1 - People relate fat the nutrient to fat the body type because they share the word "fat". Not much to do there. In high school I was taught that carbohydrates were "energy" and fat was "waste". People should probably be taught the right way our biological systems operate.
2 - Medical authorities have worked with the best science they had available at the time, and are almost always managed by bureaucrats, not physicians. This isn't limited to the governmental level; hospitals, medical organizations, medical schools... the people in charge often have administrative training, not medical training. As a subpoint; sure, medical authorities have led us astray with nutrition information, but let's not jump to the conclusion that they have done something intentionally evil here.
3 - It's hard to prove any one way is the right way because of so many variables, including genetics, activity level, co-morbidities, and so on. More importantly, when something is right for 95% of people, that also means it is wrong for 5% of people. In the absence of easily testable datum, those anecdotes get a lot of attention. And even if it were easily testable, 5% of the time it would be wrong.
To me, the key is two-fold:
1 - People need to be educated about the facts of how their biological systems function. They need to know how calories work, insulin and blood sugar regulate, and gain a general appreciation of the science of their bodies.
2 - People need to be willing to "listen to their bodies" and experiment. That's the only way to know what really works for you, because you ARE different than everyone else. A healthy diet isn't just about finding mathematically optimal foods, it's about finding stuff you like to eat, that fills you up, that you can eat in moderation, that is easy to make. You need to be willing to mix health and convenience, taste and availability, etc... and that takes a bit of time to figure out.
Related to your key #1, this[1] talk by Robert Lustig (who's work has seen some exposure on HN in the past) has a pretty good run-down of how some of the carbohydrates are metabolized. Specifically, he points to fructose as the culprit when it comes to obesity.
I recommend watching the whole thing, but skip to about 36:00 to see the biochemistry.
Key takeaway is that Lustig doesn't make any claim that you can't get fat by eating too many calories, regardless of the source. Lustig's research is on the metabolic pathways for fructose and glucose, and they are substantially different.
I'll listen when I have some time later. Does he also address the dose dependent problem in his cited studies? Of course if I'm drinking 6-7 sodas a day that's generally going to be a problem, but it doesn't mean sugar is evil. Too much water can kill me also, but I don't see people saying water is evil.
Like I said, he talks about metabolic pathways, which are independent of dose, though not your body's current state of glycogen deficiency.
He also speaks to the effect of insulin resistance, and how the very rapid metabolism of fructose in the liver (7x faster than glucose) can lead to insulin resistance. Insulin spikes redirect calories eaten directly to fat, without them ever being metabolized into energy. As a result you gain fat and have less energy available, leaving you both fatter and hungrier.
Thanks for giving such a great summation. This was the key point for me from Lustig's presentation.
Essentially, if you treat sucrose and fructose as a condiment, rather than as a key source of kCal, you will be consuming simple sugars, protein and fat, food that actually nourishes and sates you directly, versus sucrose and fructose that in high doses simply transform to fat.
Per Lustig, it's important to differentiate between starches found in bread, potatoes etc., that break down to simple sugars like glucose that are metabolized directly by the body, and added sucrose and fructose that are metabolized in the liver to fat. For people saying that our carb consumption was the same back in early 20th Century, take a look at how much of that was likely breads and the like, versus the highly sweetened cereals of today.
edit: added a para on why looking at 'carbs', misses Lustig's point.
Intake is the key point in the entire argument for me. The dose makes the poison, and at this point we're arguing over whether it is healthier to poison ourselves with excessive calories from fat or excessive calories from carbs. If you don't eat too much, you don't have a stake in the argument at all.
Not really. It depends on each person's metabolism. I know people that get fat just by having regular desserts for a few days, and others (generally very young) that can eat anything until they burst without moving the needle.
In general, you can't trust self-reported data, especially not data reported to social acquaintances. Not only do people underreport how much they eat (it's the norm, even for people who aren't overweight), they don't do a good job of measuring their weight and reporting weight loss or weight gain. People really do say and believe that they've gained five pounds in two days, or lost ten pounds in a week, when it's clear they are just measuring fluctuations that have nothing to do with muscle or body fat.
There is no such thing as 'metabolism': just body mass, muscle mass and activity.
Big people burn more calories even when still. Active people burn more than still people of the same size. Muscular people burn more calories than the non-muscular as they have to feed their bigger muscles.
In sealed room tests fat people use more calories than thin people.
Skinny people who can eat anything they want without putting on weight tend to be very fidgety - they never keep totally still. Just wiggling a leg all day can use a large amount of energy.
"Skinny people who can eat anything they want without putting on weight tend to be very fidgety - they never keep totally still. Just wiggling a leg all day can use a large amount of energy."
Hm, this is interesting. I've never heard that before, but it seems intuitive. Do you have any sources for that idea? (Not that I'm challenging, just curious.)
In the literature its referred to as N.E.A.T. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis
Many people's body's response to overfeeding is to up NEAT, up fidgetyness. But not always. Your body thinks getting fat is a good thing. Famine used to be common.
When dieting almost everyone down-regulates NEAT. On a severe diet you feel like being very still.
The reasoning in that line shows the classic misunderstanding that has led us here. As Taubes says, saying you get fat because you eat too much doesn't explain anything. Of course you need to eat more calories that you expend to gain weight. But why do people do it, and why didn't they do it before?
Taubes says we eat too much because we eat carbs. If people had eaten a carb-free diet since 1970 we wouldn't be seeing that spike in calorie intake. Therefore the fact that calorie intake increased is in complete support of Taubes and Lustig's ideas.
Carbs increase insulin secretion, which encourages fat cells to take in blood sugar and turn it into fat, and discourages the body from burning fat for fuel.
Your report just has "Carbs" - nothing to do with what sort they were. That could be flour, sugar, or potatoes, and they stay relatively constant, there's no decline (p18).
There's a big increase in the amount of fat consumed, but I suspect a large part of the difference is going to be lifestyle, too. Around the turn of the century people walked a lot more and did a lot more manual labour.
See table 4 and 5. It doesn't give breakdowns of sugar vs HFCS or corn vs wheat, but it does separate sweeteners from potatoes from grains.
Regardless - total calories went up. Carbs stayed almost constant in absolute terms (a slight decrease) and decreased in relative terms. Fat increased in both absolute and relative terms. I guess carbs must be the culprit!
Ok, I see that now, and it fits with what I know - if your blood glucose is saturated, then any extra fat and sugar you eat goes straight to your arse.
Interesting that whole milk dropped off so sharply in the 1970s and 80s - about the time that 'fat is bad' started up? From what I've read, low fat milk contributes to heart disease too - something about the level of fat-soluble vitamins?
that doesn't seem to be a very good criticism at all. he completely misses Lustig's point, skews the argument and tries to obfuscate his own lack of expertise with buzzwords and shallow analysis.
My strategy is simple: in general I avoid food that a hunter-gatherer would not be able to find. I said "in general" because I eat cheese, some hams and preserved meats and sausages, and I also drink wine.
After a short learning curve it became very easy.
In terms of convenience, I still find a sandwich and a canned juice pretty convenient, but I avoid them anyway. I have not had the need for other "convenient" foods like cereals, rice, noodles, and so on.
I know, that's was one of my starting points. My comment addresses the last part of the parent comment: you should experiment and find what works best your yourself. Although I consider myself a paleo, I am not a purist.
Well-said. Lately one of my mantras has been "Do What Works For You". We tend to broadcast our opinions as if they were the only possible approach for all people, because our insecurities make us fear being wrong every time we see someone with a different solution. Or, worse; we choose to take the "easy way" of following someone else's belief system to avoid the uncertainty of nurturing our own, even if it obviously doesn't work for us. Each individual person experimenting and drawing their own conclusions seems like the most reliable way for everyone to actually see results.
