of control of their appetites.

Glucose is sugar, whose main function is to act as fuel. The glucose is absorbed rapidly into the blood stream, for delivery to the cells that need it. All of this is the normal course of events in the body.

However, if glucose is absorbed faster than the body burns it, high blood sugar results. Sweet foods are more likely to lead to high blood sugar than white flour products, which in turn are more likely to lead to high blood sugar than whole grains like brown rice. But any source of carbohydrates will result in high blood sugar if more is absorbed from the gut than is being burned by the body. How much is burned depends on the level of physical activity.

High blood sugar is a very toxic condition. It is the fundamental problem in diabetes. High blood sugar can lead to coma and death. Because this condition is so toxic, the body has a protective mechanism for reducing high blood sugar. Insulin drives glucose into our cells, where it is supposed to be burned for energy.

But, if the cells already have enough fuel and don’t need the extra glucose, then glucose acts like a hormone and turns on a gene, a copy of which is present in every one of everyone’s 60 trillion body cells. The gene, called fatty acid synthase, has only one function. It turns excess glucose into fat. At the same time, glucose turns off the genes for fat burning. The result of eating more carbs than we burn, then, is to make fat production in the body easier, and fat burning in the body more difficult or impossible. Carbs speed fat production and slow down fat burning. I use a slogan for this situation: "When you eat carbs, either you burn them or you will wear them - as fat."

Insulin, involved in this sequence of events, is super-effective in its action and overshoots its goal of normalizing blood sugar. The result is increased body fat and blood sugar that is now too low. Starvation from low blood sugar leads to craving leads to gorging leads to high blood sugar again. Carbohydrate craving leads to another round of eating, and the cycle repeats itself. This is the basis of carbohydrate addiction. Let me repeat the process in more detail. The low, blood sugar-induced craving leads to 'gorging' which lasts until blood sugar is normal again. That takes about 30 minutes, because digestion of carbs into glucose and absorption of glucose take time. By the time blood sugar is back to normal, and the craving and gorging is over, more has been eaten than necessary.

The summary on carbohydrates goes like this:

• The body turns carbohydrates into glucose.
• While glucose is clean-burning, good fuel, it turns off fat burning and turns on fat production.
• Glucose not needed for fuel turns into fat.

Our slogan about carbohydrates: "Burn them, or wear them-as fat". The biochemistry and genetics of carbohydrates is completely different from what we've been told. 65% of the population (those who are overweight) are following that inaccurate advice in practice.

The truth is the opposite from what we have been led to believe.  Now doesn't that make you mad?

Most people were equipped by nature to turn excess glucose into fat. Our ability to turn excess glucose into fat served an important survival function that evolved during a time when rare times of feasting were followed by long famines. This survival mechanism, however, is disastrous in affluent cultures where people live in uninterrupted times of plenty.

Athletes can eat much more carbohydrate food than sedentary people can because they burn it up during intense physical activity. The more active a person, the bigger their muscles, and the more they exercise, the more carbohydrates they can burn. The less active, the smaller the muscles, and the more sedentary the lifestyle, the more important it becomes to limit carbohydrate intake to prevent overweight and its negative health consequences.

Note: There are a few other reasons for overweight:

1. Drug side effects. Look for natural alternatives.
2. Lack of iodine due to low salt diets. Optimize iodine intake.
3. Water retention from inflammation that is usually due to allergic reactions, poor lymph drainage, lack of exercise, or heart failure. Take enzymes or eat less protein.
   
   

In other words, carbohydrates are the least important of all of the food groups. Essential fats are required in the diet because the body cannot make them, and therefore are more important than carbohydrates. Proteins provide essential amino acids that the body cannot make but must have to live and be healthy, and therefore proteins are also more important than carbohydrates. Green foods are more important than carbohydrates because they make and supply us with most of the essential components of health. Minerals and vitamins are essential and must therefore be provided from outside by foods or supplements. But there are no essential carbohydrates. This means that your body does not need them. You do not have to eat them. You can live perfectly well without them. Even your brain does not require sugar. It can breakdown fat products as fuel. You do not need sugar and starch. They are not essential.

We can live without carbohydrates, because the body can make them from scratch.

