The American Heart Association Diet: Is It Based on a Flawed Theory?Could the American Heart Association diet -- and diets like it, such as the ones prescribed by the National Institutes of Health and the USDA -- be premised on a bad theory? And, if so, what might this imply about the culture of science as it is generally practiced today?
Quantity, Not Quality For decades, we've been taught that the alpha and omega of weight control is calorie control. Only the quantity--not the quality--of the calories that we eat matters. Pure and simple. The American Heart Association diet and other weight loss programs have hammered home this message. We Believe What Our Neighbors Believe Perhaps the most compelling reason why most of us believe that calories "count" is that everyone around us believes they do. From your next door neighbor to your doctor to the Surgeon General, no one disputes that overeating and inactivity will make you fat and that, conversely, diet and exercise will make you thin. Why We All Buy into "Calories Count" These most basic convictions of the American Heart Association diet come from a theory about energy balance, the Caloric Balance Hypothesis, which you can read about else where on this site. Suffice it to say that the public support for this hypothesis is utterly overwhelming. However, as we have explored at length, there's an alternative theory about what controls our weight. The Lipophilia Hypothesis argues that calories don't count. The heart of the American Heart Association diet is wrong. Instead, what counts is the hormonal and metabolic environment of our fat tissue. This theory says that low-carb diets are healthiest and that the "balanced" American Heart Association diet -- with its copious amounts of fresh fruits and whole grains; and its restricted amounts of fats -- is actually unhealthy, since fruit juices and starches elevate insulin levels and thus cause us to store fat in our fat tissue. Looking at the World Through the Lens of Lipophilia At first glance, Lipophilia may seem like a compelling (if surprising) idea. But in order for us to feel comfortable embracing this theory, we must somehow account for how it is possible that nearly every public health expert on Earth supports the other theory. Could all these people -- many of the architects of the American Heart Association diet are utterly brilliant, no doubt -- possibly have made such a massive error about the nature of a healthy diet? Massive Errors are Surprisingly Common in Science One way to answer this question -- other than examining the relative merits of the two hypotheses, which we do elsewhere -- is to search for like examples. In other words, can we find other instances of institutional blindness of this magnitude? Can we find examples of other whole communities of experts becoming biased towards bad/implausible hypotheses -- while simultaneously ignoring much better ones? If we can, that would help validate our alternative point of view. Below, we show that the kind of institutional blindness that led to construction of the American Heart Association diet can and does occur in science and elsewhere... and with an alarming frequency:
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