The Kenton way to a long healthy life

Forget the bread and rice. Diet guru Leslie Kenton tells DITA DE BONI that the way to a long and healthy life is to eat like our ancestors.

Throw away your calorie counters. Chubby, diet-wary people around the globe are cheerfully chucking out their salads, celery sticks and laxatives and picking up greasy bacon rashers and lamb chops in an effort to lose weight.

Sounds crazy? If, like me, you had the almighty "food pyramid" seared into your consciousness at high school, you might think so. Having been brought up to believe the best diet is low in fat, moderate in protein and high in grains and legumes, you might think a diet laden with cream, lard and egg yolks defies common sense.

However, many diet gurus urge you to think again. Slavish devotion to the food pyramid - and especially the carbohydrate-rich bottom rung of the food pyramid - is killing us, according to one international health writer and advocate.

Everywhere, but especially in New Zealand, she says, vested interests aim to keep us consuming large amounts of highly processed cereal, grain and wheat products at the expense of our bodies, minds and looks.

American-born Leslie Kenton knows more than most international gurus about the situation in New Zealand, living, as she does, on Banks Peninsula, which she playfully says looks like "a Walt Disney movie where someone has obviously overdone the green".

Kenton is a charming, witty and - if the photos are to be believed - naturally beautiful 50-something author of books, films and speeches who still looks great with her long hair blowing about her face. She has made a living out of extolling the virtues of eating raw, unprocessed foods, practising meditation and ageing naturally.

Kenton, whose web page describes her as "a living example of health and vitality ... the most original voice in health and beauty and the guru of health and fitness", was also responsible for developing the successful Origins range of cosmetics for Estee Lauder, and is in demand on the world's alternative health-speaking circuits.

Her message is diet plus a plethora of other health therapies, culminating in a belief that "life should be about creating a psychological place where people could grow and become what they truly are."

Her website reveals that she travels "throughout the world continually trying to bring to light natural methods of enhancing health - from detox to meditation, through child care to menopause". Her latest book, The X Factor Diet (number 30 in a range of titles that include Cellulite Revolution, 10 Steps to a Younger You, 10 Steps to a Natural Menopause) says we should live like cavemen (and women).

It is not an entirely new philosophy, although Kenton can sometimes appear to present it as her own. Instead, The X Factor Diet, published this week, draws together old and new information about the benefits of following the diet of our ancient ancestors, many whom died in the jaws of sabre-tooth tigers or the grip of childbirth, but none who died of heart disease or high cholesterol.

The argument is grounded on findings that our ancestors were not vegetarians but consumed animal meat and fatty animal organs. Palaeoanthropolgists, who study the development of diseases in humans over the history of their evolution, point to the introduction of animal husbandry, farming and agriculture at the beginning of the Neolithic period (approximately 10,000 BC, at the end of the last Ice Age) as a time when tooth decay, malnutrition and infectious diseases began their climb to permanence in the human condition.

As larger species of game became extinct and the nomadic way of life faded for most of civilisation, cereals, wild grasses, wheat, barley and legumes became staples and animals were increasingly hand reared. Meat consumption fell. As our diet first became less meat based, and then increasingly processed, our incidence of cancer, heart disease, obesity and other diet-related bogys soared.

Kenton and her palaeoanthropological sources say despite the dietary revolution, the human body's need for the fatty acids provided by animal flesh, as well as our need for raw, unprocessed vegetables and plants - and plenty of exercise - did not. And our largely sedentary bodies have struggled to cope with an increasing amount of carbohydrates - bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, pumpkin, carrot, corn and cereal - and saturated fats in our modern diet since.

Further investigation of scientific findings seemed to reinforce the folly of our high-carbohydrate diets for Kenton. As early as 20 years ago, endocrinologist Gerald Reaven coined a phrase to describe a group of abnormal conditions that huge numbers of people displayed which ended in obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. It was "Syndrome X" - in other words, insulin resistance. Something that affects diabetics, but also affects as much as 75 per cent of the general population, Kenton reckons.

In her words: "Insulin resistance can also develop in people eating a diet rich in refined carbohydrates like white bread and sweets.

The high levels of glucose triggered by such foods mean that your body cells are frequently flooded with insulin, causing them to become jaded and non-responsive to the hormone. So your pancreas just keeps secreting more and more of it in an attempt to get energy into your cells."

The two findings together "blew her mind", she says. She, too, had felt tired after eating and didn't know why, had been part of the "get up - feel like hell - have three pastries - feel on top of the world until 11 o'clock when everything comes crashing down - have a chocolate bar - and then crash again" brigade. Now it made sense.

Insulin, she realised, is released every time excessive levels of carbohydrates are eaten and eventually the body can't process it.

High levels of unprocessed insulin lead to obesity, since it also promotes fat storage while inhibiting the burning of fat.

The extreme end of Syndrome X is Type II diabetes, usually developed in middle age when the body has become so insulin-resistant it can no longer control its blood sugar levels. But the bulk of even non-diabetic people, according to Kenton, need to stave off the effects of Syndrome X by drastically reducing their sugar and carbohydrate consumption. Exercise is also a key.

That Syndrome X exists is not in question. That a diet richer in vegetables and fruit and poorer in alcohol and deep-fried foods is beneficial is simply accepted wisdom. But it is what Kenton and other low-carbohydrate zealots advocate as alternative diets that have them in hot water with the orthodox medical establishment.

Kenton is the latest in a long line of authors to advocate a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet, based on that of the hunter-gatherer man (and woman) who they say received the benefits of omega three fatty acids with the plethora of wild game, birds and fish they regularly ate.

