Dr. Wiley’s Question Box: Starches and Sugar Are the Principal Sources of Body Fat
By Harvey W. Wiley, MD
Summary: In 1912, Dr. Wiley left his post as head of the USDA's Bureau of Chemistry because of the collusion he witnessed between food manufacturers and agents within the federal government. Unable to effectively enforce the country's first food purity law (passed in 1906), he left the government and joined the private Good Housekeeping Institute in Washington, D.C. From there, Wiley would help develop the famous Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval while also writing for the institute's magazine. In "Dr. Wiley's Question Box," he would answer specific questions from readers about food safety and nutrition. In the excerpt here, Wiley explains a fact that metabologists have known for nearly a century but which conventional nutritionists and doctors have failed to comprehend from then until now: The principal source of fat stored in the body is not dietary fat but sugars and starches (i.e., carbohydrates). While nutrition schools today continue to teach the erroneous notion that glucose from carbohydrates is "the preferred fuel of the body," Wiley points out what people who study metabolism for a living all know: up to 80% of the carbohydrates a person eats are converted to fat by the liver and stored in the body's fat tissue. Fat tissue, in turn, releases fatty acids, which form the majority of fuel calories used by the body’s cells. From Good Housekeeping, 1926.
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Letter on Corpulence [Obesity] Addressed to the Public
By William Banting
Summary: William Banting was an overweight British undertaker who by the mid 1800s had tried all the popular prescriptions for weight loss of his day without success. Then his physician recommended he try abstaining from starches and sweets (i.e., processed carbohydrates). When Banting promptly dropped 35 pounds in a few months, he was inspired to inform the public of his success in the form of this pamphlet. Banting’s publication sparked a rage of successful low-carb dieting across Europe and America that would span the next century. Unbeknownst to most modern nutritionists and weight loss "experts," low-carb dieting in the Banting mode was commonly recommended in early-twentieth-century textbooks on medicine, obesity, and endocrinology. It wasn’t until the 1960s, with the emergence of the notion that eating saturated fat leads to heart disease—a hypothesis that remains unproven to this day—that low-carb diets fell out of favor. Harrison Publishing, London, 1869.
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Obesity and the Physiology of Osmotic Transfers
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: "Most overweight people have an obviously disordered endocrine balance," writes Dr. Lee in this speculative paper on the nature of weight gain and loss. While historically the thyroid has always been considered the main dysfunctional endocrine gland when it comes to obesity, Dr. Lee points to another player, one "higher up the chain" of the endocrine system—the pituitary gland. With some modern researchers claiming the cause of obesity to be resistance of the pituitary to the hormone leptin, Dr. Lee appears to have been on the right track—once again years ahead of his time. 1954.
Overweight and Underweight as Manifestations of Idioblaptic Allergy
By Arthur F. Coca, MD
Summary: The great allergist Dr. Arthur Coca, developer of the Coca Pulse Test for allergies, discusses allergic reactions in the body that can lead to extremes in body weight. Eight case histories are considered. From the Journal of Applied Nutrition. Reprint 1, 1954.
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Rockefeller Reducing Diet with Comments by Royal Lee
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: One of the most ridiculous documents in the history of nutrition. It was reproduced by the Lee Foundation just to serve as a bad example of conventional nutrition. Dr. Lee has some rich commentary on this diet. Publication date unknown.
View PDF: Rockefeller Reducing Diet with Comments by Royal Lee