If only everyone would just be quiet and follow my opinions about that...
Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that prehistoric man was optimised for a much shorter life-span than present day man has? In that case, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that pre-historic diet isn't good in the long term?
To be fair, alcohol (ab)use is highly correlated with depression symptoms. The nervous system depression, however, is not necessarily the same mechanism that causes psychological depression. (lots of available articles on alcohol and depression, e.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=alcohol%20depression)
"The nervous system depression, however, is not necessarily the same mechanism that causes psychological depression."
Alcohol causes depression because of its longterm effects on the brain, as well as the fact that it causes cytokine inflammation. (And possibly for other reasons as well.) This definitely has nothing to do with the fact that it temporarily slows down your heart rate and breathing, otherwise we'd all be suicidal every morning when we woke up.
I'm always surprised at the theories people are willing to believe about obesity, particularly people on hn. It really sounds reasonable to so many of you that the cause of the obesity epidemic is people actually listening to nutrition advice from the medical establishment and following the food pyramid?
My view of what has happened is this: technologies and ingredients were invented by food manufacturers over the past half century. Foods manufactured using these technologies have the following advantages: cheap, high mouth appeal, non-perishable, convenient. They also have the following disadvantages: calorie dense, difficult to metabolize, addictive for some people.
For most peopele not explicitly making food decisions with a mind to control their weight, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
At the same time as this was happening, most of the reasons for people to expend calories vanished. As far as I can think of, the only reasons left to burn calories are pleasure and weight control.
In this sort of context most normal, perfectly rational people will end up getting fat. The only people who won't are: athletes, people with strong metabolism (this usually goes away with age), and people who dedicate themselves to not being fat.
"It really sounds reasonable to so many of you that the cause of the obesity epidemic is people actually listening to nutrition advice from the medical establishment and following the food pyramid?"
Who said this?
The anti-nutritional establishment claim being made here is that the incorrect demonization of fat led people to replace dietary fat with carbohydrates (see, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SnackWells). You can complain all you want about food manufacturers making tasty/addictive foods which are bad for you, but they were responding to the public's demand for "low fat" driven by bad science.
On a slightly more meta note, it's probably bad form to be fake "surprised" that people have differing opinions for yours, especially when the theory being discussed is a summary of actual research and history and your counter is a "my view"-style list of anecdotes.
The surprise is genuine, and I didn't include any anecdotes in my post.
The research I have seen indicates that high carbohydrate intake (particularly sugars) is more likely to make someone obese than high fat intake. The research I have seen in no way indicates that the reason people select high sugar foods is because those foods are believed to be healthy by virtue of their low fat content.
No doubt companies use "low fat" as a marketing tool. The same can be said of "low carb", "low sodium", "sugar free", "all natural" and any number of other phrases that sound healthy. I don't think this is a significant factor in the obesity epidemic. People aren't choosing Snackwells in preference to a handful of walnuts (to they extent that they are choosing Snackwells; I've never seen anyone purchase them). People are choosing Snackwells in preference to Chips Ahoy.
I think this idea that the dietary advice of 20-30 years ago (low fat) is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic is the result of a desire for a dramatically satisfying narrative (Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.).
Ponder this: the Atkins / Low-carb craze started over 10 years ago. All the advice I see in online fitness forums acknowledges the value of high-protien low-carb eating. "Low-carb" is becoming a ubiquitous phrase on food packaging. Yet the obesity epidemic continues unchecked. To me this indicates that the people who choose foods based on macronutrients are choosing low-carb, but that most people are not involving macronutrients in their food decisions.
"I think this idea that the dietary advice of 20-30 years ago (low fat) is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic is the result of a desire for a dramatically satisfying narrative."
Again, you're arguing against a claim that isn't being made. The anti-carb claim is that the primary cause of the obesity epidemic is the vast consumption of sugars and other simple, processed carbohydrates. A contributing factor to this dietary problem is that even people who try to eat well have been led to believe that cutting out steak and replacing it with whole wheat bread would help them, which is wrong and was backed up by bad science.
If you are having trouble believing that people think that the obesity problem is caused by nutritionists telling everyone to drink six Cokes a day, that is because nobody is claiming that. They are claiming that the problem which already existed was exacerbated by bad advice, and that lots of people who tried hard to do something about their own personal problems were frustrated and gave up because they were told to do counterproductive things.
"You can complain all you want about food manufacturers making tasty/addictive foods which are bad for you, but they were responding to the public's demand for "low fat" driven by bad science."
I am arguing that they were responding to the public's demand for cheap, tasty, convenient food driven by... people liking cheap, tasty, convenient things. The "bad science" didn't do much harm because the science didn't have much influence over what people ate anyway.
Given what I've quoted you saying above, and the fact that you don't have to scroll down very far to hear the suggestion of lowering one's fat intake called "the greatest scientific fuck up of all time", I don't think I'm arguing against a claim that isn't being made.
While I have to agree with you, your theory fails to explain why people in Europe (who have the same access to calorie dense and convenient food) are less obese (in proportion) than North Americans.
I believe that culinary customs AND some additives used in industrial food play an important role.
Just check out High Fructose Corn Syrup : this is in very product in the USA and is (almost) never used in Europe.
Picking a nit, but: I generally agreed with you up until you referenced HFCS. HFCS is a bogeyman and is nearly identical to sucrose (to be precise, HFCS-55 was formulated to replace sucrose by providing a nearly identical mix of fructose and glucose (yes, it's 55/45 rather than 50/50; blow); see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup).
The problem with HFCS is not HFCS, it's that the US government has subsidized corn production, lowering the price of corn, lowering the price on a sucrose-analog and increasing the total amount of sucrose-analog in the American diet. See Earl Butz [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz ].
I'd say "people in Europe" is way too general, I'm sure there are regions such as the UK where obesity is as bad as the US.
I've dealt with vendors from southern France and Western Italy and when they come here they are shocked at portion sizes and how much pop people drink, it's all anyone drinks. Even I see the difference from many years go portions are huge even people are huge, it's hard to find clothing that isn't over-sized and baggy.
Claiming corn syrup is bad meanwhile people drink it morning, noon and night seems to indicate it's equally the fault of a culture that is comfortable with eating so much crap but seeing it as normal then blaming it for their problems.
At work we have a pop machine which up until a few years ago due a provincial law could only dispense glass bottles, all carbonated beverages had to be in a glass container. The glass bottles were about 315ml, then the law changed (because people wanted cans) and the next day the pop machines was stocked with the modern plastic bottle but they were nearly 600ml. The fridge at work was full of half bottles of pop because people couldn't drink their 600ml beverages in one sitting but gradually over the next month or two people adjusted and now drink the entire 600ml in one sitting almost double. HFCS or not who is to blame for that? The person drinking it.
The fridge at work was full of half bottles of pop because people couldn't drink their 600ml beverages in one sitting but gradually over the next month or two people adjusted and now drink the entire 600ml in one sitting almost double. HFCS or not who is to blame for that? The person drinking it.
The person drinking it is "to blame" for what, precisely? Being a creature which can adjust to its environment? Why does any blame need assigning? Who benefits from assigning any blame?
Ask for a coke in almost any bar or cafe in Europe and you'll be served a 200ml bottle. Buy a portion of french fries from a snack bar and you'll usually get a palm-sized portion on a paper tray.
