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"Dr Jan Kwasniewski This Website is dedicated to Dr Jan Kwasniewski who has spent his lifetime developing and using the Optimal Diet bringing health and happiness to many people. Dr Jan Kwasniewski still lives in Poland, he has refused to commercialise his development and is not a very rich person. He does not sell any supplements. Compared with the standards enjoyed by Western medicos he lives a very ordinary, modest life."

Welcome to the English language website for the "Optimal Diet" movement. The Optimal Diet is a dietary model of human nutrition devised and implemented by Dr. Jan Kwasniewski. The Optimal Diet is a movement, which originated in recent years in Poland, and has rapidly spread to a number of countries worldwide, is to improve the well-being, health and biological value of people as individuals, and to correct nutritional mistakes of human kind as a whole, through promotion and implementation of the "optimal" model of human nutrition. Optimal Diet is based on the delivery of the most important nutritional elements, e.g., the most valuable proteins and fats, whilst leaving the body in charge of the distribution of these elements to the most critical areas. The ideal proportion between the main food components of protein, fat and carbohydrates should be in the range of : m m m m 1 : 2.5 - 3.5 : 0.5 In order to work out the correct daily food intake using this proportion, one has to know how many grams of protein needs to be ingested in a day to satisfy body's requirements.

"Jan Kwasniewski was born in 1937 in Poland. He graduated from the Military Medical Academy and specialised in Physical Medicine. For many years he worked in the Military Sanatorium in Ciechocinek as dietician where he introduce famous in Poland and at present all over the world his nutritional method which gives the humans good and long health. This method was named "Optimal Diet" which is the cornerstone to the nutritional theory. The principles of the optimal diet at first shock people because the diet recommends eating large quantities of fats along with a radical cut of carbohydrates. The basic premise is that the dieter should keep the proper proportion among the three fundamental nutrients in food: protein, fat and carbohydrates. He found that the ideal proportion is from 1:2.5:0.5 to 1:3.5:0.5 meaning that with every gram of protein 2.5 to 3.5 grams of fat and half a gram of carbohydrates should be eaten. In another words, optimal nutrition is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. "

"Let's get the religion out of the way first. I follow an eating pattern loosely based around Dr Jan Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet. I vary from the OD in that I tend to vary my protein sources somewhat more than specified, I think a little omega 3 supplementation is worthwhile, that having a "normal" vitamin D level is probably worth while (though this is an interesting subject) and in that I specifically avoid gluten and most other grains. So I do my own thing somewhat, while still keeping a heavy emphasis on animal fat, egg yolks and trying to keep to real food as far as I practically can. When I say I avoid ketosis because Kwasniewski says avoid ketosis, that's religion. My follow on problem from this that, when you can get hold of the data, Kwasniewski is usually correct. My even bigger problem is that, when you get beyond simple diet information, some of JKs ideas are very far off the wall. And some of the off the wall ones also seem to be correct to me, which is a little uncomfortable! So religion is a real non starter."

"A friend has emailed me the full text of Pawel Grieb's paper documenting a number of physiological parameters of medium to long term Optimal Diet (OD) eaters in Poland, as pointed out by Flo and Stan. There are a few points worth making. The biggest mistake, BTW, is that the authors claim (correctly) that the OD diet aims for >70% fat with (incorrectly) "no restriction on the type of fat (saturated or unsaturated) or cholesterol level". I think they meant that the OD does not ban saturated fats. This is of course true but the impression given is that the OD allows "healthy" fats, which are, of course, inedible. So the heavy emphasis on saturated fats is missed by the paper. A pity, anyone might be left thinking corn oil is a human food... The first positive aspect is that this is a multi author study, eleven authors from several medical centres/unversities. So it's not a one man band case report. I like that. The second is that it is remarkably positive about the findings throughout. Even the elevated LDL cholesterol levels are not taken as extreme and are not trumpeted from the rooftops as the portent of imminent cardiovascular doom. So refreshing!"

"This article was originally published in 2004 in the Chicago Tribune. It's still knocking around on the web in various places but the original seems to have disappeared. You can't have too much of a good thing. Obviously Stephan's recent posts on lard prompted me to put this one up. The imported nutritionist doesn't seem quite as dismissive as you might expect! But notice in the last paragraph that the big bogeyman is protein overload damaging the kidneys! On 60g/d of protein??? Sobor clearly knows nothing about high fat diets, certainly not the one he is commenting so authoritatively about in this case!"

No one can dispute that mother's milk is the ideal nutrition, as far as the biochemical composition is concerned. It contains 3 to 11 grams of fat per 1 gram of protein (0.4% unsaturated fat). The conclusion is obvious - if Nature included such a minute quantity of that constituent in such a wonderful food, then we should respect it. Meanwhile, people are being persuaded that plant-derived fats containing polyunsaturated fatty acids which do not exist in mother's milk, are healthy. Nothing is more misleading. The best are the fats which contain the highest percentage of energy contributing constituents, or in other words, such in which COOH group is attached to the longest fatty acid chain. Short fatty acid chains contain around 30-40% of energy-contributing constituents, the longest ones over 90%. Long-chain fatty acids fully saturated with hydrogen, yields approx. 10 cal/g when metabolised, the same as petrol. Fat's value as a "fuel" for our body increases with the increase in the amount of hydrogen per gram of carbon in its molecule, with the increase in the energy-contributing constituents. Chemically, the best are long-chain fully saturated fatty acids, that is to say, solid fats of animal origin. Only fats with the length of the chain above 10 carbon atoms are suitable to be utilised by our cells and tissues without conversion. These fats are directed straight to the blood stream via the lymphatic system, and they do not have to be converted and made suitable by the liver, as is the case with inferior fats (with shorter chains), or all other constituents of consumed and digested foods

Long-term consumption of a carbohydrate-restricted diet does not induce deleterious metabolic effects. Grieb P, K?apcin'ska B, Smol E, Pilis T, Pilis W, Sadowska-Krepa E, Sobczak A, Bartoszewicz Z, Nauman J, Stan'czak K, Langfort J. Nutr Res. 2008 Dec;28(12):825-33. PMID: 19083495 doi:10.1016/j.nutres.2008.09.011 These results indicate that long-term (>1 year) compliance with a low-CHO high-fat "optimal diet" does not induce deleterious metabolic effects and does not increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, as evidenced by maintenance of adequate glycemic control and relatively low values for conventional cardiovascular risk factors.