
A chef who’s debunking detox, diets and wellness - prostoalex
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/18/angry-chef-debunking-detox-diets-wellness-nutrition-alternative-facts?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
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revscat
My anecdotal experience is that I have lost ~15 pounds since I started keto a
month ago, with no change to exercise habits.

He may have a strong opinion, but I am not sure how based in science it is.

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emodendroket
What's dismaying about weight loss isn't that people can't manage to lose
weight but that the success rates in keeping it off over the longer term (5 or
10 years) are extremely bad for just about every method except stomach
stapling.

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taneq
That's thanks (IMO) to the existence of a huge industry dedicated to
convincing people that "a diet" is a temporary change in what you eat, after
which you can once again throw restraint to the wind.

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emodendroket
I don't think so. Your body works hard to maintain stasis.

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taneq
It really doesn't. Humans (like all animals) tend to do everything based on
rates rather than absolute measurements, so setpoints drift all over the place
with time.

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emodendroket
The thing is that you'll need to forever eat a rather low-calorie diet (more
so than someone who was never overweight) and often this leads to frustrating,
pervasive cravings for food that aren't that different from what people who
have undergone starvation experiences report. Not for some finite period of
time, but forever.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/03/diets_do_not_work_the_thin_evidence_that_losing_weight_makes_you_healthier.html)

> For instance, much of the research assumes that when fat people lose weight,
> they become “healthy” in the same ways as a thinner person is healthy. The
> evidence says otherwise. “Even if someone loses weight, they will always
> need fewer calories and need to exercise more,” says [UNC pediatrician
> Asheley] Skinner. “So we’re putting people through something we know will
> probably not be successful anyway. Who knows what we’re doing to their
> metabolisms.”

> Debra Sapp-Yarwood, a fiftysomething from Kansas City, Missouri, who’s
> studying to be a hospital chaplain, is one of the three percenters, the
> select few who have lost a chunk of weight and kept it off. She dropped 55
> pounds 11 years ago, and maintains her new weight with a diet and exercise
> routine most people would find unsustainable: She eats 1,800 calories a
> day—no more than 200 in carbs—and has learned to put up with what she
> describes as “intrusive thoughts and food preoccupations.” She used to run
> for an hour a day, but after foot surgery she switched to her current
> routine: a 50-minute exercise video performed at twice the speed of the
> instructor, while wearing ankle weights and a weighted vest that add between
> 25 or 30 pounds to her small frame.

> “Maintaining weight loss is not a lifestyle,” she says. “It’s a job.” It’s a
> job that requires not just time, self-discipline, and energy—it also takes
> up a lot of mental real estate. People who maintain weight loss over the
> long term typically make it their top priority in life

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taneq
That link says the chance of keeping lost weight off for 3 years is 3% but of
doing so for 5 years is 5%? Seems odd.

Anyway, I'd like to see a credible source on the claim that "Even if someone
loses weight, they will always need fewer calories and need to exercise more".
And even IF that's true, it doesn't change the fact that that person can
still, by eating fewer calories, maintain their weight loss.

The case with Debra Sapp-Yarwood says she eats 1800 calories, or 7500kJ/day.
That's not a severe caloric restriction. For a "small-framed" but active
55-year-old woman that's an entirely appropriate intake.

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haburka
I mean obviously sugar is not toxic. I think most people that do low sugar and
no sugar diets are aware of that. Instead, they understand that there's way
too much sugar out there and it is very addictive. That's the issue with this
kind of anti-homeopathy reasoning, it's mostly just an attack on non-
scientists who have their own theories and claims. However, science has a lot
of gaps, especially when it comes to nutrition. It's very hard to be precise
with it.

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akytt
Science has gaps because scientist do not know things. Non-scientist going
"based on what happened to my cousin, this must have been what happened" is
not going to fill the gaps in knowledge.

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mercer
That strikes me as obviously untrue.

For example, we might now have the 'scientific knowledge' to explain why a
particular mushroom is poisonous, but it probably started with a 'avoid it
because your cousin died eating that one', followed by the observation that
this happened to multiple cousins, followed by some kind of proto-scientific
experimentation. None of this might qualify as 'scientists' doing 'science' by
our standards, but it's still knowledge.

That doesn't necessarily mean homeopathy should be taken seriously at this
point though.

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epx
The guy lost me when linked home-cooked food with misogyny.

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emodendroket
"Sugar is good, even though it's high in calories yet doesn't make you feel
any fuller, because you need calories to live" seems like an odd claim too,
given that we don't live in a society where most people are suffering from
insufficient caloric intake.

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throwaway91111
And yet, i still need quick calories to catch a bus in the morning. Amazing!

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emodendroket
Yeah, nothing wakes you up in the morning like a Coca-Cola.

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throwaway91111
Calories aren't directly related to arousal to my knowledge, aside from
needing to feed ones self.

My point being: you're ignoring obvious benefits by hyperbolizing having a
piece of toast to put something in your stomach before leaving the house.

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emodendroket
I imagine most people (surely me) are mostly thinking of added simple sugar
when they talk about avoiding sugar, and not the carbohydrates in a slice of
toast. But really I don't see the benefits as entirely "obvious" to having
toast rather than, say, eggs.

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appleshore
The traditional dismissal of detoxes is that your body naturally detoxes
itself. If it was full of toxins, you'd be sick. Can anyone parse that with
those who get mercury toxicity from eating too much sushi?

And how is sugar an important building block of life? I'm presume he means
calories are important, and he's not referring to glycobiology.

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majkinetor
Toxicity, when fat starts to burn down, is well known phenomena in medicine.
You can be poisoned and toxins can be 'stored' in fat for years, depending on
their type, then one day when you start melting that you start to experience
symptoms.

> And how is sugar an important building block of life?

Not very much, since there is no such thing as sugar deficiency and liver can
make its own via gluconeogenesis. Unless you have impaired liver or are
starving, sugar probably has little value.

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TwoBit
Aren't keto diets about making you more satiated and not about nutrition? I
thought I've read that people have done a better job losing weight on such
diets.

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mistermann
Most anything I've read most people's "stats" (cholesterol, blood pressure)
improve once on a keto diet.

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akytt
Where did you read that? How many were in the sample, how long was the diet,
was it a double-blind test, what was the significance of the find? That's
exactly his point: people write a lot of stuff on the internet that they
believe or think is true. It might even work on them because of placebo efect.
But it does mean these statements are facts.

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mistermann
The burden of proof is identical on the other side as well, so until then the
conclusion is null and all we have are anecdotal stories, of which there are
_a lot_.

It's interesting to see the emotional attachment naysayers have to low carb
diets. I can understand advocates having an emotional attachment due to how it
has changed their lives in a positive way, often after years if not decades of
failure, but the strong emotional response it invokes in people whose lives
are literally not affected in any way but are for some reason strongly
repulsed by the very idea, almost as if there is something within the human
psyche. Very interesting.

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chiefalchemist
Toxic or not, sugar is unnecessary. Just look around. It's not healthy,
literally, to allow people to believe sugar is okay. The context matters. And
in the context of most people's diet and lifestyle giving up sugar is probably
the quickest and smartest thing they can do.

Else, we have the status quo. Clearly, that's not working.

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al_chemist
This guy links detox, diet, wellness, Brexit and Trump. That's typical "we are
wise, they are stupid" stance.