The first truth about fats is that they do not make us fat. This is because they suppress appetite, and because eating fats does not produce the blood sugar swings, the insulin spiking, the fat production, the inhibition of fat burning, the craving, and the bingeing cycles produced by carbohydrates.

The second truth about fats is that certain fats, especially those too low in 99% of the population(called omega-3, or "omega-3" essential fats) will help us lose body fat. Did you read that right? Yes, you did. Good fats help to make and keep us slim.

How can they do that? After all, all fats, good or bad, contain 9 calories per gram, whereas carbohydrates contain only 4 calories per gram. That was the old argument against eating fats.

As with carbohydrates, the answer lies in our genes, in the way the human body works.

Research has established that omega-3 (greatly) and omega-6 (slightly) essential fatty acids, but not monounsaturated, saturated, or trans- fatty acids play a major role in the body's ability to burn fat. Omega-3 does it better than omega-6. Omega-3 is inadequately supplied in the diets of 99% of affluent populations worldwide. In fact, our intake of omega-3 today is only 1/6^th of that found in diets

in 1850, and already at that time, diets did not supply optimum amounts of omega-3. Our omega-3 intake has declined to unprecedented lows. Omega-3 deficiency is the single, most widespread essential nutrient deficinecy of our time.

Omega-6 intake, on the other hand, has doubled in the past 100 years for people who eat the diets common in affluent populations. People on low fat, no fat, fake fat, fat blocker, fat substitute, and fat remover diets are likely to get too little omega-6 as well as too little omega-3.

The ratio between omega-3 and omega-6 is far out of line with what it ought to be for good health and normal weight, and this has implications, both for health in general and for body fat and fat burning in particular. How do essential fats help burn body fat and make us slim? The answer has several parts.

Some people want to sue governments for telling us that carbohydrates are the base of the food pyramid, mis-educating us to believe that carbohydrates are the most important food, and encouraging industries to make and falsely advertise foods high in carbohydrates with health claims that they cannot deliver.

Others want to sue industry for listening to government, for not doing their own research, falsely advertising high carb foods as better for health, and profiting by making consumers sick or even killing them. Recent US estimates put the figure of overweight-related deaths at 300,000 per year.

Weight gain from eating more carbohydrates than we burn also has serious social consequences. Overweight is unpopular. If a person wants to avoid social contacts, getting fat is one of the easiest ways to ensure one's isolation.

To be fair, there are people who choose overweight as a way to avoid life, and this psychological possibility must also be addressed by those who work with overweight and obese people claiming to want to normalize body weight and get healthy. Anger, depression, and protection are common psychological reasons for over eating. Behind those is usually pain. Behind that is the courage, joy, love and contentment that make our lives beautiful and turn our challenges into adventures. But for most overweight people, the problem is just a matter of having been led to believe by industry and government something that simply is not true for the human body or for health.

First, we must establish that the recent epidemic of 65% of the population being overweight is nutritional in origin, and is not a genetic problem. We know that because 20 years ago only 25% of us were overweight. One hundred years ago, less than 10% were overweight.

Genes take much longer than that to take over a population, and they do so by improving survival (longer life), greater reproductive success (more children), and greater child survival. It takes at least 7 to 10 generations for a very strong and positive gene to take over a population. With regard to overweight, the epidemic started only 20 years, less than one generation ago.

But the most critical factor why overweight is not a genetic issue is this: overweight people live shorter lives. They do not have more children, but fewer children. And the health of the children of overweight parents is not better but worse than the children of healthy parents. In other words, this is not survival of the fittest. It is exactly the opposite. It is shortened survival of the fattest.

We owe everything to greens. They make our oxygen. Researchers have calculated that green plants took 2.5 billion years to fill our atmosphere with the oxygen we need to breathe. Only after green plants had done this important job could air-breathing creatures like us begin to live here.

