Diet and Health

[Siv]

I think evidence is increasingly suggesting that an explosion of sugar, HFCS and refined carb consumption has led to the huge increase in incidence of cancer in the past few decades.

[Siv]

You will need to supply a study from a peer reviewed accepted mainstream scientific journal for this claim. Medical or scientific claims of this nature need documentation. Thanks.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/87/5/1384
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/84/5/1171
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/2/348
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/5/1495
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/4/899
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/3/535

More and more evidence suggests carbs are the culprit, not fat - not just for cancer but diabetes, CHD and CVD. Please read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes for a ton of evidence, journal articles and references. Also read Dr. Bernstein, the Whole Health Source Blog, Heart Scan Blog and Panu.

[Evo]

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/87/5/1384
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/84/5/1171
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/2/348
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/5/1495
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/4/899
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/3/535

More and more evidence suggests carbs are the culprit, not fat - not just for cancer but diabetes, CHD and CVD. Please read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes for a ton of evidence, journal articles and references. Also read Dr. Bernstein, the Whole Health Source Blog, Heart Scan Blog and Panu.Thanks Siv! That's more than I can read right now!

[hamster143]

I think evidence is increasingly suggesting that an explosion of sugar, HFCS and refined carb consumption has led to the huge increase in incidence of cancer in the past few decades.

I don't see that increase in the chart I posted.

[Siv]

I don't see that increase in the chart I posted. I would like to see the source for that last graph. URL please.

It would be interesting to see the trends from the 1800s onwards. Processed food has started coming in from the 1930s or so, right ? Soft drinks with HFCS, refined flour products with sugar and the tons of omega-6 fats in foods etc.

[Proton Soup]

I would like to see the source for that last graph. URL please.

It would be interesting to see the trends from the 1800s onwards. Processed food has started coming in from the 1930s or so, right ? Soft drinks with HFCS, refined flour products with sugar and the tons of omega-6 fats in foods etc.

the increase in obesity isn't about carbs, it's about eating too many calories. Taubes is a fruitcake.

[hamster143]

I would like to see the source for that last graph. URL please.

It would be interesting to see the trends from the 1800s onwards. Processed food has started coming in from the 1930s or so, right ? Soft drinks with HFCS, refined flour products with sugar and the tons of omega-6 fats in foods etc.

http://cancer2000.net/

HFCS specifically appeared in the United States around 1975, and it's still quite rare outside the US. But all it did was displace some sugar. Sugar consumption was high long before that. I can't find data for the US, but sugar consumption in the UK quadrupled between 1850 and 1900 and remained within 25% of the present level since then.

The USDA web site has data on consumption of red meat (mainly beef & pork) in the US going back to 1909, and those levels also have been steady for the duration at ~100 lbs/person/year. Prior to that, there were some significant regional variations. Apparently Americans always ate plenty of meat, but, for example, mid-19th century Britons only averaged 20 lbs/person/year or so.

Refined flour seems to have come into existence (and then rapidly replaced whole wheat flour) around the same time, between 1850 and 1900.

[Siv]

the increase in obesity isn't about carbs, it's about eating too many calories. Taubes is a fruitcake. Cute, that brought a smile to my face :)
But your statement is still an ad hominem cum opinion.

Dare I ask you to try and rebut the plethora of evidence in Taubes' book ?!

[Siv]

http://cancer2000.net/

HFCS specifically appeared in the United States around 1975, and it's still quite rare outside the US. My mistake re: HFCS. BTW its started coming into food stores here.

But all it did was displace some sugar. Sugar consumption was high long before that. I can't find data for the US, but sugar consumption in the UK quadrupled between 1850 and 1900 and remained within 25% of the present level since then.

The USDA web site has data on consumption of red meat (mainly beef & pork) in the US going back to 1909, and those levels also have been steady for the duration at ~100 lbs/person/year. Prior to that, there were some significant regional variations. Apparently Americans always ate plenty of meat, but, for example, mid-19th century Britons only averaged 20 lbs/person/year or so.

Refined flour seems to have come into existence (and then rapidly replaced whole wheat flour) around the same time, between 1850 and 1900. Hmm. Interesting.
So maybe we should see the graph from the mid 1800s. All the sugar and refined carbs should have shown some increase in cancer, obesity and CVD/CHD rates.
I do remember someone on another forum presenting evidence that it rose when carb consumption rose and saturated fat consumption fell. Again, need time to dig that up.

[Proton Soup]

Cute, that brought a smile to my face :)
But your statement is still an ad hominem cum opinion.

Dare I ask you to try and rebut the plethora of evidence in Taubes' book ?!

i think we can start by recognizing that americans are fatter for a simple reason: we are eating more calories. it's a simple matter of energy balance. how much heavier do you suppose an average woman would have to be to support an extra 300 or so calories a day?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_and_obesity#Average_calorie_consumption

i'll try to dig up some stuff on HFCS in the next day or two, but will mention a couple of things off the bat. the first is that HFCS, like sucrose (cane sugar) contains both glucose and fructose, in similar proportions. in fact, sucrose gets broken down in the stomach to exactly this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose#Hydrolysis

and the whole reason you've got so much HFCS now is politics. we could have had tons of cane sugar imported cheaply from Cuba or Brazil, but our government has for a long time protected the US sugar cane industry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hfcs

and there actually was a real issue with HFCS introducing mercury into the food supply early on, but none of this came to light until after the industry had already switched to acid/base reagents that aren't produced by mercury cell process. but that has nothing to do with glucose/fructose itself.

[Siv]

i think we can start by recognizing that americans are fatter for a simple reason: we are eating more calories. it's a simple matter of energy balance. how much heavier do you suppose an average woman would have to be to support an extra 300 or so calories a day? That sounds nice but unfortunately, our body is far more complicated than that. The type of calorie matters hugely. The set points are different depending on whether your diet is high carb or low carb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_and_obesity#Average_calorie_consumption

i'll try to dig up some stuff on HFCS in the next day or two, but will mention a couple of things off the bat. the first is that HFCS, like sucrose (cane sugar) contains both glucose and fructose, in similar proportions. in fact, sucrose gets broken down in the stomach to exactly this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose#Hydrolysis

and the whole reason you've got so much HFCS now is politics. we could have had tons of cane sugar imported cheaply from Cuba or Brazil, but our government has for a long time protected the US sugar cane industry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hfcs

and there actually was a real issue with HFCS introducing mercury into the food supply early on, but none of this came to light until after the industry had already switched to acid/base reagents that aren't produced by mercury cell process. but that has nothing to do with glucose/fructose itself.

Tons of wiki quotes. Dont tell me wikipedia is now a peer reviewed journal ;)
HFCS has been proven to be more harmful than ordinary sucrose - please go to pubmed and do a search on HFCS.

