Global reinsurer Swiss Re is calling for radical reform of low-fat, high-carb dietary guidelines. The call follows global investment bank Credit Suisse’s damning report on the guidelines in 2015. Swiss Re devotes its last medical newsletter of 2016 to a research demolition job of the guidelines.

In it, Swiss Re Chief Medical Officer Dr John Schoonbee calls the guidelines a “failed human experiment” over decades.

Credit Suisse is a $23 billion a year company with 48,000 employees. Swiss Re is even bigger at $35 billion with under 13,000 employees. These are big players in global financial markets. So, what’s in it for them to research and take sides in the scientific controversy around low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diets? A former Swiss Re head of health underwriting and claims explains.

The Credit Suisse report is a tome over 76 pages. Called Fat – The New Health Paradigm, it looked at changing consumer food choices.  Chief among these choices: a move away from high-carb to high-fat foods such as red meat, butter and eggs. It looked at the science for safety and efficacy of LCHF diets to treat and prevent obesity, diabetes and heart disease. This trend, Credit Suisse said, offers “powerful investment ideas”.

The Swiss Re report by Schoonbee is shorter but just as critical of conventional dietary “wisdom”

These findings highlight a new chapter in the fight against obesity and diabetes. We may eventually see the tide turning now that  saturated fat is no longer seen as harmful and we can advise those with deranged carbohydrate metabolism to replace energy  from carbohydrate with fats, hence substantially reducing the one nutrient that is in fact driving their disease process. 

About the event
How do we maintain a healthy diet to avoid obesity and diabetes? How should those with obesity and diabetes eat differently to improve their health? The answer is complex, but a better understanding of the key nutritional mechanisms leading to metabolic ill health, including diabetes and obesity could significantly improve population health. This will be a focus of Food for Thought 2023: Rising to the challenge of obesity and diabetes.

At @keto_live I listened to this super cool guy who works from inside one of the biggest insurance companies in the world talk about his efforts to steer the industry towards the adoption of ketogenic diets for noncommunicable diseases.
Prepare for a thread. (1/12)

Remember how we were talking in past threads about the different steps that have to be done in order to get ketogenic diets accepted as a standard of care for mental illness and neuro disorders and how insurance companies that want to save money should be part of that? (2/12)

Well, this guy is going to be terribly instrumental in helping this become a reality. His name is @john_schoonbee. Give him a quick follow and keep reading because I am going to tell you why this is so exciting! (3/12)

Swiss Re and the BMJ are hosting their 3rd Food for Thought series. This is going to bring together 200 scientists, clinicians, policy- and decision-makers to meet in October to discuss, debate, and learn. (4/12)