Validation of a Whole-food, Plant-based Diet

My name is Richard Harding. I am a friend and colleague of Professor Stewart Truswell of University of Sydney.

He and his colleague, Professor Jim Mann from were, in their words, “incensed” when Arne Astrup’s article WHO draft guidelines on dietary saturated and trans fatty acids: time for a new approach? was published in the BMJ in July last year and received so much attention in the popular press.

His Professor Truswell’s colleague Professor Jim Mann from University of Otago was at a World Health Organisation diabetic conference in Europe and the meeting decided they would not to engage in a public debate with “cholesterol sceptics” such as Dr James Muecke and Dr Peter Bruckner because it will “give them oxygen” – they will always lose out to the well-funded dairy and beef industries.

I disagreed. I have produced an 85 page A5 document that reviews Astrup’s paper which Stewart has reviewed. I also produced a 97 minute video with some of the highlights. An increasing number of people are more comfortable with getting information from videos which has a greater impact.

Dr James Muecke, the Australian of the Year in 2020, refers to Professor Arne Astrup’s article to justify his high-fat, low-carbohydrate, high-animal based diet to minimise diabetes and its associated blindness. (It causes diabetes – it does not prevent it.)

Arne Astrup is a Senior Vice President of Novo Nordisk Fonden, the world’s largest medical treatment foundation with multiple corporate donor’s from the food industry. Previously he was head of the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen.

Another of Muecke’s mentors is Robert Lustig. I have a recording of Professor Robert Lustig, a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California announcing that:

Stewart is “appalled” with Lustig’s and John Yudkin’s influence in the popular press. Stewart was Yudkin’s successor as Head of Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London University.

My book – and video – documents how the food industry has manipulated the media and researchers to ensure that profits become before public health.

I have taken the material below to the Newcastle Herald, The Australian newspaper, Sydney Morning Herald, my state and federal members of parliament, NSW and South Australia Health departments but no-one is interested. The Australian Medical Association and the Medical Journal of Australia have indicated that it is not within their scope to bring this to the attention of medical doctors or the Australian public.

Dr James Muecke is the Australian of the Year in 2020 which was awarded for his work as an eye- surgeon and his work in preventing blindness. He is trying to convince Australians to eat more meat, eggs and dairy. Australia is ranked number 2 in meat consumption, just behind the United States but in front of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and New Zealand.

Muecke has declared that we need to “Declare war on type 2 diabetes and cut back on sugar” in order to reduce the incidence of blindness.

He believes that it is the introduction of sugary drinks and highly processed foods are the cause of diabetes – not a high-fat, high-protein diet as shown by numerous papers dating back to 1927. ¹ ~ ² ~ ³ ~ ⁴ ~ ⁵ ~ ⁶ ~ ⁷ ~ ⁸ ~ ⁹ ~ ¹⁰ ~ ¹¹ ~ ¹²

Dr Muecke was interviewed by Keith Wheeler for a FarmOnline National article. Wheeler summed up his article with,
“Dr Muecke faces a challenge to defeat type 2 diabetes, but if people eat more meat and dairy it would be a good start. And dark chocolate. That’s the sort of report I like!”

Muecke refers to a 2019 article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Unprocessed Red Meat and Processed Meat Consumption: Dietary Guideline Recommendations From the Nutritional Recommendations (NutriRECS) Consortium to support his beliefs.

Walter Willett, the Harvard professor of epidemiology and nutrition, called the study “the most egregious abuse of data I’ve ever seen.” ¹³

The publications produced by the NutriRECS organisation are concerned with proving that red meat consumption is healthy – or at least not detrimental.

Bradley Johnston is the director and co-founder of NutriRECS, and is an Associate Professor with the Departments of Nutrition & Statistics, Texas A&M University (formerly Agricultural and Mechanical College).

Grant money came from AgriLife Research, a part of Texas A&M University that is partially funded by the beef industry. According to Patrick Stover, vice-chancellor and dean of AgriLife, the Texas research agency received more than $2 million in funding from the beef industry in 2019 alone.

Stover was also a co-author on the Annals study with Johnston, along with an international team of researchers. Stover has since hired Johnston as an associate professor of community health and epidemiology at Texas A&M. ¹⁴

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National Press Club Address 8th February 2021

In a 30 minute address to the National Press Club on 8th February 2021, Dr Muecke said the Australian Dietary Guidelines were flawed, biased at critical multiple levels, conflicted by industry funding and borne out of weak and unreliable epidemiological data that was “certainly not as robust as we have been led to believe”.

Muecke states that:

“There now being over 100 controlled clinical trials to support the fact that a very low calorie diet or low carbohydrate diet works to either prevent Type 2 diabetes or to put it into remission”.

There are no references given to these 100 controlled clinical trials.

Eric Westman and William Yancy are medical doctors associated with Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina, where they are associate professors.

They are prolific authors associated with ketogenic and high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets. They have both received funding from Robert C. Atkins Foundation which supports research into low-carbohydrate nutrition.

