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I believe that the tide has started to turn, and we will win the war against lifestyle disease. This will happen because the group of educated people adopting and promoting low carbohydrate or slow carbohydrate diets is reaching a critical mass.
An obesity and lifestyle disease epidemic is sweeping the world. It started with the USA in the 70s and 80s, and now the worst affected are people in countries like India.
This epidemic has a strong correlation with food sufficiency, and a simultaneous and dramatic rise in the amount or proportion of simple carbohydrates and sugars in the diet.
People like to simplify the issue and blame it on sodas or processed food. But that would be wrong in countries like India, where the home kitchen and home-cooked food is probably a bigger culprit.
Whatever the source of these simple carbohydrates and sugars, unless their consumption, the lifestyle disease risk will be high for most people.
In India, simple carbohydrates (grain and potatoes) and sugars (refined sugar and jaggery), are cheaper and more affordable than ever before. Even for low-income families, the subsidised public distribution system had made these easily accessible. This is now combined with an abundance of cheap refined vegetable oils, making it a double whammy, thereby inviting lifestyle disease into homes across income levels.
However, now the tide has begun to turn. The low (or slow) carbohydrate diet is being aggressively adopted and promoted as a practical health choice. And this is not being done by corporations but by individuals. It is also helpful that these individuals are mostly highly educated. Many are celebrities, vastly followed on social media, and are physically fit themselves as a result of their diets.
I think the number of people making these changes has reached the critical mass needed for rapid growth and adoption across society. Slow-carb diets, ketogenic diets, cyclic Ketogenic diets, and others like them, are here to stay and to become mainstream.