French schools serve real food on real plates - a portion of moules marinière or escargot would be completely familiar fare to most french kids. Even lardy Britain is changing school meals from mere fuel to an integral part of a child's education.
American food culture is one of abundance - eating large quantities of the richest foods. The humblest of American meals are based around meat in great quantity. Italians still eat a prima piatti of something cheap and filling before a relatively small secondi piatti of meat or fish, a cultural legacy from harder times when meat of any sort was a treat.
The tide is certainly turning and obesity rates are soaring, but the difference in rates is largely accounted for by cultural difference. The French rightly see it as a crisis that students don't want to sit down for meals anymore. Most of Europe sees food as a vitally important political and social issue.
Great question, I've often wondered about the same thing. I think it's probably a combination of factors, the most important being, in my view, culture. I suspect that other countries may have more homogeneous eating traditions than the U.S. If most people around you are eating the same sorts of foods, and eating occupies the same space in their lives, its probably less likely to occur to you to go buy a bag of fritos or a pizza or something.
If everyone around you is behaving in varied ways with respect to food, you may be more likely to make decisions based on price, convenience, or the "food buzz" you get from eating something. It may also be that buying everything based on price and convenience is itself a cultural norm in the U.S.
It might be economic factors as well. If the U.S. is the world leader in corn production and industrial-scale agriculture, the market for food products in the U.S. might just be very different from what exists in Europe.
Finally there is the possibility that the U.S is not alone in the obesity epidemic, merely ahead. I'm not totally sold on that, but it's a possibility.
I'm a Canadian currently living in the US; our two countries are culturally very similar, and diet-wise practically identical (save poutine, sweet sweet poutine). But the obesity epidemic hasn't swept Canada nearly the same way it is commonly seen in the US.
I just got back from a trip to Canada, and I can say with absolute confidence that the typical restaurant dish in the US is more than twice the size it is up north.
It's this way in Asia too, and probably Europe (though I haven't been, shame).
It doesn't matter how much you exercise (or don't), nor does it matter if you're eating steaks vs. granola bars. If you're eating twice as much as the rest of the world, you've got big problems.
The US needs to halve their serving sizes in restaurants, and reduce the appetite of the general population. You can improve what you're eating, and you can exercise more, but none of that will do diddly squat until you cut down on intake.
"The racial make-up of the two countries might explain some of the differences, as research has shown that obesity rates vary by ethnic origin. Nonetheless, when obesity rates of White Americans and Canadians are compared, White women in the United States were significantly more likely than those in Canada to be obese: 30.3% versus 24.8%. However, the percentages of White American and Canadian men who were obese did not differ."
For myself and my wife, typical US serving sizes constitute 3 meals, though nowadays, we generally only eat out occasionally, and at local non-chain restaurants that serve decent quality food.
Anecdotally - I'm from europe and when I was in the US I only ate one meal a day. I simply didn't feel hungry for a whole day after a typical American meal.
My scariest experience of American food was on my first night in the country. I was in the lobby of the hotel and kinda peckish, so I ordered the nearest thing I could find to a ham sandwich, a montecristo.
Despite it being actually fairly cheap, what arrived, was a MASSIVE batter encrusted mountain of about 50 sandwich quarters...
Agreed - though in Europe (though maybe not the UK these day) food isn't marketed as agressively, people eat main when they are hungry not for something to do, and home cooking is a way of life and is held in high esteem.
Also more of Europe is plain old walkable or bikeable. When I lived in Oslo I didn't even own a car. In the states there are very few spots you can get by without a car. Even if I wanted to bike from my house to some places there flat out are not sidewalks in a lot of places. Walking is looked down at. There are plenty of blog entries of guys that go without a car even though they could afford it and find dating near impossible not because they live in a city, but because it is such a powerful signal here.
"The International Obesity Task Force estimated that Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta have exceeded the United States figure of 67% for overweight or obese males."
The "fat is evil" thing that happened in the latter half of the 20th century is going to go down as the biggest scientific fuck up ever.
The very people who were given all the authority and trust, and who were supposed to protect human life, actively killed people by pushing carbs as healthy and fats as unhealthy.
They directly caused spiking obesity, the #1 medical issue in our society.
Repeat after me: The biggest health issue in our society was directly caused by the health authorities. This means doctors, medical researchers, and governments.
Heart disease, cancer, and obesity are all linked to carbs now. Millions and millions of people have died because they followed the advice of the scientific authorities.
When the general public figures out how wrong the scientific and medical authorities were for SO LONG and SO LOUDLY... public trust in science is going to be maimed for generations.
If you can't trust them on the #1 public health issue - the #1 killer of humans - what can you trust them on?
I think it's more to do with our idea of a balanced diet being out of kilter. I've met plenty of people who are now replacing carbs with meat, which to me doesn't feel like the right way to go about things. One day perhaps we'll realise for a start that we don't need to eat so many calories in each sitting. Then with any luck we'll realise that vegetables (not potatoes) should form the base of the 'food pyramid'.
It might be interesting for you to know that great numbers of Irish people survived on little other than potatoes and milk in the period before the great potato famine. This was supplemented with oatmeal occasional vegetables, and very occasional salted fish, but the vast majority of their nutrition came from potatoes.
The results? The highest birthrate in western Europe and people historians of the time considered healthy and good-looking.
You can trust them to continue diving into the science of nutrition. The interesting thing about this whole episode is that it serves as a wonderful illustration of the self-correcting nature of the scientific method.
Consider what's happened: First, health authorities made observations about diets and various diseases, creating hypotheses along the way. Next, they gathered some data and analyzed it. They drew conclusions from that data and made recommendations based on those conclusions.
Over time, more observations were made. More hypotheses were developed, more data was collected and analyzed, and the conclusions changed. This is the nature of science. We make decisions based on what we know at the time. If new evidence is found, we revise our theories and make different recommendations.
I think there is a problem, but it doesn't lie with the health authorities themselves. (Not that there aren't problems in the health field, but that's for another discussion.) Instead, the problem lies in how various other authorities use the information provided by the health professionals.
As the information and recommendations make their way through government, the issue becomes politicized, and politics frequently wins out over science. As the information is reported by the mainstream press, it is also sensationalized and frequently blown out of proportion. Going by the headlines in many publications, everything that is bad for you becomes good for you and vice versa every few years.
Rarely, if ever, do you see an attempt at understanding nutrition, the nature of the scientific process behind the recommendations, or a call for simple moderation. Yet that's what we need. We need government officials who are willing to listen carefully to the health professionals without allowing lobbyists to influence their decisions. (Corn sugar? Really?) We also need a press that is willing to educate the public rather than simply splash attention-getting headlines and content-free articles everywhere.
I doubt we'll see either of these things happen in our lifetimes, so it's up to us to educate ourselves, our families, and each other. Then, maybe, we'll start eating right and enjoy a healthy life.
Being in the midst of a global obesity epidemic brought on by thirty years of following the nutritional advice of scientists really isn't "a wonderful illustration of the self-correcting nature of the scientific method". Especially when the government and most other health authorities are still actively promoting the bad science that caused the problem to begin with.
This was bad science not politics. Dr. Lustig (of Sugar the bitter truth fame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM) explains the details of it, but to sum up; Ancel Keys authored the Seven Countries Study that linked heart disease with dietary fat that that study formed the foundation of our nutritional knowledge ever since. According to Lustig, Keys preformed the first multivariate regression analysis and messed it up but we have been teaching it and living by it for 30+ years. Its still a challenge to get
Everybody loves to place science on some pedestal and pretend that politics is the source of all our problems.
