

I Hacked My Diet with Science - thras
http://thras.blogspot.com/2009/08/diet.html

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jonknee
I'm not sure if following a low-carb diet qualifies as "hacking" (Atkins
published his book in 1972 afterall), but congrats on the weight loss.

~~~
wvl
If it takes a link bait title to get this message across, then I'm all for it.
This diet is essentially Primal, similar to the Paleo Diet
(<http://www.thepaleodiet.com/> ). I've been doing it for a while now, and
have nothing but good things to say about eating this way.

An introductory link: [http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-primal-
bluep...](http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-primal-blueprint/)

An index into most of the content: <http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-
blueprint-101/>

FAQ, and comparisons to other diets: [http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-
book/references/questions...](http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-
book/references/questions-and-answers/)

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
I seriously doubt any cavemen or any human other then modern man, ever had
regular access to THIS much animal protein and fat. During peak times,
migratory season, sure, but not all the time.

And I don't think the diet as described, most calories from meat, cheese and
eggs, is the most healthy. Perhaps healthier then any diet high in processed
sugar, depending on individual physiology. I certainly agree sugar is bad for
you, but I think a "mostly plants" diet, is still better for most people.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
Paleolithic people practically ONLY had access to fat and protein. The only
non-domesticated edible plants in most places are available for, like, three
months, and aren't nearly abundant enough to live on.

Go take a walk in practically any ecosystem and find edible stuff that's not
an animal. There's barely anything. Primitive man clearly ate mostly animals
and fish.

~~~
pg
I believe this is false. The traditional Bushman diet depended more on
vegetables than meat, and they lived in a place where vegetation is about as
far from lush as you can find.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
Not sure what a traditional bushman is. Are you refering to the san bushmen
who eat a lot of mongongo nuts? That is a strange exception, and those people
are hunters who eat a lot of meat anyway.

There are abundant written accounts of native north americans. There were
those who grew corn and squash, which means they have little in common with
paleolithic humans who had no such crops. And there are those that did not
grow crops and ate mostly game and fish.

Anywhere away from the equator there is virtually no gatherable plant food for
most of the year. Before domesticated crops, people clearly ate mostly
animals, fish, and insects.

~~~
pg
San = Bushman. The reason I mentioned them is that they preserved their
hunter-gatherer culture till a few decades ago, and anthropologists were able
to measure what they actually ate, which was mostly vegetables.

You respond to this contrary evidence by simply restating your claim. There
was "virtually no" plant food, and people "clearly" lived mostly on meat. Do
you have any evidence at all?

~~~
kingkongrevenge
I pointed out the San are a rare exception. You were trying to make a general
case from this. The other ethnographies and historical accounts show high meat
consumption. I also suspect the san you are talking about are stunted and
trying to get by on marginal land without much game, and so not a good sample.

It bears repeating the simple fact that most places don't have wild plant food
for most of the year. Pick up the army survival manual. It's mostly about how
to fish and trap in many different ecosystems, because, as it explains, there
isn't much wild plant food out there most of the time.

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fuelfive
I always like to see a little more science in articles that use the word
"science" in the title.

~~~
chancho
Ditto for "hacking." I mean, good on you thras for losing the weight but it
seems to me that what you're really hacking here is the global food economy.
An all meat-and-horticulture diet is completely economically infeasible for a
great number of people, to say nothing of environmental impact or
sustainability.

~~~
chandler
Regarding the environmental impact and sustainability:
[http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtvegetarianism.html...](http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtvegetarianism.html#1)

Here's another take: <http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/vegetarian.html#link1>

One missing piece regarding the idea of sustainability of ruminant farming
versus grain farming is that the former tends to rejuvenate the soil, and can
be performed in areas unsuitable for crop growth. The latter, on the other
hand (unless performed in concert with ruminant farming), encourages
deforestation (to locate healthy, nutrient dense soil), using up the nutrients
in the soil, maintaining the soil via petroleum fertilizers, and then
abandoning the land once depleted/eroded.

Ruminants are a key piece to the puzzle in sustaining the fertility of the
soil when growing crops.

~~~
chancho
Oh I'm all about eating meat, just not exclusively. Both of those links
advocate grazing livestock, which I 100% support and think it also tastes
better. Better than the grain-fed meat that is so cheap and plentiful in the
US (I think that's where thras is.) But meat raised that way is more
expensive, which makes it difficult to eat only meat and greens (the latter of
which are likely to be trucked halfway across the country.) This is how he's
"hacking" the food economy: taking advantage of agriculture subsidies that
distort the price of meat.

Exclusively eating local produce, grass-fed beef, free-range chickens and
their eggs is not only seriously expensive, but in many parts of the US (like
where I am) nearly impossible.

Whole grains and legumes, however, are pretty healthful and easy to grow,
AFAIK.

~~~
chandler
Of course I was simply addressing the sustainability comment, not the
economics involved.

Regarding economics, I suppose the unanswered question is how would a
reallocation (or reduction, depending on your political bent) of government
subsidies affect the feasibility/availability of grass-fed beef compared to
the CAFO variety? What would happen if grass was subsidized instead of/in
addition to grain?

Even now, it's possible to buy sustainable meat at comparable prices
([http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/12/13/how-to-buy-a-
si...](http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/12/13/how-to-buy-a-side-of-
beef/)) if you go in for a half or quarter cow. However, this involves quite a
bit of work (if only it were as simple as logging into buymycow.com and
ordering 200lbs to be vacuum sealed & delivered at your doorstep!).

~~~
chancho
> 200lbs to be vacuum sealed & delivered at your doorstep!

You're making me hungry.

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SwellJoe
In passing, weightlifting is mentioned. I think this is perhaps as relevant to
the story as diet. Even if weightlifting has always been a part of the story,
boosting protein and the resulting increase in muscle mass, can account for
dramatic fat loss, as well. Muscle burns more calories than fat, so it is
self-reinforcing.