• Greens absorb water and hold water in the soil. Without them, our planet would turn into a desert.
• Green plants absorb light energy from the sun, store it in bonds between atoms to make food molecules which, when we eat them, release that energy for us to live on.
• Greens draw minerals from the soil, and make them available to us in a form that our body can use-we can't suck rocks to get our minerals, but plants do exactly that for us.
• Greens also manufacture the other components of health-molecules that we need to build and maintain a healthy body but cannot make ourselves. Greens make the vitamins, essential amino acids (proteins), and essential fatty acids (good fats) that we need.
• Greens make fiber (important for bowel regularity, detoxification, and blood sugar stabilization), anti-oxidants (that slow down the processes that lead to aging), phytonutrients (potent healing molecules which are the basis of herbal medicine), and fuel (to burn for energy).
• Raw, greens also provide enzymes (for digestion and against viral infection), and probiotics (friendly microorganisms/flora that protect our digestive tract from being ravaged by nasty, toxic bacteria like Salmonella, E. coli, fungus, and yeasts like Candida). Cooking destroys enzymes and probiotics.

In short, greens provide all of the building blocks that our genetic program-our built-in program for building a healthy body-needs to build maintain, repair, and replace cells, tissues, glands, and organs.

In addition, greens inhibit infections and cancer. Greens provide magnesium, which improves cardiovascular and insulin function and has anti-cancer benefits.

Further, greens are great tonics for our digestive system. Their alkalinity protects us from diseases due to acidity. Chlorophyll cleanses and detoxifies. Phytonutrients and anti-oxidants in greens help us in many ways-some inhibit tumors; some regulate hormones; some are anti-inflammatory; and some prevent damage caused by free radicals.

2: Good Fats. In addition to greens, good fats are the second most important food group. The good fats are essential for health, but the body cannot make them. They must therefore be provided by foods. Too little leads to deterioration of the health of every cell, tissue, gland, and organ, accompanied by many symptoms of degeneration that resemble the degenerative diseases that we suffer and die from. Complete absence will kill anyone who avoids fats long enough.

Good fats, made up of omega-3 and omega-6 essential fats, are the most neglected, confusing, misrepresented part of the nutritional advice being dispensed by health experts "untrained in nutrition".

Good fats are easily damaged by the destructive influences of light, air (oxygen), and heat, and must therefore be made, stored, and used with care. Most commercial food fats are made with shelf life rather than health in mind, and the processes used to improve shelf life of good fats damages them, producing toxic molecules that increase cancer, cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, inflammation, and other diseases.

Of the good fats, omega-3 is inadequately present in the diets of almost the entire population. Lack of adequate omega-3 is the greatest single nutrient deficiency in modern diet. In fact, research shows that by increasing omega-3 in the diet, we can improve the symptoms of most of the major degenerative conditions of our time as well as improving skin, increasing energy, and elevating mood.

3: Protein. The third, equally important food group, is protein.  Protein is adequately supplied in the diets of most affluent people. We are protein-conscious, and too much rather than too little protein is more prevalent in industrialized nations. Our sources of protein include red meat (pork, beef, lamb), eggs, fish, white meat (chicken, turkey), and dairy (milk, cheese). Protein powders have also become quite the rage.

Protein is also present in all whole foods, including greens, grains, beans, seeds, and nuts. If one eats whole foods in the form in which God/Nature provides them, protein malnutrition is inconceivable unless one does not have enough of them to eat.

Protein under-nutrition (kwashiorkor) is a problem during famines in underdeveloped countries, especially during times of war. In developed nations, protein deficiency is found only among very poor, aged, and infirm people incapable of looking after themselves.

4: Carbohydrates. Fourth are the carbohydrates. It bears repeating that carbohydrates do not supply any nutrients that one cannot get from other foods. Contrary to food pyramid advice, they are therefore the least important of all the major foods.

Whole grains cause fewer blood sugar and weight problems than polished grains such as white rice and flour, which in turn are better than white sugar, syrup, and honey. The difference is the rate of absorption. The faster the absorption, the quicker blood sugar goes high. The more digestion is required, the more time it takes to turn starch into glucose. Slower digestion slows down the absorption of glucose into the body. Slower absorption makes it less likely for blood sugar to get so high that insulin spikes and drives the sugar into our cells as self-protection against the damage that high sugar does to cells, tissues, and organs.

It is vitally important for health that sugar is absorbed no faster than the rate at which the body burns it for energy.