[Siv]

I doubt that. From the Office of Dietary Supplements - National Institutes of Health:

When your skin is exposed for a length of time, you burn in the sun if you don't wear sunscreen . I take a daily multi-vitamin and adhere to the dietary Guidelines from the Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin D :

How so? Give me a quote and the link (url) that supports your claim.The RDA for Vitamin D is a joke. Hardly anybody tests their Vitamin D levels with a 25 hydroxy vitamin D blood test.

The Vitamin D council is a not-for-profit organization which has done tons of research on this. You should go to their website and read up on some of that.

Here are some links.

http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v125/n5/full/5603599a.html
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/134/12/3472S
http://www.vitamin-d-deficiency-symptoms.com/does-sun-exposure-cause-skin-cancer.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101018162934.htm

[Siv]

Some more useful links.

Carbohydrates and cancer: an overview of the epidemiological evidence.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17992182

Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds
http://www.reuters.com/article/idAFN0210830520100802

Refined-sugar intake and the risk of colorectal cancer in humans.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8375922

Pancreatic cancer and sugar diabetes
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11368504

[Proton Soup]

That sounds nice but unfortunately, our body is far more complicated than that. The type of calorie matters hugely. The set points are different depending on whether your diet is high carb or low carb.

Tons of wiki quotes. Dont tell me wikipedia is now a peer reviewed journal ;)
HFCS has been proven to be more harmful than ordinary sucrose - please go to pubmed and do a search on HFCS.

oh, i will. and in the meantime, find me something from Taubes that is more than him just stating his opinion. most everything there on Pubmed attributed to G Taubes is either him commenting on a paper, or something for which he is the sole author, yet appears to simply open-ended comments.

the stuff on wikipedia is actually referenced btw, just follow the footnotes.

[Siv]

oh, i will. and in the meantime, find me something from Taubes that is more than him just stating his opinion. most everything there on Pubmed attributed to G Taubes is either him commenting on a paper, or something for which he is the sole author, yet appears to simply open-ended comments.The whole book reads like pubmed. He references tons of studies and peer reviewed journals. So much so that the book is hard to get through sometimes.
Most people dismiss the book without even reading a few pages.
Same way religious folks do with Dawkins' books I guess :smile:

Plus its now being accepted by so many. More and more research indicates that saturated fat is not bad, that refined carbohydrates do harm in so many ways ....

Read up blogs by Dr William Davis, Dr Stephan Guyenet, Dr Kurt Harris, for starters.

[Proton Soup]

The whole book reads like pubmed. He references tons of studies and peer reviewed journals. So much so that the book is hard to get through sometimes.
Most people dismiss the book without even reading a few pages.
Same way religious folks do with Dawkins' books I guess :smile:

Plus its now being accepted by so many. More and more research indicates that saturated fat is not bad, that refined carbohydrates do harm in so many ways ....

Read up blogs by Dr William Davis, Dr Stephan Guyenet, Dr Kurt Harris, for starters.

i've read Davis' heartscanblog. he has some interesting intuition and observations. it was because of him that i switched to vitamin D in oil capsules instead of the calcium tablets. but he is not practicing science, it is the art of medicine. physicians give medical opinions. good observation and intuition may then lead some to do clinical studies, which are science.

and are you really going to bring up the paleo guys? man has been eating carbs for a long time now (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/revised-paleolithic-diet/). some of us with say, european descent, have been drinking milk for so long that we can process it without getting lactose intolerance. that is an evolutionary adaptation beyond paleo. not to mention that we've lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C, which is a pretty good sign that we used to get a lot of carbs from fruit.

oh, speaking of vitamin C, this can lead to some funny things. like a paleo blogger giving himself scurvy (http://www.carnivorehealth.com/main/2009/11/27/dry-fasting-its-gnarly-effects.html), and then in shame, hiding a previous article about scurvy behind a login (http://www.carnivorehealth.com/main/2009/6/3/disease-of-civilization-scurvy-vitamin-c-deficiency.html). but hey, at least he learned from his mistake, which is a lot more than you can say about most of them.

but, where were we? oh yeah, pubmed! here, try this one on for size and tell me what you think.

free full text (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/88/6/1716S)
Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Dec;88(6):1716S-1721S.
Straight talk about high-fructose corn syrup: what it is and what it ain't.

White JS.

White Technical Research, Argenta, IL 62501, USA. white.tech.res@gmail.com
Abstract

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a fructose-glucose liquid sweetener alternative to sucrose (common table sugar) first introduced to the food and beverage industry in the 1970s. It is not meaningfully different in composition or metabolism from other fructose-glucose sweeteners like sucrose, honey, and fruit juice concentrates. HFCS was widely embraced by food formulators, and its use grew between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, principally as a replacement for sucrose. This was primarily because of its sweetness comparable with that of sucrose, improved stability and functionality, and ease of use. Although HFCS use today is nearly equivalent to sucrose use in the United States, we live in a decidedly sucrose-sweetened world: >90% of the nutritive sweetener used worldwide is sucrose. Here I review the history, composition, availability, and characteristics of HFCS in a factual manner to clarify common misunderstandings that have been a source of confusion to health professionals and the general public alike. In particular, I evaluate the strength of the popular hypothesis that HFCS is uniquely responsible for obesity. Although examples of pure fructose causing metabolic upset at high concentrations abound, especially when fed as the sole carbohydrate source, there is no evidence that the common fructose-glucose sweeteners do the same. Thus, studies using extreme carbohydrate diets may be useful for probing biochemical pathways, but they have no relevance to the human diet or to current consumption. I conclude that the HFCS-obesity hypothesis is supported neither in the United States nor worldwide.

PMID: 19064536 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19064536) [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

CONCLUSIONS

The hypothesis that HFCS is a unique cause of obesity is not supportable in the United States or elsewhere, and the reasons are clear:


HFCS has the same sugars composition as other "benign" fructose-glucose sweeteners such as sucrose, honey, and fruit juice concentrates and dietary sources such as fruits and juices;
Increased caloric intake since 1970 was not due to added sugars (including HFCS) but rather was due to increased consumption of all caloric nutrients, especially fats and flour and cereals;
HFCS is consumed in equal amounts with sucrose in the United States, but at <10% of the amount of sucrose worldwide;
Fructose-glucose sweeteners are metabolized through the same pathways regardless of dietary source;
Although pure fructose can cause metabolic upsets at high concentrations and in the absence of glucose, such experiments are irrelevant for HFCS, which is not consumed at extreme high levels and contains both fructose and glucose;
There is no longer an association between HFCS and obesity in the United States: per capita consumption of HFCS has declined in recent years, whereas obesity rates continue to rise; and
There is absolutely no association between HFCS use and worldwide obesity; HFCS is really a minor sweetener in the global perspective.

