You will have to overcome the powerful dogma that exalted the “complex carbohydrates” at the base of the food pyramid. You will have to remind yourself that these carbohydrates are mostly just glucose (sugar) with some nutrients and fiber—which are easy to get from far, far healthier foods.

Cold-pressed olive oil, coconut oil, and other natural oils are unquestionably the best choice. The “eat real food” rule applies here—seek out real food from the era before obesity took over the world.

The key findings overall were that reducing or replacing saturated fat in the diet resulted in: no significant effect on all-cause mortality no significant effect on cardiovascular mortality no significant effect on heart attack mortality or the rate of heart attacks no significant effect on stroke incidence or mortality

7. Eat only three main meals a day—ideally two, if you can manage it.

But even without the hydrogenation that makes them solid and shelf-stable, there are huge questions remaining around the health of vegetable oils. Should we be consuming them in any form, rather than simply eating real food? No, as we will see in Chapter 4 (and in even more disturbing detail in Appendix E).

How much refined sugar (both glucose and fructose) did humans ingest as the species evolved? The estimates are somewhere in the region of 1.5 teaspoons a day, mostly from occasionally available sources like honey. The World Health Organization now recommends no more than 6 teaspoons a day for adults and no more than 3 teaspoons for children—whether

If the risk multiplier exceeds 5x, there is likely something pretty serious going on. What was the risk multiplier for insulin resistance here? 40x! The risk multiplier for high LDL was 1.001x—there was no statistical significance. Reaven’s study can be put alongside massive volumes of mechanistic and other data gathered previously on the connectio

You can stick with a typical high-carb, low-fat diet and cut your calories in half, and you’ll start to see some improvement in health metrics. Or you can try a low-carb, high-fat diet, stop obsessing about calories, and eat delicious low-carb food, and you’ll see twice the improvement.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the ideal dietary regime for weight loss is the same one that will optimize health and longevity.