London - People should stop counting calories and instead focus on the kind of food they are eating to cut the risk of heart attack, stroke and other health problems, a group of experts have said.
Advocating a high-fat Mediterranean-style diet to improve people's health, they argue in a leading medical journal that the importance of calorie-counting has been overplayed by the food and weight-loss industries. This has come at the expense of wider public understanding of the benefits of a nutritionally balanced diet that can include certain high-fat products.
Dr Aseem Malhotra, an NHS cardiologist and public health campaigner, one of the authors, said that “not all calories are the same” and also criticised the UK's national food guide - the “eatwell plate” - as “extremely unhelpful” for saying a can of cola could be part of a balanced diet.
Writing in the Open Heart journal alongside Professor Simon Capewell of the University of Liverpool, and US heart researcher Dr James DiNicolantonio, Dr Malhotra points to evidence that a can of cola a day, at 150 calories, is associated with a significantly increased risk of type 2 diabetes - but four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil a day, at around 500 calories, has been shown to reduce the risk of strokes and heart attacks.
The authors said it was time to “stop counting calories, and... promote good nutrition and dietary changes that can rapidly and substantially reduce cardiovascular mortality”.
Dr Malhotra, who is a leading figure in the campaign group Action On Sugar, which is calling for a reduction in the amount of sugar in manufactured food, told The Independent: “Before we had the obesity epidemic, do you think our grandparents were counting calories? The only people who benefit from calorie counting are companies that sell low-fat junk food based on low calories, but full of sugar, which is lower in calories than fat.”
But Professor Tim Sanders, professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics at King's College London, said that current dietary advice in the UK stressed the need to reduce the intakes of salt, sugar and fat, adding that “even a healthy dietary pattern can result in weight gain if too many calories are consumed”.
“In my opinion, it is idiotic to suggest that calories don't count and then advocate a high fat diet,” he said.
Dr Tim Chico, reader in cardiovascular medicine at Sheffield University, said he was concerned that the Open Heart article presented a “false choice”, when it was possible to count calories and eat nutritionally valuable foods.
EXPLAINER
FEAR SUGAR, NOT FAT
National guidance suggests men need around 2 500 calories a day and women 2 000 calories.
But the idea of “good” and “bad” calories, as discussed by Dr Aseem Malhotra and his colleagues in their article, is based on the idea that certain foods and drinks with a relatively low calorie count might be worse for your health than some more calorific items.
For example, 100g of digestive biscuits contains 481 calories - less than 100g of almonds, which contains 576 calories.
Nuts may be high in fat but they have many nutritional benefits as they are also high in fibre. Biscuits, on the other hand, contain high levels of sugar - high intakes of which are linked to a greater risk of diabetes and other conditions.
The Independent