No one would disagree that HFCS as a caloric ingredient can lead to weight gain if products sweetened with it are consumed to excess. After all, the same may be said for all caloric ingredients, such as fats, protein, alcohol, and other carbohydrates. But there is absolutely no proof that HFCS acts in any exclusive manner to promote obesity. It is time to retire the hypothesis that HFCS is uniquely responsible for obesity. (Other articles in this supplement to the Journal include references 34-37.)

[Siv]

i've read Davis' heartscanblog. he has some interesting intuition and observations. it was because of him that i switched to vitamin D in oil capsules instead of the calcium tablets. but he is not practicing science, it is the art of medicine. physicians give medical opinions. good observation and intuition may then lead some to do clinical studies, which are science.

and are you really going to bring up the paleo guys? man has been eating carbs for a long time now (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/revised-paleolithic-diet/). some of us with say, european descent, have been drinking milk for so long that we can process it without getting lactose intolerance. that is an evolutionary adaptation beyond paleo. not to mention that we've lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C, which is a pretty good sign that we used to get a lot of carbs from fruit. Ok. I post more than 8 links re: vitamin D, the damage of HFCS, sugar and refined carbs, their links to cancer etc .... and what have I got in response ?!

but, where were we? oh yeah, pubmed! here, try this one on for size and tell me what you think.

free full text (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/88/6/1716S)Umm.... let me see. Did you read the entire article, right upto the end? I'm sure you did not miss this :wink:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is a consultant to the food and beverage industry in nutritive sweeteners, including HFCS and sucrose. His professional associations, past and present, include individual food industry companies as well as such organizations as the American Chemical Society, American Council on Science and Health, Calorie Control Council, Corn Refiners Association, Institute of Food Technologists, and International Life Sciences Institute.

And this is not the only "study" sponsored by the food industry to try and do damage control to damaging evidence being revealed more and more. And all of them are available free full text :wink:

Now here you go re: the real evidence showing how bad HFCS really is.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19064538
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19381015
Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks. Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose. Fasting plasma triglyceride concentrations increased by approximately 10% during 10 weeks of glucose consumption but not after fructose consumption. In contrast, hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and the 23-hour postprandial triglyceride AUC were increased specifically during fructose consumption. Similarly, markers of altered lipid metabolism and lipoprotein remodeling, including fasting apoB, LDL, small dense LDL, oxidized LDL, and postprandial concentrations of remnant-like particle-triglyceride and -cholesterol significantly increased during fructose but not glucose consumption. In addition, fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels increased and insulin sensitivity decreased in subjects consuming fructose but not in those consuming glucose. These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19208729
CONCLUSIONS: In obese subjects, consumption of fructose-sweetened beverages with meals was associated with less insulin secretion, blunted diurnal leptin profiles, and increased postprandial TG concentrations compared with glucose consumption. Increases of TGs were augmented in obese subjects with insulin resistance, suggesting that fructose consumption may exacerbate an already adverse metabolic profile present in many obese subjects.

[Proton Soup]

Ok. I post more than 8 links re: vitamin D, the damage of HFCS, sugar and refined carbs, their links to cancer etc .... and what have I got in response ?!

Umm.... let me see. Did you read the entire article, right upto the end? I'm sure you did not miss this :wink:


And this is not the only "study" sponsored by the food industry to try and do damage control to damaging evidence being revealed more and more. And all of them are available free full text :wink:

Now here you go re: the real evidence showing how bad HFCS really is.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19064538
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19381015

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19208729

actually, i don't find animal studies compelling at all. there are tons of diet supplements that have entered the market based on animal studies, and the problem is that they just don't work.

if you want to talk about conflict of interest, then you have to at least recognize that Taubes represents the goofball diet blogging industry, and everything he writes is to line his own pockets.

vitamin D is certainly interesting. i know Bill Davis found that in some of his patients that supplemental D had great effects on their lipid profiles. highly individual. maybe you should work with your doctor and see what works for you if you are hyperlipidemic.

and maybe most people should just work at not being fat and slothful, since that seems to be most peoples' problem.

[Proton Soup]

what the hell is this goofy crap? a hypercaloric diet that is 25% fructose? i guess it is true that goofy diets will get you goofy results.

J Clin Invest. 2009 May;119(5):1322-34. doi: 10.1172/JCI37385. Epub 2009 Apr 20.
Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans.

Stanhope KL, Schwarz JM, Keim NL, Griffen SC, Bremer AA, Graham JL, Hatcher B, Cox CL, Dyachenko A, Zhang W, McGahan JP, Seibert A, Krauss RM, Chiu S, Schaefer EJ, Ai M, Otokozawa S, Nakajima K, Nakano T, Beysen C, Hellerstein MK, Berglund L, Havel PJ.

Department of Molecular Biosciences, UCD, Davis, California 95616, USA.

Comment in:

* J Clin Invest. 2009 May;119(5):1089-92.

Abstract

Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks. Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose. Fasting plasma triglyceride concentrations increased by approximately 10% during 10 weeks of glucose consumption but not after fructose consumption. In contrast, hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and the 23-hour postprandial triglyceride AUC were increased specifically during fructose consumption. Similarly, markers of altered lipid metabolism and lipoprotein remodeling, including fasting apoB, LDL, small dense LDL, oxidized LDL, and postprandial concentrations of remnant-like particle-triglyceride and -cholesterol significantly increased during fructose but not glucose consumption. In addition, fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels increased and insulin sensitivity decreased in subjects consuming fructose but not in those consuming glucose. These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults.

PMID: 19381015 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


goofy studies aside, do you know how to get rid of visceral fat? it's easy, just exercise!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17637702
Int J Obes (Lond). 2007 Dec;31(12):1786-97. Epub 2007 Jul 17.
A dose-response relation between aerobic exercise and visceral fat reduction: systematic review of clinical trials.

Ohkawara K, Tanaka S, Miyachi M, Ishikawa-Takata K, Tabata I.

Health Promotion and Exercise Program, National Institute of Health and Nutrition, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan. ohkawara@nih.go.jp

Erratum in:

* Int J Obes (Lond). 2008 Feb;32(2):395.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: It has been suggested that exercise has preferential effects on visceral fat reduction. However, the dose-response effect remains unclear because of limited evidence from individual studies. The purpose of this study was to systematically review the current literature to establish whether reduction of visceral fat by aerobic exercise has a dose-response relationship.

METHODS: A database search was performed (PubMed, 1966-2006) with appropriate keywords to identify studies exploring the effects of aerobic exercise as a weight loss intervention on visceral fat reduction. Visceral fat reduction was expressed as the percentage of visceral fat change per week (%DeltaVF/w). The energy expenditure by aerobic exercise was expressed as Sigma (metabolic equivalents x h per week (METs x h/w)).

