Weight loss surgeon Dr. Garth Davis revealed why he no longer promotes low carb diets while speaking at the recent 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. 

The Advisory Committee, which is comprised of nationally recognized nutrition and medical researchers, academics, and practitioners, updates the guidelines every five years. It invites experts to speak and share current scientific and medical evidence in nutrition.

Dr. Davis was one of many plant-based medical experts, who spoke about the benefits of plant-based diets, and the possible negative effects of eating low carb. During his speech, Dr. Davis begged the committee to ‘put him out of business’, saying he is ‘tired of cutting people open for obesity and re-arranging their intestines’.

Low carb diets

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that it’s 2019, and we have a group of very smart people in this room, yet we are asking what we should be eating. It’s absolutely crazy and my patients are confused. They’re confused by the guidelines, they’re confused by the discussions here and they’re confused by bad science.

“So I ask you to look at the science very carefully. Because I did. I wrote a book saying we should be eating protein first and should be on ketosis diets, but you know what happens to these ketosis patients? They end up eventually on my operating room table when they fail this diet over and over again.”

Ketosis diets failing

Dr. Davis says he asked himself why both he and his patients were failing the ketosis diet – leading him to study topic intensively. “You’ve heard people here say that carbs cause diabetes, and yet when you look at the blue zones they eat extremely high carbohydrate diets. 

“When you look at the epic database, fruit dose is associated with a decrease of diabetes. Taking five percent of your saturated fatty acid and changing it to a fruit dose decreases your diabetes risk by 30 percent. People act as if carbs cause insulin resistance – that is not true. 

“Animal protein and animal fat causing untermyer cellular fat causing ceramide toxicity causes insulin resistance. But our patients don’t know that so all they hear is ‘protein-carbs-protein-carbs…they don’t know whether to go low carb or low fat. They are petrified of a banana.

“I ask the committee to get rid of the recommendation for a protein, and rather focus on whole foods. The questions out there are complicated but the answers are simple and I refer to Michael Pollen – ‘eat real foods, mostly plants, not too much’.”