Coming off that last post regarding some of the lies in advertising about HFCS, I think it is only fitting to take on another major heath threat - this time one that is deliberately (and quite disingenuously) packaged as something to make you healther. I am speaking of Alli, the only FDA-approved, over-the-counter weight loss product marketed by Glaxo-Smith-Kline. If you know someone taking this product, tell them to stop. Now. Even if they are losing ‘weight.’ 

Let me explain why. Alli ‘works’ by blocking the ingestion of fat. With Alli, the fat you eat essentially gets encapsulated by a non-digestible compound so that you magically pass said fat into the toilet. The nasty side effect is that if you eat meals with too much fat while on Alli, you get some serious diarrhea. I’m not talking about Olestra-scale ‘anal leakage’ either, I’m talking full-on butt explosions. 

That is NOT, however, why I think you should tell everyone that you know to stop taking the product. Indeed GSK is quite up-front about this effect, and claims that moving to a lower-fat diet while on Alli is part of your commitment to weight loss success. The real reason that I plead with you all NOT to take the product is that all the best research for the last 20 years has shown quite clearly that losing weight by this method, lowering caloric intake by reducing only fat,  is etirely unhealthy. 

Fat is a hugely important part of our diet. Among other things, fats are necessary for cell membrane production, balanced ‘prostaglandin’ production (which is important for immune response and blood clotting, among other important functions), and a variety of other essential metabolic processes that I have neither the time nor expertise to get into. You might have heard of a number of vitamins being ‘fat-soluble’, which practically speaking means that they’re useless to us without fat (those of you who drink skim-milk for the vitamin D are wasting your time.)  And you know those hugely-popular ‘Omega-3s’ that people are talking about in fish? Take Alli and you don’t get ‘em.

I can’t argue that you are likely to lose ‘weight’ if you take Alli. Nor will I argue that some people have way too much fat in their diet, and could stand to reduce it, especially the saturated fats. But for all of those except the most grossly obeise, the weight that you will lose with Alli will be more muscle than fat, and the long-term result? You will indeed weigh less but you will be weaker, your heart will be weaker, you will have less endurance, and will be at more risk for coronary heart disease, because your BMI will have increased even though your overall weight has gone down.  You will have a higher overall ratio of fat on your body than before. I won’t post them here but email me if you want samples of the many studies that have come to this conclusion; suffice to say this is not healthy. 

This is the only outcome of diets that restrict only calories and fat (by stopping the digestion of fat with Alli you necessarily lower your caloric intake because fat is calorie-dense), and it is an outcome that has been known about for years. Why the FDA chooses to ignore it is anyone’s guess. 

If you want to lose weight there are a number of paths to do so, but to do so healthily requires more than a magic pill. The first thing you will need to do is eat more fiber. And by this I don’t mean buying the darker-looking honey wheat bread, I mean eating many more green vegetables, and when you do eat breat eat something called ’sprouted grain’ bread. In fact, I’m willing to bet $100 right now that if the only thing you change about your diet is to replace every bread product you eat with sprouted grain breads (assuming you eat 2 servings a day), that you will lose 5 lbs in a month’s time.  

The next thing you do is try to replace the so-called ‘bad fats’, that is trans-fats and other saturated fats, with ‘good fats,’ meaning more poly- and mono-unsaturated fats. Forget the metabolic chemistry, just eat nuts, free-range eggs and poultry, and grass-fed beef, these are where healthy fats are the highest. And Avocados, these are good, eat a lot of them. Did you know that you can use avocados in baked goods, like cookies and breads, in place of vegetable oil, butter, or lard? 1/2 of a Haas avocado equals about 1/4 cup of oil. But if you insist on using oil for baking, use grapeseed oil; it has roughly the same healthy fat profile as olive oil but has a plain taste that doesn’t come through. 

The two most commonly promoted ways to diet are easily the two worst: reducing calories and fat in our diet is one, and I hope I’ve been clear about why this is a bad idea. The second is to somehow suppress our hunger, which is just silly, if you think about it, since hunger is something we evolved to tell us when to eat. The real thing to do is to put more healthy foods back in our diet. The weight loss may not be as fast and dramatic as acheived by something like Alli, but in the long-run, you will be healthier, and enjoy a more stable weight profile for it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 8:06 pm by Philip Loring and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.