RESULTS: Nine randomized control trials and seven non-randomized control trials were selected. In most of the studies, the subjects performed aerobic exercise generating 10 METs x h/w or more. Among all the selected groups (582 subjects), visceral fat decreased significantly (P<0.05) in 17 groups during the intervention, but not in the other 4 groups. There was no significant relationship between METs x h/w from aerobic exercise and %DeltaVF/w in all the selected groups. However, when subjects with metabolic-related disorders were not included (425 subjects), METs x h/w from aerobic exercise had a significant relationship with %DeltaVF/w (r=-0.75). Moreover, visceral fat reduction was significantly related to weight reduction during aerobic exercise intervention, although a significant visceral fat reduction may occur without significant weight loss.

CONCLUSION: These results suggest that at least 10 METs x h/w in aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, light jogging or stationary ergometer usage, is required for visceral fat reduction, and that there is a dose-response relationship between aerobic exercise and visceral fat reduction in obese subjects without metabolic-related disorders.

PMID: 17637702 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[hamster143]

what the hell is this goofy crap? a hypercaloric diet that is 25% fructose? i guess it is true that goofy diets will get you goofy results.

I don't see the word "hypercaloric" in there. It shows that 25% of fructose in a diet have a statistically significant effect of reducing insulin sensitivity (in other words, predisposing the person to type 2 diabetes). A person on a high-carb diet with emphasis on simple carbs can easily exceed 25% and may even exceed 50%. What's goofy about that?

[bobze]

what the hell is this goofy crap? a hypercaloric diet that is 25% fructose? i guess it is true that goofy diets will get you goofy results.


A lot of problems with these 'fad' diets is they are based on "theory" and animal studies. Believe it or not, digestive enzymatic activity can vary greatly between species, even closely related ones.

Fructose for instance, enters the glycolytic pathway through an enzyme called fructokinase. Which has a very high Vmax and low Km. This means, it quickly phosphorylates fructose and is very active. Once phosphorylated the fructose cannot escape the cell, the bulky charge of the phosphates make lipid-insoluble.

The problem for humans, is that the next enzyme in this digestive pathway--Fructose-1-phosphate aldolase has a very high Km and very low Vmax. That is to say it's slow. Very slow.

So, fructokinase goes around burning up cellular stores of ATP, while the replenishment for ATP (continuing the digestion of fructose) is delayed. This leads to a decrease in intracellular ATP concentrations.

A funny thing happens. The decrease of ATP and increase of ADP signals the brain that you need more energy and you get hungry. Which would lead you to eat more and be counter-productive to the point of the "diet".

Interestingly, in medicine it was once thought that IV fructose maybe better than IV glucose and when given to patients they quickly developed high uric acid levels (from purine metabolism) and lactic acidosis--In severe patients fructose loading can even kill you.

People need to be less worried about "miracle" cures and one-stop diets and more worried with eating a balanced diet and getting off their behinds watching TV and being more active in their daily lives. American's (Westerner's even) extend the American dream (something for little or no effort) too far, in my opinion.

I don't see the word "hypercaloric" in there. It shows that 25% of fructose in a diet have a statistically significant effect of reducing insulin sensitivity (in other words, predisposing the person to type 2 diabetes). A person on a high-carb diet with emphasis on simple carbs can easily exceed 25% and may even exceed 50%. What's goofy about that?

Yes that's true, it will reduce your plasma insulin levels, because insulin production is dependent upon plasma glucose levels. But, as I point out above, at a trade off.

People seem to be on a hiatus against insulin these days. You're body is supposed to have and use insulin. If people would not take the lazy approach to their health (say like eating at Burger King 3 times a day) they wouldn't really need to worry about their insulin levels unless they were unlucky enough to inherit a genetic disease.

[hamster143]

People seem to be on a hiatus against insulin these days. You're body is supposed to have and use insulin. If people would not take the lazy approach to their health (say like eating at Burger King 3 times a day) they wouldn't really need to worry about their insulin levels

It's supposed to have insulin, sure ... but there's having insulin and there's having too much insulin. When you consistently consume a diet that contains the amount of fructose above safe levels, you develop insulin resistance, your fasting insulin and blood glucose levels go up, and at some point they get high enough that your condition is called "type 2 diabetes" with all the dangers it brings. That's exactly what causes diabetes, not eating at Burger King 3 times a day, but excess fructose. (Which is not to say that the two aren't interrelated: a single medium serving of non-diet soda at Burger King contains 40 grams of fructose.)

And then, due to the way fructose is metabolized, its regular overconsumption leads to fat deposits in the liver, which, when left unchecked by periodic fasting, lead to fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and potentially to a number of deadlier diseases such as cirrhosis and (back on the subject) liver cancer.

[Proton Soup]

I don't see the word "hypercaloric" in there. It shows that 25% of fructose in a diet have a statistically significant effect of reducing insulin sensitivity (in other words, predisposing the person to type 2 diabetes). A person on a high-carb diet with emphasis on simple carbs can easily exceed 25% and may even exceed 50%. What's goofy about that?

it was right here:
both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention

you gain weight by eating more calories than you burn. that would be hypercaloric. if they had lost weight, it would be a hypocaloric diet.

[Siv]

it was right here:


you gain weight by eating more calories than you burn. that would be hypercaloric. if they had lost weight, it would be a hypocaloric diet.If you assume what you want to conclude, then it becomes very easy, right ? :wink:

The whole point (actually one of the points) of really analyzing the real science in nutrition is that you realize that this simple calories in calories out theory is too simplistic and does not really explain anything. Plus its not true.
If your diet is high in carbs then your set point is much lower. And if your diet is high in fat/protein and low in carbs your set point is much lower.

Our body is far more complicated than the simplistic nonsense that had been spouted for so many decades.

And re: exercise, that was such a big myth that has been propogated for decades, again thanks to the so-called nutrition experts. Exercise does not help weight loss.

I am wondering whether it is worth debating with you. Not only do you not seem to know how to conduct rational debate and what is the type of evidence to look at, but your debating seems purely on opinion and confident assertions.

BTW if you have some sort of chip on your shoulder against me individually, hamster makes some good points.

[Siv]

I don't see the word "hypercaloric" in there. It shows that 25% of fructose in a diet have a statistically significant effect of reducing insulin sensitivity (in other words, predisposing the person to type 2 diabetes). A person on a high-carb diet with emphasis on simple carbs can easily exceed 25% and may even exceed 50%. What's goofy about that?Very true. Even fructose can easily exceed 25%. Easily.
Take a typical American diet. 1 pizza, 2 burgers, 5 diet sodas and maybe some processed chips like Lays. Do you know how much HFCS that is ?? Do the math.

The food and beverage industry has so much going for it, with the corn subsidies making HFCS such a big thing, that they are trying to do all that they can to discredit the evidence pouring in.

Forget the carb:fat ratio, if you just avoid all the processed crap available in dept stores and fast food restaurants today, I can bet my savings that cancer incidence will reduce drastically.

