While doing some research for another post I came across an
interesting article by Spreadbury about how the type of carbohydrate differs in
an ancestral diet compared to a western diet. The article, “Comparison with ancestral
diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory
microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and
obesity.” was just published the other month, and is available for free
online.
The article is really great and is well worth the read. He starts off by explaining the discord
between much of the data for macronutrient ratios and obesity. While both high fat and high
carbohydrate diets have been implicated in the development of obesity in
western society, these diets result in very healthy people when consumed in a
“traditional” culture. Since these
diets only promote obesity in a western culture, there must be some other
factor that makes these diets cause obesity, rather than the carb/fat ratios
themselves.
