Why Healthy Eating Isn't Healthy

John Nicholson, author of The Meat Fix: How A Lifetime of Healthy Eating Nearly Killed Me!, on why you need to forget everything you think you know about healthy eating. This article originally appeared in The Sun.
Healthy eating isn’t healthy. That’s a New Year message you won’t hear from your doctor or the NHS.
How do I know? Because I was the healthiest of healthy eaters.
For 26 years I had the low-fat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, wholegrain and pulses diet that your GP will tell you to eat.
For 26 years I ate no animal fat, very little saturated fat and no cholesterol.
You couldn’t have eaten more healthily than me.
Result? I was very sick. For 17 of those years I suffered from chronic IBS, my gut was bloated and felt like lead after every meal. I became clinically obese, had headaches every day, slept every afternoon, my libido diminished and my cholesterol was a massive 9.2mg/dl.
I did food diaries for my doctors.
Was this a really a healthy diet? “Yes, its great, keep it up,” they said.
Wrong.
They never suggested that it was my diet making me sick. Not once.
Instead, they put me on statins, which made me weak and forgetful. But no more.
In 2010 I changed my diet, quit the statins, started eating lots of meat and saturated animal fat. Delicious.
I started cooking things in butter and coconut oil and eating Jersey cream and eggs every day.
At the same time I stopped eating all processed foods, grains, bread, potatoes, sugar, sweet fruits, fruit juice and all other high-carbohydrate foods. I also ate more leafy greens and broccoli.
The result?
My IBS immediately stopped and never returned.
I lost a lot of weight, put on muscle and dropped from a 29 per cent body fat to 14 per cent. Twenty four hours after eating meat again, all my IBS symptoms had gone. As the weeks and months passed, my health all round improved.
I became leaner, shedding body fat and becoming stronger and fitter.
My headaches went away and my libido increased. It felt like being young again, like coming back to life.
But though I felt energised, I was also furious. I should never have stuck to the healthy eating regime for so long.
But I was also furious with those who should know better, who have been peddling this low-fat high carbohydrate claptrap for so long that no one thinks to question it.
France has the lowest rate of death from coronary heart disease in Europe, yet the country has the highest consumption of saturated fats.
My gran survived into her eighties and grandad into his seventies.
Did they achieve this by gobbling low-fat spreads, soya or skimmed milk? No.
They ate good old-fashioned foods like butter, lard and beef fat.
It’s high time we started questioning this “one size fits all” healthy eating advice we’re all spoon fed. We need to opt for wholesome, unprocessed, home-made food.
I had loads more energy — the aches and pains in my joints disappeared.
I was mentally brighter and sharper and my cholesterol dropped from 9.2 to 5.1. I’m now 51 but I feel 30 years younger.
What the hell had happened to me?
I discovered there are doctors, researchers and dietitians who have always said it is the “healthy” eating advice that has made many of us fat and sick and that our diet should be based on protein and animal fat, not carbohydrate as currently recommended.
They say cholesterol is not a marker for heart disease and that statins can be damaging and are useless for those who do not already have heart disease.
It is sugar and carbohydrates that are destroying our health.
I’ve returned to a simple, natural way of eating — nothing processed, starchy or sugary.
It has transformed me, physically and mentally.
Many others have travelled similar paths to greater health and hugely improved quality of life, all on a supposedly unhealthy diet.
So, who’s right and who’s wrong?