We have found scientific justifications for our racism and other quirks, habits and general prejudices for a very long time:
Don't think that because <1950s commercial narrator voice>This information was brought to you by Science!</1950s commercial narrator voice> that it is necessarily correct. I spoke to James Flynn (The guy the Flynn effect is named after) and it turned out that he only got into studying IQ to disprove the science of the day showing that blacks were inferior. He has gone on to show that women are also equally intelligent (Imagine!). He is still working on debunking racist, sexist science decades later. The science around nutrition is no more reliable and no less subject to being shaped by our cultural prejudices.
>The interesting thing about this whole episode is that it serves as a wonderful illustration of the self-correcting nature of the scientific method.
This is actually not very good PR for science. The wonderful illustration here is that after billions of dollars and millions of lives we realized we were wrong? What system couldn't do that?
To me, what this actually illustrates is the mistaken way we use science today:
Today: "Ok, it looks like it's probably fat that's bad. Ok, everyone! No more fat"
And everyone laughs and points at all the stupid uneducated fundies still eating fat.
Tomorrow: "Oh, we were totally wrong about everything we said. Ok, everyone! Stop what ever you're doing!"
And now we get to laugh at all the stupid people who don't eat fat anymore.
Scientific method never proves anything, it's only good for disproving things. If a (valid, i.e. falsifiable) theory doesn't get proven wrong we develop more and more confidence. That still doesn't mean it's right though.
The problem isn't science or the scientific method. It's marketers and salesmen (laypersons) that take one scientific study and go crazy with it. The studies themselves are probably littered with probabilities, statistics and caution conclusions. That doesn't work when you're trying to sell snake oil.
Just look at the whole anti-oxidant craze with cranberries, pomegranate and acai berries. Suddenly people are buying gallons of juice. The scientists didn't do that.
>It's marketers and salesmen (laypersons) that take one scientific study and go crazy with it.
In most case; scientists are salesmen/marketers. They have to be because they're salaries come from grant money. There are plenty of examples of scientists themselves trumping things up.
Religion, for one. Alternative medicine for another. Any fixed mindset philosophy that has no feedback loop between "reality" and "what it advocates".
You know tomorrow is predicted to be judgement day, right?[1] Do you think that guy/group is going to change his/their philosophy one iota when tomorrow is not judgement day? Even when they've predicted it before and been wrong before?
[1] http://search.google.com/search?q=judgement%20day%20may%2021... and http://www.wecanknow.com/ claims "the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 [..] Study the proofs that God has so graciously given in His Word showing us that these dates are 100% accurate and beyond dispute.". In a couple of days, find those people and ask about their "100% accurate and beyond dispute" claims.
Wrong. All religions have, in fact, adjusted to changing realities. The Pope has made changes, the Jews don't sacrifice animals anymore, etc. You have a point with "alternative medicine" though.
You can trust them to continue working on the research that gets them grant money. Where that grant money comes from tends to have a disproportionate impact on the outcome of the research. This is a problem that must be addressed before science is actually science and not marketing.
Not really. It was doctors like Atkins and journalists like Gary Taubes. Huge public support of Atkins forced nutritionists to start studying Atkins.
Nutritionists have been demonizing low carb diets since the 70s.
It is the general public, through anecdote and experience, that has made this discovery mainstream. Dr. Atkins and others made the discovery, but they were never accepted by the scientific community.
(I don't want to split hairs, but "carbs" aren't to blame, simple sugars are, especially in sodas, confectionary, et cetera.)
> Millions and millions of people have died because they followed the advice of the scientific authorities.
Because of a poor diet? Maybe; diet is only one side of this. People who die of heart disease are normally very unfit. As easy as it is to blame the scientific authorities, they should have done something about their health and taken up regular exercise.
I was in Brazil in 1995 and one of the Brazilian girls I was eating with mentioned she is not going to eat the pasta / carbs because she is trying to lose weight. I thought she had no idea what she was talking about, what she needed to do was cut out the fat. Turns out I was wrong.
Not really, it turns out the carbs from glucose (pasta) are actually pretty good for you. If she also cut the carbs by removing fruit juice and soda from her diet, then it would have been the right approach.
For more info, watch the Lustig video already linked in this thread.
Apparently combining carbs with fat is conducive to fat accumulation. So, avoiding that pasta with olive oil or butter is a good idea if you want to loose weight.
People resist the idea because the answer is too simple. "Fats" are better than "Carbs". So lard is better than a banana? Ugh.
It's not the broad category of "Fats" vs "Carbs". It's the TYPE of food. Eat good food. Period. Not something made in a factory. Twinkies: out. Soda: out. Standard pizza with refined grains and loads of cheese: out.
Eat healthy food: the right meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lots of water. Don't eat crap. Exercise.
It really isn't rocket science, but when we make one food group "bad" and the other one "good" just so we have another excuse to eat junk, we lose.
> People resist the idea because the answer is too simple. "Fats" are better than "Carbs". So lard is better than a banana? Ugh.
> It's not the broad category of "Fats" vs "Carbs". It's the TYPE of food. Eat good food. Period. Not something made in a factory. Twinkies: out. Soda: out. Standard pizza with refined grains and loads of cheese: out
People resist this idea because it is too simple. The reason behind the whole article is trying redefine what "good food" is. The last twenty years we've been told that fatty foods were bad for us, and high-carbonhydrate foods were good for us. That we should have 60%+ of our diets as carbs.
There is now mounting evidence that this is all bad advice.
I know many people now who trim the fat off the meat whilst eating unchecked quantities of pasta because they believe this is what good food is and what 'eating well' means. This is wrong and people need to be re-educated.
I totally agree, the problem is that it's harder for people to eat healthy than simply pick a single thing and demonize it. Plus, telling people to eat healthy doesn't sell a lot of books.
On top of that, phrases like "eat healthy", "eat healthy fats", "eat cleanly", etc are ambiguous, and not helpful. This is because each person's definition of "healthy" and "clean" is different.
We need to be very specific when describing what to eat.
True, but I think the sentiment is correct at least in selling food. It's hard to get rich selling spinach, but it's easy to get rich selling Sugar-Frosted Excitement Pops - now made with whole grain-like substances!
Fad books sell to a lot of people over and over. Of course you can get rich helping people to just eat healthy, but it's harder and you likely don't get the repeat buyers. But write a book saying x is evil or fat is not your fault because y is evil and you'll get tons of buyers.
It's also more expensive to provide quality fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Compare the cost of a big mac to a free-range organic chicken breast and some fresh vegetables.
God I remember when everywhere (even in school) was hooked on the "you are killing your kids with butter, eat margarine" line.
Of course, then they banned it most sensible places because of the hydrogenated/trans fats. Shocking that something made by chemical process by companies with large sums of money will be heavily advertised and pushed to people over, say, something that can't be patented by any one body.
Similarly, carb laden foods are cheap to produce and will last even if stored badly, you just have to try going out to dinner to an "average place" and try not to eat something where the dish is not mostly potato, noodles, rice, or flour based (pasta, bread, pizza base) to see why industry wouldn't think it was great if carbs came with health warnings.
Having said that, It strikes me from experiences in the past that everyone reacts differently to the mix of carbs and fats in their diet, but everyone seems to react to good amounts of protein, so while I'm not sure either should be demonised, clean sources of protein should be made more important.
You just used the words "potato", "noodles", "rice", and "flour" in a distinctly negative tone. Those are some of my favorite foods, preferable doused in butter.
I agree. I guess I didn't make it clear that I was saying that those foods aren't necessarily bad just because they are carbs. My personal data is irrelevant (and largely due to the fact that my metabolism seems to be on par with a smelting furnace).