[Siv]

Some more interesting articles.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Its surprising how we have accepted so many things as gospel without a shred of evidence.

[hamster143]

Take a typical American diet. 1 pizza, 2 burgers, 5 diet sodas and maybe some processed chips like Lays. Do you know how much HFCS that is ?? Do the math.


Um, zero? Or close to. Diet sodas don't contain any HFCS for sure. (Whether it's safe to consume that much aspartame, that's a different story). Domino's medium-sized "American Favorite Feast" pizza on deep dish crust is less than 4% simple sugars by weight; trust me, I just checked. A Big Mac contains 5 g of fructose. Lay's chips are also pretty much sugar free.

Bad example. :)

On the other hand, non-diet sodas, candies, cookies, donuts - that's where HFCS really gets pouring in. A single donut is typically 20 g or more of simple sugars. It's really hard to find healthy breakfast cereals: with a few exceptions, most of them are laced with HFCS (especially destructive, since they are marketed toward children). Sweetened Starbucks coffees are notorious about that, you can sometimes exceed 50 g in a single cup.

[Siv]

Oops, sorry. Meant ordinary sodas, the word diet was typed by mistake (sign o' the times, huh?!).

[Studiot]

Has anyone in this debate read any of

'The Saccharine Disease' by Cleave

or

'Tired or Toxic?' by Sherry Rogers

or

'Not on the Label' by Felicity Lawrence

[Siv]

Has anyone in this debate read any of

'The Saccharine Disease' by Cleave Um ... have you read the posts? That sugar and refined carbs are responsible for many of our current diseases/ailments is something that is definitely being discussed.

[russ_watters]

Some more interesting articles.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Its surprising how we have accepted so many things as gospel without a shred of evidence. Those are really terrrible articles. They take something that is true (and blindingly obvious) and twist it around to imply - completely incorrectly - that it's false, for the sake of sucking you in to reading the article. Time does that all the time and IIRC, they got a huge amount of negative feedback for that article.

Exercise alone will make you lose weight.

That statement is true. It has to be. The human body's weight gain or loss is determined by the caloric balance: calories in - calories out = calories stored. If you increase the calories out while maintaining the calories in, you lose weight. Period.

What they are doing in those articles is applying faulty logic - and more importantly, faulty reading comprehension - to the thing that makes weight loss by exercise alone hard: when you exercise, your body demands more calories, so it is hard to not eat more. But look again at the statement in bold. Where in there does it addresss eating? It doesn't. It assumes all other factors including eating are held constant. So saying that the statement is wrong because exercise leads people to eat more is bad logic and bad reading comprehension.

The correct message that should be transmitted here is this: Exercise alone will cause you to lose weight, but it will cause you to want to eat more, so you have to be vigilant in maintaining your caloric intake. This really should not be hard to grasp, nor to do as long as you make yourself conscious of it. Eating habits are just that - habits. You should be able to control your caloric intake by eating what you normally do because you know what you normally eat. Ie, if you used to eat the "medium" extra value meal and now you're eating the "supersize", you're eating more. Obviously, this will cut into the weight loss, so you shouldn't do it.

Duh.

Here's a 5-part rebuttal: The recent August 9th 2009 cover story from Time Magazine, "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin" (Cloud, 2009) may be one of the most poorly researched and misrepresented articles about exercise and fitness. Not only did the author John Cloud misinterpret much of the exercise and health science literature--he has plenty of other articles where his seemingly lack of science and health knowledge is moot--and wrote an article that could potentially damage the public if they follow his misinformed advice, but Time Magazine has been completely irresponsible in publishing this article without seemingly proper fact checking. Cloud begins the article by touting his bitterness towards exercise and finds studies which seem to rationalize his disregard for proper exercise and nutrition. Cloud seems to lack comprehension in science, health, and fitness to accurately convey truthful information. The inaccurate and misleading conclusions he draws may make the metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc...) epidemic even worse if people believe his story.

http://www.examiner.com/diets-and-exercise-in-boston/rebuttal-to-the-time-magazine-article-why-exercise-won-t-make-you-thin-part-1-of-5

[Studiot]

Um ... have you read the posts?

That sort of response makes me sorry I bothered to post at all.

Yes I checked electronically and according to my browser ,my post was the first mention of Dr Cleave in this thread.

[mugaliens]

I am not so sure. Anthropologists who studied tribes untouched by the modern Western fast and processed food disease often did not find evidence for these.

References, please.

And given that Hippocrates described several cancers a couple thousand years ago (Moss, Ralph W. (2004). "Galen on Cancer (http://www.cancerdecisions.com/speeches/galen1989.html)"), cancer is most certainly not caused by "the modern Western fast and processed food." Is there an increase caused by our diets? Possibly, although there are so many other factors out there including significantly changed levels of exercise and dietary composition, as well as exposure to sun, radiation, and man-made toxins, that's it's very difficult to definitively state cancers are due to x, y, or z.

peaking of dentists, anyone read Weston Price's work ? I dont mean the current WAPF, but the original works of Weston Price. Interesting stuff indeed.

I have Vols I & II of a rather thick medical text 1880's medical text which I find fascinating, both in terms of how much remains valid today, as well as how much was little more than heresay or anecdotal. They're in long-term storage, however. Otherwise, I'd share some tidbits!

[Siv]

That sort of response makes me sorry I bothered to post at all.

Yes I checked electronically and according to my browser ,my post was the first mention of Dr Cleave in this thread.Thats not what you asked, specifically about Dr Cleave.

What you did was post 3 books and asked if anyone had read them. The first book (which I referenced while replying) was one about the modern evils of refined carbs and sugar, which we have extensively discussed.

[Proton Soup]

Some more interesting articles.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Its surprising how we have accepted so many things as gospel without a shred of evidence.

good grief. and nowhere above did i post that exercise alone would make you thin. the points were simply this, that a surplus of calories will be stored as some kind of weight (often fat, but can also be muscle (which is almost always accompanied by fat, too, but let's not get into that)), and that exercise will burn visceral fat preferentially. visceral fat acts as more of a short-term storage depot. it's rather easy to get rid of, especially for a *ahem* paleo :rolleyes: guy that actually gets up off his rump to go find food instead of just driving to Publix.

for someone so concerned about gospels, it is a bit amusing to see you line up for the Flavor-Aid. anyhoo, i think i'll leave you to your delusions.

[Siv]

Those are really terrrible articles. They take something that is true (and blindingly obvious) and twist it around to imply - completely incorrectly - that it's false, for the sake of sucking you in to reading the article. Time does that all the time and IIRC, they got a huge amount of negative feedback for that article.

Exercise alone will make you lose weight.