~~~
nova
I'm also doing a low-carb diet, for a month and a half. No exercise of any
kind. 6 kg lost, and counting.

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javanix
While I'm sure this approach has general merits, I'm also fairly certain that
different dietary approaches will work with varying levels of success for
different people.

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burke
Eggs (yolks) have a load of cholesterol. Watch out for that. IIRC, they're
about 200mg each, where a sensible daily limit is 300-400mg.

EDIT: If you want to go all crazy-health-nut, the whites are 100% protein
calories (~50/50 fat/protein in the yolks), have no cholesterol, and taste
pretty much the same.

EDIT again: But I guess you don't really have much else in the way of fat
sources, cheese aside. If you do this long-term, you might want to make sure
your blood cholesterol levels don't go nuts.

~~~
Aevin1387
If you read the book mentioned in the article, he also talks about how the
whole "eating cholesterol is bad" is also a myth and bad science.

~~~
burke
Maybe. I've heard a couple people with similar diets wonder why their plasma
cholesterol is so high, whether or not it's from the dietary cholesterol.
YMMV.

~~~
dialtone
Your body makes more than 60% of the cholesterol that you need daily. 500mg of
cholesterol are about 1/3 of what you need every day.

<http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/NCR332.pdf>

------
swerling
While the article does not go into specifics about the "Science" involved, it
is not hard to find hard science that show unequivocally that only lowering
calories lowers weight, eg. this one from the New England Journal of Medicine:
<http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/9/859>. Why is the first law of
thermodynamics so hard for people to internalize? Shall we start measuring the
energy in stars in terms of grams of fat too? One expects this kind of thing
on Oprah, not on HH.

At any rate, let's assume for a moment that the blogger is still eating the
same number of calories, and doing the same amount of weight lifting (that is,
still burning the same number of calories), but he is still losing weight. To
be consistent with the 1st law of thermodynamics, it will mean he has made his
body less efficient at absorbing the calories in food. So he has successfully
shocked his metabolism into being less efficient. Will he stay on this diet
forever? Because as soon he starts eating bread again, presumably his
metabolism will emerge from the state of shock he induced. When that happens,
while he will feel as if he were eating the same amount of calories, he will
effectively be eating much more since his metabolism will no longer be so
inefficient.

~~~
chandler
Different nutrients are processed differently by the body, fully in line with
thermodynamics.

Take 100 Calories of sawdust (cellulose). If you eat this, how many calories
did you consume? Did consuming these calories contribute to fat accumulation?
Because the answer to this is no, does this cause a violation of the 1st law?

Your body doesn't merely "absorb calories" from food. It absorbs and
transforms chemicals, and directs these chemicals through various pathways.
Eating a low carbohydrate diet doesn't "shock his metabolism" into being less
efficient, it simply uses different pathways for nutrient absorption.

Also, regarding the referenced study: All four diets tested were virtually
identical regarding the % calories derived from fat, protein, and
carbohydrate.

[http://content.nejm.org/content/vol360/issue9/images/large/0...](http://content.nejm.org/content/vol360/issue9/images/large/05t2.jpeg)

Moreover, the low-fat diets weren't particularly low-fat, and the high-fat
(low-carb) diets weren't particularly low-carb.

So what happens when you feed a group of people the same 1600 Calorie diet for
two years, and then measure their weight loss? What exactly are you
demonstrating?

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Tichy
Nice success, but I am not yet convinced that weight is the only important
variable to watch.

~~~
chandler
One of the points Taubes makes in his GCBC book (which is phenomenal, by the
way), is that obesity is a dysfunction of excess adipose tissue (fat), not
merely a problem of excess weight.

As you suggest, using only weight as the variable means that a dieter who
loses 10 lbs of lean muscle tissue is considered as successful as a dieter who
loses 10 lbs of adipose tissue.

------
aswanson
Slightly off topic, but do any of you folks ingest whey protein shakes or use
creatine monohydrate before workouts?

FWIW, my current diet consists of fruit, tuna, protein shakes and the
occasional chicken breast.

~~~
helloworld
Tuna seems to be high in mercury:

<http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/tuna.asp>

You might want to substitute some lower-mercury alternatives:

<http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/guide.asp>

~~~
aswanson
Good lookout.

------
andrewbadera
Good for you, but ... some details would be nice. Reads like a lazy blog
entry. Please inform us as to more of your specifics. Do you eat non-veggie
carbs ... like, at all?

~~~
thras
Sorry, I thought that I was clear on that: I eat meat, eggs, cheese, and green
vegetables. That's it.

I suppose I do use wine, salt, and other seasonings when I cook. By "meat" I
mean meat, poultry, and fish.

I don't worry about no-calorie drinks. I drink mostly tea. Sometimes diet
soda. It doesn't seem to make any difference.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
No eggplant, squash, onions, peppers, and such? Just greens? Sounds boring.

Also, no organ meat?

~~~
skittles
Most people in the US don't eat organ meats (other than what's in hotdogs).

~~~
shard
That's too bad. Fried liver, delicious if they're plump and juicy. Chicken
hearts, they're like little meat popcorns. I don't know if pig ears are
considered organs, but they're crunchy and fun to eat.

~~~
tptacek
I had fried pig ears on a salad at The Spotted Pig in NYC and they were f'ing
fantastic. If I could source pig ears, I'd eat nothing but pig ears from now
on.

And bone marrow. Om nom nom nom nom.

~~~
tokenadult
_If I could source pig ears, I'd eat nothing but pig ears from now on._

You need to visit more Chinese food markets.