Fair enough, but, like the article points out, personal experience, or case studies, doesn't count as scientific proof here.
My own experience is that I can eat as much butter (real butter), bacon, olive oil, and other fats as I want and my weight won't change. But as soon as I start to eat bread and potatoes, I can easily gain 10 pounds.
This is a very complex issue. For every single person there are many factors involved, like personal make, hormones, age, genetics, even how your mother ate when you were in the womb.
On the big scale, these studies are trying to find the cause for the obesity (and heart disease) epidemics. The accumulating evidence is pointing to carbs as the culprit.
Yes, of course. You are following the Atkins diet, basically all fat and protein, very limited carbs. This is an effective way to maintain or lose weight and it's been shown to have positive cardiovascular effects.
On the other hand, the best studied and most effective diet for weight loss and cardiovascular health is the Ornish diet, which is almost the exact opposite: no meat, no fat, lots of vegetables, rice and non-fat yogurt. Plus exercise and meditation. Both work and they are on opposite sides of the fat/no-fat spectrum.
(My own experience is that cardiologists are eager to recommend the Ornish diet and don't really believe the studies favoring the Atkins diet. Doctors are people. They believe what the culture believes.)
The success of both of these diets may suggest to some that nutrition is too complex, that all people are different, that different people react well to different diets, etc. In other words, don't listen to science and follow your gut. That path leads to your gut hanging over your belt.
The simpler explanation is to look at what both the Atkins and Ornish diets restrict: "Sugar and simple sugar derivatives -- honey, molasses, corn syrup, and high-fructose syrup" (WebMD).
The accumulating evidence is not pointing to carbs as the culprit, it's pointing to sugar.
Hmmm. More complex carbs are pretty much chains of glucose. The sugars you are talking about are glucose and fructose, about 50/50. If your explanation is the correct one, does that mean the problem is really fructose?
What I do is more like "paleo" than Atkins, but they are similar.
Apparently both diets avoid grains and sugar.
Check out the comment about by jpb that refers to Robert Lustig's talk. It is very interesting. It refers to your point that low-fat high-carb diets could also be healthy, but not all carbs are recommended.
Apparently eating fat together with carbs in conducive to fat accumulation, and sugar by itself has the same result because half of it, the fructose, is metabolized into triglycerides.
I'm sure he didn't mean to offend you, but those were mentioned because they are pretty rich in carbs. I must say though I haven't heard of anyone eating flour, especially doused in butter, no less ;)
Regarding your height/weight: age, physical fitness and genetic disposition are also determinants of that along with your diet.
Edit: I'm 29, 6'1" and 180 pounds (I could lose another 10-15 pounds if I got back into marathon-running condition), and I do enjoy eating foods such as pasta on a regular basis.
I resist the idea that carbs (and HFCS for matter) need to be demonized. The article mentions peoples tendencies, but one tendency the anti-carb crowd relies on is how people want to find a smoking gun or silver bullet solution.
The article doesn't really do much to prove anything since rarely did the elite eat the same thing as the peasants. Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasants. This would include more meat, alcohol, spices, sugar, etc...
The article says "Mummy Says Princess Had Coronary Disease." This leads me to believe they are talking about Egyptian royalty, even if they were not called kings and queens.
What's more radically different between people who are healthy and people who are not is how much they exercise rather than what they eat. There is much more worldwide cultural variation in what people eat, and much more individual variation within each culture, among healthy people than there is variation in the exercise level of healthy people. But seeking to change diet to change health sounds easier than getting more exercise, so that's what gets in the news (and on HN, over and over and over).
with controlled experiments and careful observation and follow-up on human nutrition is extremely hard. I recall a local television news documentary about a dietary study from the 1970s in which experimental subjects were confined 24/7 in a lab for many weeks (they must have been compensated handsomely to agree to participate in this experiment) and fed EXACT portions of food that were weighed with extreme precision. Oddly, I don't recall particularly what hypothesis that study was set up to test, but I do recall that it was described as the first experiment that relied on feeding subjects exactly measured portions of known foods (and excluding subjects from access to foods they chose for themselves) while involving lengthy (weeks of time) follow-up. It's still exceedingly rare for studies of human nutrition to have careful experimental designs. (And even at that, I suppose most of the subjects of that experiment are still alive, but I don't know if anyone is doing follow-up observations of those subjects in any manner.) Instead, we get inferences from Egyptian mummies (as in the submitted article) or from other uncontrolled case studies that never even had careful observation to begin with. That really isn't science;
What makes it all that much more complicated is that diet is, in fact, the best way to lose weight. Losing weight through exercise is incredibly hard and unrewarding (and often unsuccessful), but to keep the weight off after losing it, exercise is essential.
What compounds this is that 'healthy' is a particularly ill-defined catchall term. If you are, for example, morbidly obese or horribly malnourished, you probably do need to change your diet. If you get winded going up a flight of stairs, or maybe worried about general physical fitness, you probably want exercise.
What is our ideal for a healthy person?
An underwear model? someone who lives to 93?
What compounds this is that 'healthy' is a particularly ill-defined catchall term.
Thanks for asking an important follow-up question implicitly by commenting on what the term "healthy" (used in my first post here) might mean. To make that explicit, when I refer to "healthy" people in the context of a human nutrition study, I refer to people who have longer lifespan (less mortality) and fewer documented diseases and disabilities (less morbidity) than the general than the general population baseline. (By symmetry, unhealthy people have more mortality and more morbidity than the population baseline.) Ideally, a hypothesis on nutrition and its relationship to health would be backed up by EXPERIMENTALLY OBTAINED data on both the central tendencies of groups given one treatment or another, and by similarly obtained data on individual outcomes before and after differing treatments. We have a long way to go to get data of this quality. And it may be that eventually (although this promised future seems farther away now than it did a decade ago) individuals will be able to obtain testing to allow them to receive individualized advice on diet, adapted to their individual peculiarities. Right now we are still trying to figure out very general patterns of advice, which surely won't fit all individuals equally well.
Tim Ferriss made the assertion in the 4 Hour Body that what should be a benchmark for health is reproductive fitness ("sexyness"). This is tough to measure objectively, but not subjectively. A significant portion of our brain is devoted to processing exactly that (ever notice how you can instantly spot an attractive member of the opposite/preferred sex out of the corner of your eye?).
We use similar criteria for household and farm animals ("shiny coat," musculature, posture and signs of coordination and activity). Back when slavery was widespread, slave traders made their choices the same way.
I'll absolutely agree that its damn hard to do control what people are eating in experiments, but I disagree that exercise plays the role you say.
You can eat something in a single meal that will take SEVERAL HOURS on a treadmill to burn. It is incredibly easy for the number of calories you need to burn to pass the number of hours possible to exercise.
I've found the fat hypothesis - 'fat makes you fat' - to be false, or at least not to apply to me. I am not exactly anti-carb - I eat potatoes, and a little rice - but I have been eating a diet that I guess you could call 'Paleo 2.0' for the last 7 months or so. The basic goal is to minimize my intake of grains, fructose, and legumes, and maximize that of saturated fats. I also happen to be vegetarian, so for me this means a diet of mostly dairy and vegetables (and limited fruit). I eat a lot of full fat Greek yogurt (Fage brand, typically), butter, cheese, eggs, very dark chocolate (85+%), potatoes, etc. I eat until I'm full and I never count calories. I probably cheat 1-2 times a week on average, usually by eating something rice- or corn-based (Chipotle, corn chips, an Indian meal with rice, etc.).