That statement is true. It has to be. The human body's weight gain or loss is determined by the caloric balance: calories in - calories out = calories stored. If you increase the calories out while maintaining the calories in, you lose weight. Period. Unfortunately, thats not true. Our body is far more complex than a simplistic calories in = calories out. The laws of theormodynamics are not violated (obviously!) but the set point changes depending on the type of calories.

For eg, if you feed 2 groups the same 2000 calories, but one where 80% are from carbs (mostly refined) and the other where 80% is fat, the 2 groups will gain different amounts of weight.

One simple factor is the energy the body uses in the digestion process, which is called the thermic effect of food. The thermic effect of protein is about twice that of carbohydrate or fat.

I will find the link later, but there was a study done at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California. Here they studied two groups of overweight people, both on medically supervised low-calorie liquid diets. One group added 3 ounces of almonds to their daily diet, while the other group added the same amount of calories from complex carbs like popcorn and Triscuit crackers. Both groups ate the same number of calories daily, about 1,000. During the 24-week study, the almond-eating group lost more weight even though they ate the same number of calories as the carb group.

There have been other studies done as well, I will need some time to dig them out.

Meanwhile, here's a nice article from Dr. Feinman
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/3/1/9

Quoting from the conclusion - A review of simple thermodynamic principles shows that weight change on isocaloric diets is not expected to be independent of path (metabolism of macronutrients) and indeed such a general principle would be a violation of the second law. Homeostatic mechanisms are able to insure that, a good deal of the time, weight does not fluctuate much with changes in diet – this might be said to be the true "miraculous metabolic effect" – but it is subject to many exceptions. The idea that this is theoretically required in all cases is mistakenly based on equilibrium, reversible conditions that do not hold for living organisms and an insufficient appreciation of the second law. The second law of thermodynamics says that variation of efficiency for different metabolic pathways is to be expected. Thus, ironically the dictum that a "calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics, as a matter of principle.

Plus eating fewer than a certain threshold of calories puts your body in starvation mode and drastically reduces your metabolism too.

The correct message that should be transmitted here is this: Exercise alone will cause you to lose weight, but it will cause you to want to eat more, so you have to be vigilant in maintaining your caloric intake. This really should not be hard to grasp, nor to do as long as you make yourself conscious of it. Eating habits are just that - habits. You should be able to control your caloric intake by eating what you normally do because you know what you normally eat. Ie, if you used to eat the "medium" extra value meal and now you're eating the "supersize", you're eating more. Obviously, this will cut into the weight loss, so you shouldn't do it.

Duh.

Here's a 5-part rebuttal:

http://www.examiner.com/diets-and-exercise-in-boston/rebuttal-to-the-time-magazine-article-why-exercise-won-t-make-you-thin-part-1-of-5 Maybe this guy is a weirdo, but that does not matter. Resorting to ad hominem wont negative his evidence. And the evidence is there.

The Terry Wilkin study of childhood obesity, for e.g.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2008/06/30/adc.2007.135012.abstractThere were no associations between physical activity and changes in any measure of body mass or fatness over time in either sex (e.g. BMI-SDS: r=-0.02 p=0.76). However, there was a small-to-moderate inverse association between physical activity and change in composite metabolic score (r=-0.19, p<0.01). Mixed effects modeling showed that the improvement in metabolic score among the more active compared to the less active children was linear with time (-0.08 z-scores/year, p=0.001).

Exercise is beneficial for lots of other things, but not weight loss.

Merely saying that if you starve and exercise you lose weight is no solution to anything. Its your bodies complicated homeostasis mechanism which makes you hungrier when you exercise. Which is what makes the calories in = calories out cliche a myth.

Exercise is not a useful method for weight loss. As Taubes says, the original Finnish report cited by most researchers for the benefit of exercise in weight loss is far from conclusive. Yet the Finnish report, the most scientifically rigorous review of the evidence to date, can hardly be said to have cleared up the matter. When the Finnish investigators looked at the results of the dozen best-constructed experimental trials that addressed weight maintenance—that is, successful dieters who were trying to keep off the pounds they had shed—they found that everyone regains weight. And depending on the type of trial, exercise would either decrease the rate of that gain (by 3.2 ounces per month) or increase its rate (by 1.8 ounces). As the Finns themselves concluded, with characteristic understatement, the relationship between exercise and weight is “more complex” than they might otherwise have imagined.

The problem is that light exercise burns an insignificant number of calories, amounts that are undone by comparatively effortless changes in diet. In 1942, Louis Newburgh of the University of Michigan calculated that a 250-pound man expends only three calories climbing a flight of stairs—the equivalent of depriving himself of a quarter-teaspoon of sugar or a hundredth of an ounce of butter. “He will have to climb twenty flights of stairs to rid himself of the energy contained in one slice of bread!” Newburgh observed. So why not skip the stairs, skip the bread, and call it a day?

[Proton Soup]

Siv, there is a lot of confusion that seems to originate from differences in how much water people hold onto when they are on a keto diet, versus a higher carb diet that keeps them out of ketosis. people on a ketogenic diet can lose several kilograms of water weight, and unless you correct for this in your studies by doing something like a DEXA scan to measure body composition more directly, you're going to get screwy results. if you're just looking at a person's kg weight changes, then you don't really know what you're looking at. it is easy to misinterpret this as a change in "setpoint".

[Siv]

Siv, there is a lot of confusion that seems to originate from differences in how much water people hold onto when they are on a keto diet, versus a higher carb diet that keeps them out of ketosis. people on a ketogenic diet can lose several kilograms of water weight, and unless you correct for this in your studies by doing something like a DEXA scan to measure body composition more directly, you're going to get screwy results. if you're just looking at a person's kg weight changes, then you don't really know what you're looking at. it is easy to misinterpret this as a change in "setpoint".Actually the Atkins water weight thing is just a myth.
http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/634109964/m/8011922838

Anyway I am not recommending any diet here, but just acknowledging the real harm that refined carbs and sugars do. Apart from busting the exercise weight loss myth.

[Proton Soup]

Actually the Atkins water weight thing is just a myth.
http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/634109964/m/8011922838

Anyway I am not recommending any diet here, but just acknowledging the real harm that refined carbs and sugars do. Apart from busting the exercise weight loss myth.

no, it is not a myth. and the reason you gain water back on atkins is that atkins is only keto on the induction phase, and after you switch over to a more normal carb intake in later parts of the diet, the water comes back. have you read atkins? you realize it's got different phases and isn't the zero-carb caricature that the press makes it out to be?

[Siv]

no, it is not a myth. and the reason you gain water back on atkins is that atkins is only keto on the induction phase, and after you switch over to a more normal carb intake in later parts of the diet, the water comes back. have you read atkins? you realize it's got different phases and isn't the zero-carb caricature that the press makes it out to be?Ok, if you can skip the patronising assertions, maybe we can have a more productive debate ? :smile:

[Siv]

The Omega-3/Omega-6 ratio is another thing increasing inflammation and inflammatory diseases, I had forgotten to mention that earlier.
An interesting blog post re: that from Dr. Stephan Guyenet.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/02/corn-oil-and-cancer-reality-strikes.html

[russ_watters]

Unfortunately, thats not true....

