One cheeseburger away from a heart attack.

Quick, don’t think.

Human beings are very good at being very firm in their beliefs. So fixed that it can be very hard to change our way of thinking about things.

As an example everyone knew for certain that the earth was flat. It was a flat disk floating in an ocean with a hemispherical top – like a snow globe. And EVERYONE knew it. Fact. Don’t question it.

Even though it was firmly established in the third century that the earth was a globe, it wasn’t widely accepted until around the 15^th century. For 1200 years people didn’t want to change their idea of the world.

Ever heard anyone say “He’s one cheeseburger away from a heart attack.”?

That one cheeseburger

This idea came about in the 1950s. Ancel Keys theorized (without a lot of good evidence) that fat was the cause of heart disease. Eat fat, clog arteries up like a drain with grease, and boom – heart attack and death.

Except it’s not how your body works. Fat doesn’t make you fat or prime you for a heart attack. Overeating carbohydrates (especially simple carbohydrates) does.

When you eat the Standard American Diet (SAD) you consume a lot of your calories as carbohydrates. These carbohydrates break down into glucose in your digestive tract. This glucose enters the blood and is used to produce energy in your cells. This is no problem if your metabolism is working well. It’s a huge problem if you begin to have metabolic disease.

This occurs when your cells begin to become resistant to insulin (from decades of processed carbohydrate consumption). As your cells become resistant, it becomes difficult to get the glucose in your blood into your cells. Your body needs higher and higher levels of insulin to transport the glucose into your cells.

Downward spiral

This high insulin level leads to many problems, from inflammation to high blood pressure.

As your blood glucose rises your body works to store the extra sugar. Your liver processes glucose into triglycerides. These become fat in your belly and thighs.

Eat high carb, have high triglycerides, blood pressure, inflammation. That’s the perfect recipe for heart disease. And type 2 diabetes – with all of its miseries, like neuropathy, kidney disease, eye damage, and obesity.

So you may be one cheeseburger away from a heart attack, but it’s the carbohydrates in the bun, (and the fries, and the soda) not the fat in the meat that are doing the damage.