I didn't do this to lose weight - I wasn't exactly a big guy - but there were some surprisingly quick effects. After about 5-6 months I'd dropped from around 155 lbs to 135 (+/-2), and I've been stable there for a couple months. My waist went from 33" to 30" and my body fat went from around 21% to 12%. Had a checkup a few weeks ago and, other than very low vitamin D, the doc said I was pretty much in perfect health.
http://archevore.com is probably a good resource, if you want to know more about the diet itself.
One of the major parts of the Paleolithic diet is consuming at least 65% meat. With this in mind, you can see how your diet is very much not like theirs.
You'll note that I stated explicitly that I'm not following standard paleo. I gave the following as one of the resources I like: http://www.archevore.com/get-started/ (formerly panu.com, for Paleo Nu).
My point is why call it Paleo-anything (2.0, etc.) if it only resembles it in a maximum of 35%? And that's not even counting that you eat cheese, butter, yogurt and chocolate.
I'm not criticizing your diet, I'm criticizing how you label it.
From the little that I've read in your post, it sounds like you're just a healthy ovo-lacto vegetarian.
I've resisted the paleo diet as a fad, but reading what you've written has made me realise it's what I've taken up instinctively as something based on what I feel are the healthier aspects of the Mediterranean diet I grew up with. I don't eat much meat though, and I do have bread now and again in small amounts. The results have been similar to yours.
The point isn't to eat what cavemen ate, it's to look at what their bodies were optimized for and eat things with similar components. Dairy is a very good source of saturated fat, especially for a vegetarian like me.
And the average life expectancy of a caveman was what, maybe 20 years? Cavemen perished too soon to have to worry about the diet-related health problems that we deal with today.
Ancient life expectancy numbers are misleading because of very high infant mortality. And even if that weren't the case, your reasoning is faulty. I have more or less the same gut as a caveman, so it makes sense to eat what they were optimized for. The fact that we have surgery and antibiotics and aren't at significant risk of being eaten by saber-toothed tigers isn't relevant to diet.
The human digestive system evolved over millions of years, and there is not much that is known with certainty about the human diet over that span of time - however, it is known that humans have a better ability to process starchy foods than other primates. So the assumption that a 'paleo' diet wouldn't include lots of starch is not based on science. Take a look at this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6983330.stm
If you read my comment a little more carefully, you'd know I'm not anti-starch. I avoid anti-nutritious and harmful grains like wheat, but I eat potatoes with zeal.
I just wish the "evangelists" would stress "for some people" when they talk about these diets.
Some people stay healthy and trim on a low-fat diet. Some people do much better on a low-carb diet. Some people are physically harmed by eating meat (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/gout-diet/MY01137).
Unfortunately we just need to experiment a little as individuals to find what works best - and hope for a day when we doctors/scientists can recommend diets based on genetic traits.
A more subtle reason for the pro-carb bias is it provides justification for vegetarianism since most vegetarian diets are much higher in carbs than fat. Vegetarians, animal rights advocates, and people who may eat meat but nevertheless are against promoting it because of their concern for the environment want to believe that their more moral diet is also healthier. The easy way to do that is by lending their confirmation bias to any scientific study that maligns high fat diets and thus meat eating and to ignore contrary research findings that does not confirm their bias.
I'm afraid this might be true, and I say this as someone who was a vegetarian for almost 3 years partly for environmental and moral reasons. I started eating meat again after reading Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories".
I still agree that it's better for the environment and for the animals to have a vegetarian diet, but I couldn't find a way to stick to it without eating way more carbs than I felt was good for me.
I'll be the first in line when 'grown' meat that doesn't come from an animal with a central nervous system that can feel pain/stress/anguish/etc comes on the market, though...
How did you reintroduce meat into your vegetarian diet? Was it a gradual process? Do you eat the same meat diet (dishes and frequency) as before you were a vegetarian?
I've been a (ovo-lacto) vegetarian for 12 years for the reasons you describe. After reading Gary Taubes, I am conflicted. Taubes has little advice for vegetarians or vegans except "eat some cheese and eggs".
I think the real answer is because it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people.
It is interesting to see comments on this forum that involve the strategy of reasoning with the public to get them to accept their idea.
Next time you see somebody drinking a soda explain to them what fructose does metabolically to their bodies. Your message is a lot less effective than seeing a polar bear mommy drinking a coke on a wintery day or seeing kobe bryant dunk a basketball and popping open a bottle of sprite.
"...it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people."
Apart from the cheap, unhealthy ingredients and slick marketing, modern processed food is also engineered to be appealing; and for the want of a better word, addictive. Prehistoric man would have to do a lot of hunting and gathering before he would consume the equivalent amount of carbs, sugar and salt that one could quickly and easily consume in a single meal from a fast-food restaurant. Humans never evolved to be able to cope with the amount of crap in modern food.
We also evolved to hunt or farm our food before we could eat. Now with the internet, you can order your groceries with the barest physical exertion - the click of a mouse.
While all of that is true I think the real story is one of economics.
It is VERY easy for me to eat as much swine as I feel like nowadays. If we assume that saturated fat/protein isn't bad for you then the fact that I can, in modern times, acquire the pig with less effort than my ancestors doesn't appear to harm me very much. It is tasty pretty much right out of the farm. I imagine it is difficult to make the margins on livestock very high.
Carbs have brands. They have business moats. They have high margins and great psychological keys that make selling them a great business (helps to be addictive). So they push and we buy.
Anyways my thought was that the obesity epidemic has less to do with how we are more sedentary than before but rather the peddlers of PROFITABLE products just got better at their jobs over time.
I think, first, one should differentiate between the part of the food industry that is actually the sugar industry - products like Coke and Gatorade and Snickers - and the part that is packaged convenience food that also contains a lot of sugar. (High-fructose corn syrup is just another sugar with 5-10% more fructose.)
The convenience food industry is highly motivated to sell what the public wants to buy. They follow food fads assiduously. When fiber was in, suddenly all products had added fiber. When that fad (which was actually a mildly good thing) passed, the fiber went away. Now that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is out of fashion, packaged foods remove it and advertise "0% Trans Fat!"
There was a time when carbs were bad and there were plenty of packaged foods that upped the fat and protein and advertised "Low Carb!" When Dr. Atkins died of heart failure and overweight, the steam went out of low-carb. Now low-fat is ascendant, and packaged foods trumpet "Low Fat!"
The problem with this latest fad is fat makes food taste good. When you take it out, recipes taste like crap. Try a spoonful of fat-free cream cheese and tell me what you think. So the packaged food industry has to add something else that makes the low-fat garbage palatable: sugar!
It's evil, but it's not a conspiracy. People buy packaged foods because they're convenient and taste ok. They do this in preference to cooking, which may or may not taste better, because they're lazy or too busy. That's human nature. The problem is the low-fat food fad.
If the culture turned a corner and demanded low-sugar food, the food industry would fall all over itself taking sugar and corn syrup out and adding back in fat and protein to make the stuff taste better. They did it in the low-carb era and they'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I don't really think its a conspiracy unless you consider advertising to the public to be very secretive and back-room.
I agree mostly with what is said above but I think it is important to emphasize that what the public wants to buy is heavily influenced by what they see on TV.
Because people say, "I am getting so fat!", not, "I am getting so carbed!" So they equate calories from fat being converted directly to adipose tissue.
This answer may sound glib, but not if we consider the facts surrounding the issue.
- The propaganda for carbs and against fat has been overwhelming over the years. Most people are not likely to believe anything other than what they've been taught.
- Our economy relies heavily on what we can generally call "the carb industry." If people are being harmed by too many carbs, they'll take medicine (like they're trained to) and that builds another industry. Why would anybody (politicians, industry leaders, corporate science) want to change that?
