LIVING NATURALLY with Olwen Anderson

EIGHT years ago I wrote a booklet advising how to lower cholesterol levels naturally. If you still have your copy, I'd like to you turn to the diet advice pages and gently rip them out - because what I wrote then simply isn't of use any more.

Since those words were printed our knowledge about nutrition has evolved considerably. A growing band of scientists and writers are pointing out our earlier paradigms around cardiovascular wellness were mistaken. Let's go back a few decades, when heart disease and its causes was a growing concern. At that stage our understanding of its nutritional cause could be summarised as this: "Eating cholesterol and fat causes our body's cholesterol levels to rise. Fat clogs up your arteries and causes heart disease. Therefore fatty foods, and cholesterol, are bad for you”.

This hypothesis made its way into nutrition recommendations. Everyone keen on health became focused on minimising fat and cholesterol, and ate more carbohydrate instead. But what transpired wasn't the expected blossoming of improved health across the population. Instead, levels of obesity and diabetes began to sky-rocket. Today's researchers believe this over-focus on carbohydrate foods and reduced fat consumption is what's behind the soaring rates of obesity and diabetes.

It seems the prior research on fats was a little too selective, and all too readily supported. Fat was erroneously tagged as 'bad for you'. But our lived experience of low fat eating is suggesting we need to reconsider. You may despair that "they've changed the rules again”. But it's normal for nutritional recommendations to keep changing. It's a good thing actually, because it means that science is continually challenging beliefs, researching more, generating new findings. Scientists publish their findings expecting them to be challenged by future scientists. The new paradigm is fat isn't the cause of heart disease, it's about inflammation, which is sparked by - wait for it - too much carbohydrate and sugars in your diet.

Some of the backlash against low fat, high carb eating has been extreme, with some proponents advocating excluding carbohydrates altogether in favour of extremely high fat intakes. The more balanced approach, perhaps, could be to check you aren't overdoing the carbohydrates or the fats. Focus on eating real, unprocessed foods - like our great-grandparents did. They weren't so obsessive about it all.

And the book? No need to toss it out; the advice on exercise and stress management is still useful.

Olwen Anderson is a naturopath and counsellor. www.olwenanderson.com.au