Exercise is not a useful method for weight loss. You failed to address the point I made even a little bit. Besides the irrelevancies you disucssed, like the effects of different types of food (which may be interesting, but have nothing to do with exercise), you used the same logical disconnect as the article did! The fact that eating affects weight gain/loss does not in any way imply that exercise doesn't. The fact that eating less works better doesn't change the fact that exercising more still works. The fact that people who exercise more tend to start eating more doesn't change the fact that if they exercise more while holding their food intake steady they lose weight.

Again: Exercise alone can make you lose weight as long as you really are just adding exercise and not adding extra eating as well.

I think part of the disconnect is that what is the better way to lose weight is different for different people. For most it is a combination of the two, but for many people, the eating is the much bigger problem and therefore the much easier to correct. Example: Many studies have compared weight loss resulting from changing diet versus increasing activity. Most often, weight loss during programs focused on dietary change produced two to three times greater weight loss than programs focused on exercise. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13821677/

That's easy to believe. Particularly if you're out of shape, it is very difficult to burn more than a few hundred (say 300) extra calories a day. But 300 calories a day is equal to only two sodas, and that's not a difficult thing to cut out of a diet.

[Proton Soup]

Ok, if you can skip the patronising assertions, maybe we can have a more productive debate ? :smile:

very well. as for why atkins works (at least for some people), i think what you will find is that ketosis can suppress appetite (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/87/1/44). this results in people eating below their maintenance level of calories, they burn more than they eat, and start losing adipose mass. and because they also lose a lot of water in the beginning, the results appear more dramatic than they really are. losing adipose mass probably doesn't hurt your lipid profiles, either, as many people who unfat themselves find out.

[Siv]

You failed to address the point I made even a little bit. Besides the irrelevancies you disucssed, like the effects of different types of food (which may be interesting, but have nothing to do with exercise), you used the same logical disconnect as the article did! Ok, very convenient way of dismissing all the info/links/research I presented.

I let moderator unpleasantness drive me away from PF once, but not again. I should have been able to develop a thick skin by now :wink:

Let me try again.

You said - "The human body's weight gain or loss is determined by the caloric balance: calories in - calories out = calories stored. If you increase the calories out while maintaining the calories in, you lose weight. Period."

To which I responded with - "Unfortunately, thats not true. Our body is far more complex than a simplistic calories in = calories out. The laws of theormodynamics are not violated (obviously!) but the set point changes depending on the type of calories.

For eg, if you feed 2 groups the same 2000 calories, but one where 80% are from carbs (mostly refined) and the other where 80% is fat, the 2 groups will gain different amounts of weight.

One simple factor is the energy the body uses in the digestion process, which is called the thermic effect of food. The thermic effect of protein is about twice that of carbohydrate or fat.

I will find the link later, but there was a study done at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California. Here they studied two groups of overweight people, both on medically supervised low-calorie liquid diets. One group added 3 ounces of almonds to their daily diet, while the other group added the same amount of calories from complex carbs like popcorn and Triscuit crackers. Both groups ate the same number of calories daily, about 1,000. During the 24-week study, the almond-eating group lost more weight even though they ate the same number of calories as the carb group.

There have been other studies done as well, I will need some time to dig them out.

Meanwhile, here's a nice article from Dr. Feinman
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/3/1/9

Quoting from the conclusion - A review of simple thermodynamic principles shows that weight change on isocaloric diets is not expected to be independent of path (metabolism of macronutrients) and indeed such a general principle would be a violation of the second law. Homeostatic mechanisms are able to insure that, a good deal of the time, weight does not fluctuate much with changes in diet – this might be said to be the true "miraculous metabolic effect" – but it is subject to many exceptions. The idea that this is theoretically required in all cases is mistakenly based on equilibrium, reversible conditions that do not hold for living organisms and an insufficient appreciation of the second law. The second law of thermodynamics says that variation of efficiency for different metabolic pathways is to be expected. Thus, ironically the dictum that a "calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics, as a matter of principle.

Plus eating fewer than a certain threshold of calories puts your body in starvation mode and drastically reduces your metabolism too."


Re: your exercise claim, I responded to that with - "Maybe this guy is a weirdo, but that does not matter. Resorting to ad hominem wont negate his evidence. And the evidence is there.

The Terry Wilkin study of childhood obesity, for e.g.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/200...35012.abstract
There were no associations between physical activity and changes in any measure of body mass or fatness over time in either sex (e.g. BMI-SDS: r=-0.02 p=0.76). However, there was a small-to-moderate inverse association between physical activity and change in composite metabolic score (r=-0.19, p<0.01). Mixed effects modeling showed that the improvement in metabolic score among the more active compared to the less active children was linear with time (-0.08 z-scores/year, p=0.001).

Exercise is beneficial for lots of other things, but not weight loss.

Merely saying that if you starve and exercise you lose weight is no solution to anything. Its your bodies complicated homeostasis mechanism which makes you hungrier when you exercise. Which is what makes the calories in = calories out cliche a myth."


The fact that eating affects weight gain/loss does not in any way imply that exercise doesn't. The fact that eating less works better doesn't change the fact that exercising more still works. The fact that people who exercise more tend to start eating more doesn't change the fact that if they exercise more while holding their food intake steady they lose weight. Please read what I wrote. I said that exercise was not a useful method for weight loss. Period.

Precisely because you cannot eat the same if you exercise more. Our body's homeostasis works to ensure that we compensate by eating more too. Artificially and forcefully starving yourself will never work long term and is not sustainable. What is far more likely to work is something which keeps you full and makes you less hungry.

Also, I dont agree that if you eat the same number of calories, the more you exercise, the more weight you will lose. Show me a study which shows this linear or geometric relation. I also contest that the type of food you eat will also affect how much you lose. As stated above, the laws of thermodynamics have been incorrectly interpreted for too long w.r.t nutrition and weight loss.