- Besides, carbs are beautifully packaged, cheap, and readily available. Why would anyone want to re-think that?
"Fat is worse than carbs" is a very successful meme because it passes a superficial "evidence-checking": it's fat, so it's gotta make me more fat, right? A mechanistic, false-newtonian, 17th century understanding of biology. A fallacy of common sense.
Plus, it's been touted all over the place for decades. Of course it catches on.
Keep calories in general low, paying special attention to carbs. Don't forget to lift some weights. Feel free to do other types of exercise if you wish. Voila, instant fat management.
Let me guess the root cause of this "fat is evil" meme. People who love fat are often gluttons. They eat what they want, in large quantities, and don't care about the consequences. They also consume huge quantities of processed sugar, which is now found to be "bad", and don't eat their greens.
Health freaks avoid fats and sugar, living on lean meat, veggies, and grains. This may not be optimal, but it's better than Big Macs, Cola, and fries.
I guess I haven't been paying attention but I thought the Atkins diet from a few years ago had been discounted as an unhealthy fad diet. But now I'm reading that it has been scientifically proven to be the healthiest diet. Is that right? Are carb-filled fruits and vegetables supposed to be less healthy than for example fried bacon?
Wrong. The problem is that people think low-carb equals bacon grease and no vegetables. It really just means little to no bread, grains, rice or potatoes. A low carb diet is predominantly fruits and vegetables, but for some reason, people really like to focus on the meat and fat aspect.
I've been on a high-fat, moderate protein diet for almost a year now. I eat occasional small servings of vegetables because it's easier than arguing with my wife, but my diet is probably 95-98% meat/eggs/(dairy). "Low-carb" means 'low carb'. There are lots of ways of doing it, and frankly, we have no idea which way is right for most people (let alone for outliers).
Meta point on this whole discussion (and I don't mean to single you out). There are a lot of posts of the sort "come on people, this is easy"+(some simple dietary advice). But it isn't easy, and nobody really has a clue right now. The evidence is contradictory and poor. What we need is more individuals engaged in personal experimentation, and more methodologically sound research. It's a hard, complex problem.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that studies and/or those who do them are not very trustworthy? I have watched studies conclusively prove that eating chicken eggs will:
kill you sooner, make you live longer, have no measurable effect, cure cancer, cause cancer, and defeat communisms (joke)
Similar cycles for other types of food. Similar cycles various types of activity.
Having watched this for so long, am I really going to suddenly believe that carbs are evil, that I should found a new moral system (and a new diet) on the latest studies which, in my experience are going to be shown wrong in a few years anyway. Or should I just go ahead an eat the way I've observed the people who live to be old eat?
Related: look up the story of the boy who cried wolf.
My beef is that nutritional "experts" tend to reverse their "advice" every 5-10 years.
- X is bad
- No, actually X is good.
- No, it turns out X is actually bad after all.
- No, actually it's Y that's causing all our problems.
- Wait, no, it's Z.
And then along comes the marketing blitz.
"No salt", "Sugar free" "glucose free" "gluten free" "made with cane syrup" "cholesterol free" "fat free" "no saturated fat" "no trans fat" and now "carb free", no doubt.
And then the vitamin supplement and herbal crowd come out to flog their latest crackpot diets and exercise regimens and trans-yogic-meta-druidic-ninjutsu-meditation.
So many of these articles do not distinguish between simple and complex carbs and lump them all together. There is a difference between 20g of carbs from a piece of fruit vs 20g carbs from, say, pasta.
I'm not sure the difference is that big. Amylase in your saliva starts breaking down starches to glucose even before you swallow. Non-digestible carbs (fiber), protein and fat can slow down the process, however.
The point of the article wasn't to discuss the opportunity cost of keeping or eliminating carbs. It was a discussion of what is optimal for our health.
There are many reasons why people resist the idea that carbs are worse that fat. For one thing, no one has proved that "carbs are worse than fat." It's a silly, over-simplified assertion.
Also, fats are the most calorie-dense macro-nutrient. If your calorie intake is greater than your calorie expenditure you will gain weight. You could easily supplement your diet with a 300 calorie bar of chocolate twice a day and your daily calorie intake skyrockets from 2,000 to 2,600. Over time this will lead to obesity if your activity level doesn't rise or if muscles don't grow.
Each tablespoon of oil adds 100+ calories a the dish.
2 slices of bread: 160 calories, 60g of peanut butter: 350 calories.
Carbs are good. You need carbs. Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage.
Too many carbs at once leads to unstable blood sugar and insulin levels. The consequences of this are poorly understood, especially in healthy, active people. But intuitively, daily large spikes in blood sugar and insulin response are probably not a good thing. The good news is that eating high GI carbs with fiber, protein, fats, and sugars mitigates the spikes.
While not as calorie-dense as fatty foods, lots of high carb foods are low fiber, low protein, and low moisture with minimal micronutrients and still have very high calorie/weight ratios.
(Calories-in > Calories-out) in a sedentary lifestyle leads to increased body fat and weight gain which leads to cellular stress inflammation causing insulin resistance, which leads to more weight gain and more severe metabolic problems.
It is possible for a person who is unaware that insulin promotes glycogenesis and lipogenesis to write what you just did. However, I'm not convinced that a person who IS aware could do so. Can you help me out?
> Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage.
This only happens in the case of ketoacidosis which is caused by things like type 1 diabetes and alcoholism. A ketogenic diet isn't inherently unhealthy (they use it very successfully to treat epilepsy in children).
My reading led me to believe that sugars and grains in my diet were the culprit and, sure enough, once I cut those out and increased the amount of animal fats in my diet, I lost 50 pounds. (I always had and continued to eat a lot of vegetables, too.) I have never felt more energetic or clear-headed.
So, yes, my personal experience tells me Taubes is correct, just as Horgan’s experience tells him Taubes is incorrect. But, importantly, I would not have had my experience if I had not read the nutrition literature with an open mind.
The last sentence is unjustified and probably incorrect. A lot of people get fed up with their weight, resolve to make a change, and then lose a bunch. Adopting an exciting new idea and making a change is the crucial part, not the validity of the idea. I lost a lot of weight as a vegan (over thirty pounds), got into the best shape of my life, relaxed my rules, and gained a little bit back. Did I gain that little bit back because veganism was the answer and I failed to be faithful to it? No, it was because the initial novelty and enthusiasm wore off. It's the same pattern no matter what the actual composition of the diet is. Low-carb diets' biggest contribution to weight loss has been to provide a psychologically viable option for meat-and-potatoes people who felt unsatisfied or alienated by the "hippie" food that low-fat diets would have had them eating.
the health effects of a high-carbohydrate diet often are not visible as weight gain—that Egyptian princess, no doubt thin as a rail (have you ever seen a fat mummy?), had a level of atherosclerosis that today would have doctors scrambling for a bypass operation
Now, this part is actually interesting and I await more information concerning the heart health of people who exercise and maintain a healthy weight on different kinds of diets.
Since moving to only /expressly/ eating carbs once a week (as in the 4 hour body book) I've lost a stone and gone from 24% body fat to 17% - all in about 8 weeks.
Plus my /gut/ feels a hell of a lot better now I'm not eating bread, and when/if I do I get a pretty rough stomach.
People don't realise just how bad processed carbs are. We didn't them for centuries and only do now as they are sold to us cheaply.
These anecdotal arguments back and forth are interesting, but they're not science. I mean, where's the details on the methodology? Where are the data? Why do we listen to/argue about the various experts, instead of digging into the actual research that's been done?
