Aseem Malhotra still doesn't know what he's talking about

Aseem Malhotra has inexplicably been on television again today spouting his latest scientifically illiterate theories. In recent months he has been lurching ever closer towards the low carb cult and the Atkins diet. He is now telling people to eat a low carb, high fat diet while simultaneously telling them to adopt the Mediterranean diet. The latter has never been properly defined but is certainly not low carb. I can only assume that he has now read more than one diet book.

In the last year or so, Malhotra has done his best to deter people from taking statins, downplay the importance of physical activity, eat more fat and not worry about how many calories they consume - strange behaviour for a cardiologist. Perhaps, as Fergus says, he is trying to recruit new customers.

The only upside about the cretin of Croydon appearing in the media is that it stirs scientists into rebutting his drivel, so rather than fisk his eat-more-fat-and-consume-more-calories article, here are a few comments from the Science Media Centre...

... it is disappointing that this incomplete review reduces the diet to mere prescriptive nutrition: eat flaxseeds (good), eat almonds (good), eat olive oil (good), don’t eat sugar (bad) – dogma that’s exactly the opposite to the Mediterranean-style eating approach. The impression to ‘never mind the calories, feel their nutritional quality’ is in my opinion a misleading and superficial approach to a healthy eating.

I can agree with only one point made in this rather confusing editorial which seems to jump from one poorly proven hypothesis to another, undoing the work of thousands of good quality research papers and backed by years of careful research.

In my opinion, it is idiotic to suggest that calories don’t count and then advocate a high fat diet. The editorial has muddled obesity prevention with cardiovascular disease prevention.  Obesity is only prevented if energy intake is balanced by energy expenditure.

Adding fat to food is the easiest way to increase calories in food so pouring large amounts of olive oil over food or eating loads of nuts is not going to help prevent obesity!  

As I have said from the very beginning, Aseem Malhotra doesn't know what he's talking about.