While the domestication of these animals over the past 10,000 years has decreased their nutritional benefit for humans and increased their saturated fat content, low-carbohydrate diets generally continue to advocate far more protein-giving meat than conventional low-fat diets, which people have slavishly followed in recent history, have allowed.

The famed Doctor Atkins diet - one of the first and most popular low-carb programmes - goes further and tells people to eat all the fat they want. Greasy burgers are fine, for example, as long as they come without buns.

Meatballs without spaghetti, deep fried chicken without potato (but with gravy), salads with thick creamy dressings minus the croutons are all ok.

People lose weight initially, but many find the pace hard to keep. A lot of initial weight loss is water. Also, a diet devoid of carbohydrates depletes energy and eats into lean body mass, and a diet high in protein can stress the kidneys.

Despite the American Heart Foundation and US Federal Department of Agriculture weighing in against these types of seemingly madcap diets, their short-term success have them selling like hotcakes. And in a country where $US30 billion ($71 billion) is spent each year on diet-related products, they are making their makers millionaires.

Kenton denies this type of motivation. Moreover, while she respects Atkins, she thinks his theories "do not go back to first principals. He never asked 'how do we provide the body with the highest levels of food nutrients and minerals, and what would it thrive on because it was genetically programmed to'?" He would not, for example, suggest the dumping of muffins altogether as Kenton might (they are a carbohydrate-dense food), but would suggest making them out of soya flour.

On the face of things, Kenton's X-Factor diet would seem like common sense. Putting aside the issue of carbohydrates, she advocates natural fresh, organic and unprocessed foods, no coffee, limited alcohol and sugar and most importantly, a regular dose of exercise, all fairly standard stuff.

But some of her other recommendations - including cutting out pastas, breads and cereals, as well as eating some types of fat including coconut oil - are not so universally welcomed.

Her theories were presented to the New Zealand public in a documentary she made for TVNZ last year. To Age or Not To Age, running a full hour in the prime Inside New Zealand slot, attracted huge interest from a public always open to new dieting ideas. As Kenton's website says, "The network was swamped with web hits - so much so that their website could no longer function normally and many people could not get through."

But one who did get through was Otago University Professor Jim Mann and his colleagues at the Department of Human Nutrition, who were most concerned at the programme's message.

To be fair, some of Mann's ire was directed at TVNZ, which had made a documentary without any dissenting voices. The broadcaster was forced by the Broadcasting Standards Authority to run a statement acknowledging the documentary was not impartial.

But Mann's concerns ran deeper. "It was not balanced, and parts of it were not accurate, in my opinion. She said have lots of exercise, and I agree with that. And lots of fruit and vegetables, again, I agree. But not to eat as much fat as you like, and [the programme] went as far as to advocate eating coconut oil, which is not as bad as butter, granted, but is nevertheless a saturated fat."

Mann says that given the amount of exercise scheduled for Kenton's six subjects - all of whom reported improved health from her regime - they would have lost weight regardless of the diet they were on. He says "any gimmicky diet works in the short term. A high-fat diet will work initially ... if you remove carbohydrates, you remove a lot of foods that have got energy and that will work because most people eat far too much. But if you took a serious [high-fat, low-carbohydrate] diet you would actually become ketotic [lacking insulin; glucose in the blood cannot be taken up into cells] which makes you feel mildly nauseous, lowers your appetite and you lose weight in the short term."

The business of going back to a hunter-gatherer diet is also nonsense, Mann says, for two reasons. Humans have adapted to different diets over the past 10,000 years. Mann's old Oxford professor, for example, tried an Eskimo diet, much lauded by some for its incredibly high fat content, and "very nearly died", he says.

The other reason is that a caveman diet is almost impossible to recreate.

"No one is advocating you stuff yourself with white bread, mashed potatoes and white rice, but if you take a diet high in wholegrain cereal, fruits and vegetables and low in free sugars, which are the sugars added by the cook or the manufacturer, you can eat a moderate amount of carbohydrates and still lose weight."

Certainly, Kenton's day-by-day diets look daunting. At a glance there seems to be no bread, no potatoes or kumara - and definitely no buns, cakes or biscuits. A typical insulin-balanced day includes yoghurt, strawberries, broccoli sprinkled with slivers of organic ham, water-packed tuna, three grilled lamb chops, grilled aubergine and tomatoes, sliced oranges sprinkled with grated coconut and drizzled with Grand Marnier.

Mann has just been to Geneva to take part in discussions with the World Health Organisation and as such, does know "what scientific opinion is ... [Leslie Kenton's] never published a paper. In the circles I move in, you're judged according to your research. You've got to have paperspublished in medical journals".

Kenton, meanwhile, is unconcerned that she has no medical qualifications. She has never felt her lack of formal papers disadvantages her.

"I don't know why people are so daunted by that stuff [qualifications] - you go to medical libraries and read it."

Her three sons live with her in New Zealand and one - a consultant surgeon in Auckland - "rings mommy to ask what to do when he gets sick", she says with a laugh, adding that she is certainly not against aspects of modern medicine.

But her adopted homeland, she says with some annoyance, is the only place she has been criticised by the powers that be. The media in Australasia is far less sophisticated than in Europe and America, and there is "a lot of political pressure [in NZ] and it has to do with moneyed interests.

"There are a lot of so-called experts around, many who have 15 letters after their names, and these people can be unbelievably ignorant," she says.

"They should know all this stuff but they so often buy into the politically correct idea of the moment ... they obviously know on which side their bread is buttered."

What: The X Factor Diet

Who: By Leslie Kenton

When: Out now, published by Random House NZ, $34.95.