If you're looking for studies on the topic, check out these two videos:
It's basically a survey paper in video form, presented by one of the researchers. It has actual graphs! With error bars!
The corresponding book is pretty good too, it's called the China study.
Personally, I trust statisticians on health much more than biologists. It's nice that there's a biological basis for the conclusion, but trying to argue diet based on the metabolic process seems like a stretch, especially when it conflicts with what's observed.
Over-consumption of everything is bad. Cake is great, cake is fun, but if you eat it everyday you'll probably get fat because it has a lot of calories. And hey, a lot of calories isn't bad, it's just if you eat more calories than burn you'll gain fat. And that's OK, until you start to get so fat that it decreases your quality of life. Body like a loosely tied ballon, if push air into it -- it'll get big, but on itself it'll lose weight.
On another topic, I'm usually pro-legalization of every drug that's out there. But there's a lot of people out there who just put random shit into their bodies in unreasonable quantities without understanding of what they are doing, making stupid excuses. AND IT'S JUST FUCKING FOOD. If heroin or coke become legal, we'll probably see a lot of people overdose. Which I'm fine with, technically. I just now start to understand why some drugs are illegal.
We are predisposed by our Victorian ancestors to assume that anything which gives us great pleasure must also be bad for us. Hence fat is believed to be worse than carbs.
Blame the media, they portray fat for the reason people are fat, the do not educate these people with the truth behind complex carbs and simple carbs and how the body responses to these. Some fats are good for you such as olive oils contain mono saturated fats which is great for your body and those can be found naturally in meats. But trans and saturated fats are hard for the body to respond to. It comes down to educating people of what they are eating.
I eat lots and lots of bread (what you would call "carbs") but basically no meat, and I'm quite skinny nevertheless. I do no sports (I've only recently started to ride my bicycle after a 10-year pause), nor am I on any diet or anything similar. So, yeah, I don't see how carbs are worse than fat.
They are not worse, just different. People are desperate for a single villain to blame for their fat asses.
Maintain a balanced diet, keep the total calories down, stay away from cheap processed food, get exercise. It's very simple, but unfortunately there is not a single villain, so people resist.
Argh. This is what I don't like about non-tech, -IT, and -CS articles posted on HN: people go off on tangents with so little (useless) information. I'm sorry to say this article is poor on information.
Let's stick to the facts. Complex carbs (brown rice, whole wheat bread, bagels, whole wheat pasta, beans - the list of delicious, healthy complex carbs is long) in moderation does not hinder your health. In fact, your body needs them because it is stored energy. Other sources of energy are used up quicker, such as protein. That's not to say carbs are better than protein. Your body needs both!
Now, refined SIMPLE carbs (table sugar, fruit juice, "packaged" cereals, chocolate bars, etc.) are not good for you, and only certain types of bodies with certain physical activity should consume them (e.g., if you are a bodybuilder or if you lift weights a few times a week, etc.). It is still absolutely tantamount that you consume unrefined simple carbs such as strawberries, raspberries, oranges, apples, plum, pear, a long etc., and the number one fruit because of its flavanoid content: blueberries!).
Put simply, fruits and complex carbs help you convert what you eat in slow-releasing energy that has less content that is turned into fat (as opposed to refined simple carbs). This steady release of energy is part of "moderation is key". If you have your body working too hard, your heart fluttering/palpitations and overworking it are not healthy, neither is when your body processes everything too slow.
The biggest factor when consuming carbs (both simple and complex) is the glycemic levels in your blood. You can't have this fluctuate so much, especially if you're pre-disposed to it, otherwise you throw it out of kilter and it may cause diabetes.
I'll keep the fat part short. We need fat, too! Let me be less "headliney". We need polyunsaturated fatty acids; in part, to keep our metabolism going. Foods like avocado, fish, flax seed, leafy vegetables, soybeans, walnuts (nuts), and shellfish. Sure, saturated fats may not be the major cause of heart disease, but lessening it while consuming a healthy amount of polyunsaturated fat and complex carbs might. You can read an article on that here (it's better than the OP's article, but still has its flaws): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/rethinking-satura... (By the way, this article was published over a year ago.)
Having said all that, each body is different. You should tailor your diet to what your body reacts positively to. For example, flax seed is healthy for you, but I know people who get diarrhea from it. Obviously, don't force yourself to eat something your body doesn't like. Listen to your body, because, unfortunately, the science doesn't fully understand all body types.
I'm not a fan of fallacies from defective induction, so I shall refrain from an argumentum ad verecundiam on this, but on a separate note, I will say my friend studied nutrition and she has expressed a keen dislike toward the "Food guide pyramid".
I know a lot of people who have opinions on what is good for you and what isn't in terms of food. none of them are doctors, of course. in fact, most of them have never taken any science subjects at all, and wouldn't know their ass from a redox equation even if you threw a shelf-full of chemistry books at them.
That's simplistic advice. Food additives like High Fructose Corn Syrup cause you to crave more food even though you're calorically fine. If you listen to what your body says while eating poorly, you will over eat.
Did you implicitly define overeating as eating past the point where you stop being hungry? Because that's not necessarily what the parent comment meant. They could have meant eating too much for your activity level.
Many vegetarians eat some food from animal sources, like eggs, milk, yogurt, etc. On the other hand, I have heard cases of people that tried to be pure vegan and had serious health problems.
Veganism isn't a diet. It's a lifestyle. And a poor one at that. It's the anti-paleo diet, because you can't be vegan without modern technology and supplements. There are just too many gaps in nutrition.
The agriculture industrial complex is invested deeply in corn/soy/wheat processed foods and chemicals. Mega billions are at stake. The options for "low effort" and "low price" food are virtually all unhealthy from a diet standpoint. Yet, these foods have been engineered to be nearly addictive. That is why there is rampant obesity. Any diet that largely avoids these foods and maintains reasonable variety is going to be vastly more healthy.
I did quite a bit of research into carbs after being diagnosed Type One diabetic and I wholeheartedly agree with this article. Turns out, carbs weren't a staple part of our diet until the agricultural revolution (17th century?) and then only really caught on because it was cheap and easy to farm, compared to fruit and meat. So there you go. Capitalism has been fucking us for centuries.
1 - People relate fat the nutrient to fat the body type because they share the word "fat". Not much to do there. In high school I was taught that carbohydrates were "energy" and fat was "waste". People should probably be taught the right way our biological systems operate.
2 - Medical authorities have worked with the best science they had available at the time, and are almost always managed by bureaucrats, not physicians. This isn't limited to the governmental level; hospitals, medical organizations, medical schools... the people in charge often have administrative training, not medical training. As a subpoint; sure, medical authorities have led us astray with nutrition information, but let's not jump to the conclusion that they have done something intentionally evil here.
3 - It's hard to prove any one way is the right way because of so many variables, including genetics, activity level, co-morbidities, and so on. More importantly, when something is right for 95% of people, that also means it is wrong for 5% of people. In the absence of easily testable datum, those anecdotes get a lot of attention. And even if it were easily testable, 5% of the time it would be wrong.
To me, the key is two-fold:
1 - People need to be educated about the facts of how their biological systems function. They need to know how calories work, insulin and blood sugar regulate, and gain a general appreciation of the science of their bodies.
2 - People need to be willing to "listen to their bodies" and experiment. That's the only way to know what really works for you, because you ARE different than everyone else. A healthy diet isn't just about finding mathematically optimal foods, it's about finding stuff you like to eat, that fills you up, that you can eat in moderation, that is easy to make. You need to be willing to mix health and convenience, taste and availability, etc... and that takes a bit of time to figure out.