One frequently referenced paper compares two calorie restricted diets. This paper claims that carbohydrate restriction “may be one of the most effective dietary treatments for diabetes“. The study was over a 24 week (4.5 month) period. ¹⁵

The low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) group were given “a lay-press diet book and additional handouts [and] a registered dietitian instructed participants to restrict intake of dietary carbohydrate to fewer than 20 grams per day, without explicitly restricting caloric intake. Allowed foods were unlimited amounts of animal foods and eggs; limited amounts of hard cheese, fresh cheese, salad vegetables (2 cupfuls per day), and non-starchy vegetables (1 cupful per day). Participants were encouraged to drink at least 6 glasses of permitted fluids daily.”

The low-glycemic (low-carbohydrate) group were given “a lay-press diet book and additional handouts [and] a registered dietitian instructed participants to follow a low-glycemic index, reduced-calorie diet with approximately 55% of daily caloric intake from carbohydrate.” The energy intake was calculated to be 500 kcalories less than the participant’s calculated energy needs for the day.

Overall, the completion rate was not high. Completion rate was greater for the low-glycemic group. Only 55% of the participants were able to complete the low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet compared with 63% on the low-glycemic diet. The low-glycemic index diet was 36% fat which is not a low-fat diet. The amount of fat was higher than the average and the mean of the U.S, diet which is 33% fat by energy.

The low-glycemic group had a much higher level of black participants who are afflicted by diabetes at a lower threshold than white people.

Participants of the ketogenic group were instructed to drink “bouillon dissolved in water 2–3 times a day during the first two weeks to reduce possible side effects.” This is to supply sodium and potassium to treat the side-effects of the ketogenic diet.

Adverse events were reported for both groups with a greater prevalence occurring in the ketogenic diet group. The paper stated that there was no significant difference between to two groups but the data supplied indicated otherwise.

Both the comparison and experimental diets are very unhealthy and the participants were miserable. They were very overweight and diabetic at the start of the trial and at the end of the trial.

Funding for this study was obtained from the Robert C. Atkins Foundation.

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A paper, Systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials of the effects of low carbohydrate diets on cardiovascular risk factors, claims that: ¹⁶

The paper claimes that the LCD diet “was shown to have favourable effects on body weight and major cardiovascular risk factors; however the effects on long-term health are unknown“. At least one of the authors, William S. Yancy, has received funding from Robert C. Atkins Foundation, which is committed to “low-carbohydrate nutrition”.

This study investigated 17 clinical trials involving 1141 obese patients. Some results are highlighted below.

An examination of the table provides no evidence of an improvement.

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A much bigger study investigated 17 studies involving 272,216 subjects. This examined the impact of low-carbohydrate diets on all-cause mortality. Their conclusion was, compared with the standard western diet, ¹⁷

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Muecke stated that,

“Perhaps because they’re not aware the low-fat, high-carb diet they’ve been consuming for the past 40 years may be causing them harm.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued the first dietary guidelines in 1980, following the release of the second edition of the McGovern Report in December, 1977. ¹⁸

Included in the seven guidelines was the advice to “avoid too much fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.” An argument that is made by many low-carbohydrate articles, books, and websites is that, despite following the expert medical advice to reduce fats for decades, we are fatter than ever. Many of popular articles claim that there is a conspiracy to hide the truth concerning fat and cholesterol.

However, USDA’s Economic Research Service data suggests: [The] average daily calorie intake increased by 24.5 percent, or about 530 calories, between 1970 and 2000. Of that 24.5-percent increase, grains (mainly refined grain products) contributed 9.5 percentage points; added fats and oils, 9.0 percentage points; added sugars, 4.7 percentage points; fruits and vegetables together, -1.5 percentage points. ¹⁹

We have not been consuming a low-fat diet for the last 50 years.

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I have written two articles, one which addresses Astrup’s 2019 paper and the other addressing Dr James Muecke’s views on diabetes. Both articles are fully referenced from peer-reviewed medical journals.

There are many doctors (including my doctor) and health professionals who believe that a low-carbohydrate diet, one rich in fat and protein diet is beneficial. These diets are rich in animal-sourced products.

In 2018, 36% of Australians aged 18 and over are overweight (BMI of 25 to up to 30) and 31% of the population are obese (BMI 30 or more). ²⁰

34% of adult Australians have hypertension (greater than 140/90 or taking medication). ²¹

According to the Framingham Risk Assessment calculator, a systolic value of less than 120 mmHg is ideal. The majority of doctors, including my doctor and the Mater haematology clinic tell their patients that a systolic reading of less than 140 mmHg is OK, despite that fact that the patient has now accumulated 5 risk assessment points for a heart attack. That is NOT OK.

5.3% of Australian adults aged 18 and over had type 2 diabetes in 2017–18. Diabetes is the fastest growing chronic condition in Australia; increasing at a faster rate than other chronic diseases such as heart disease and cancer. ²²

Between 25% and 35% of Australians diabetics report some form of diabetic retinopathy. ²³

Something is seriously wrong and the situation is becoming worse.

Whilst the above sounds very much like Dr Muecke’s arguments, he has resorted to information supplied by popular commentators. When Muecke makes announcements in the press or by giving public addresses, he is not constrained by the need to provide evidence.

The views of Mueke and Astrup and the reporting in the popular press are detrimental and are contributing to the problem.

Dr Muecke has created the organisation Sight for All. As the Australian of the Year in 2020, he is a national hero. He has raised millions of dollars and garnered support from many prominent individuals as well as private and public institutions based on a flawed premise.

Last updated on Wednesday 29 January 2025 at 07:05 by administrators

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