[Siv]

Here are some media articles debunking the calories in = calories out myth (the dumbing down of the complex mechanism of our bodies).

http://migraineur.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/calories-in-calories-out/

http://www.naturalnews.com/027126_dieting_food_health.html.
Quoting from above - The idea of calories in versus calories out is a complete myth. The body is far more complex than that. There are hundreds upon hundreds of activities performed in your body at any given time - it needs fuel to perform these functions. If your body is not receiving the materials it needs from your diet, then it has no choice but to take from its only other source - itself. Most people assume your body will only use its stored fat for its various needs, but this is not true. Your body will also draw from your bones, muscle tissue and organ tissue. You may lose some fat, but it will be at the sacrifice of vital living tissues. This is not a good state to be in, so your body slows down your metabolism to prevent its own destruction. After all, your body has one natural instinct - to survive.


http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/busting-the-great-myths-of-fat-burning.html.
A quote from the above : Technically, once you've been exercising for 15 or 20 minutes, your body has made the shift to using a higher percentage of fat for fuel. But again, if you're trying to lose weight, it's about the total number of calories burned, not necessarily the fuel source.
For example, say that at rest you burn up to 60 percent fat. When you enter the initial phases of intense exercise, the ratio changes. You may now burn only 30 percent fat because your body is using quick-energy carbohydrates. Once the exercise is sustained, the body switches back to using a higher percentage of fat to fuel the movement (up to 75 percent fat). In this aerobic phase of exercise, a higher percentage of fat is being used for energy. But if you aren't working out for a very long period, you may still burn more total calories and, therefore, more fat calories working out harder. Put another way, if burning as many calories as you can is the best way to lose weight, even a dummy can figure out which activity of the following is going to give the best results (answer: jogging and sprinting), even though their fat-burning quota is on the low end of the ratio. So you see, not only is it not a linear relationship, it depends on the type of exercise as well. Makes us realize how dangerous it is to oversimplify anything.

[Siv]

Re: the water weight loss myth re: Atkins, here's an article which comprehensively debunks it.

http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2006/09/01/4838/losing-weight-on-a-lower-carb-diet/

Carbohydrates Can Cause Water Retention

Because stored glucose binds water, there is a diuretic effect during the first few days of the Induction phase of the Atkins Lifestyle, when carbs are limited to 20 grams daily. That’s why people on diuretic medications are cautioned when cutting carbs to do so with the supervision of their doctor to avoid overmedication.

For anyone following a lower-carb plan, it is important to stay properly hydrated. Most people do very well during the Induction stage. However, if help is needed to replace lost minerals because of an excessive loss of water, taking a multi-mineral every day or drinking two cups of salty broth daily works quite well for most people.

So its not that Atkins causes initial water weight loss but that high carb diets cause water retention.
Taubes also explains this beautifully in his book.

[Proton Soup]

Siv, please stop using blog articles to backup your assertions.

[Siv]

These 2 are not blogs.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/200...35012.abstract
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/3/1/9

Plus some of these health blogs are a wealth of information. Run by really clever and qualified scientists/doctors who keep up to date with the latest research.

BTW was looking at the link you posted re: ketogenic diets. And it does not really support your case much.
The significantly (P = 0.006) greater weight loss with the LC diet (1.99 kg) than with the MC diet was due, in part, to the difference in water loss with the ketogenic diet, although this difference did not reach significance (0.71 kg; P = 0.158) (Table 4). There also tended to be greater losses of fat mass (1.05 kg; P = 0.083) and fat-free mass (0.94 kg; P = 0.054) with the LC diet than with the MC diet. In the 4-compartment model used, glycogen is considered part of the fat-free mass, and it cannot easily be directly measured. Examination of the change in protein mass (rather than in fat-free mass), calculated from the 4-compartment model, indicated that there was a weight loss of 0.25 and 0.02 kg with the LC ketogenic and MC nonketogenic diets, respectively (P = 0.281; SED: 0.202). 0.71 kgs ?? The margin of error would have been higher, thats why its not statistically significant.

[Proton Soup]

These 2 are not blogs.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/200...35012.abstract
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/3/1/9

Plus some of these health blogs are a wealth of information. Run by really clever and qualified scientists/doctors who keep up to date with the latest research.

BTW was looking at the link you posted re: ketogenic diets. And it does not really support your case much.
0.71 kgs ?? The margin of error would have been higher, thats why its not statistically significant.

you know i specifically used that study for appetite suppression.

but if you want something with more significance, try this one: http://www.annals.org/content/140/10/769.full

if you want something really rigid (heavily controlled inpatient vs. outpatient), then this is interesting: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC333231/

[Ygggdrasil]

When studying the effects of various interventions on human health, it is notoriously difficult to glean actionable information from any one single scientific study. Often these are observational studies that are subject to many confounding factors and limited by small sample sizes, poorly controlled conditions, and short observation periods. Even well-controlled, randomized clinical trials can often reach opposing conclusions.

We can reach better conclusions, however, by performing a systematic literature review: examining the scientific literature as a whole by using strict criteria to select the highest quality studies and evaluating the results of the all of the studies as a whole. Although there may be individual studies within the review that support either side of an assertion, if a large majority of the studies support one side of an argument, we can be much more confident about their conclusions.

The 2007 report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer by the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research does just this. I will summarize the relevant findings of the review below. The full report is available here: http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/

Because obesity is an established cause of cancer, the report examined the risk factors for weight gain, overweight, obesity. The systematic literature review of this area covered 207 publications investigating the determinants of weight gain, overweight and obesity. The report concludes:

"The epidemiological evidence on physical activity is substantial and consistent. There is robust mechanistic evidence, particularly in relation to its impact on appetite regulation and energy balance. Overall, the evidence that all types of physical activity protect against weight gain, overweight, and obesity is convincing. It has this effect by promoting appropriate energy intake. Conversely, the evidence can be interpreted as showing that sedentary living is a cause of weight gain, overweight, and obesity."

The panel gives the evidence linking physical activity to a decreased risk of weight gain, overweight and obesity its highest ranking of convincing. The panel ranks the strength of evidence linking energy-dense foods, sugary drinks, and fast food to an increased risk of weight gain, overweight and obesity as probable.

Furthermore, while Siv has claimed that changes to appetite that accompany physical activity cancel the effects of exercise, the report claims otherwise:

"Control [of appetite] seems to be least effective at relatively low levels of physical activity, meaning that sedentary people tend to gain weight more readily than active people. Conversely, although high levels of physical activity increase energy requirements and appetite, the likelihood of consuming more than is needed is lower."

Therefore, although some may be able to produce studies showing otherwise, the preponderance of high quality scientific evidence strongly supports the assertion that physical activity can prevent weight gain, overweight and obesity.

Since this topic was originally on cancer, I will quote the panel's conclusions about the effects of sugar consumption on the risk for cancer:
"The evidence is hard to interpret. There is limited evidence suggesting that sugar is a cause of colorectal cancer."

This does not mean that there is convincing evidence that sugar is not a cause of cancer. Rather, the report concludes that there is not sufficient high quality evidence to reach a solid conclusion.

[bobze]

When studying the effects of various interventions on human health, it is notoriously difficult to glean actionable information from any one single scientific study. Often these are observational studies that are subject to many confounding factors and limited by small sample sizes, poorly controlled conditions, and short observation periods. Even well-controlled, randomized clinical trials can often reach opposing conclusions.

We can reach better conclusions, however, by performing a systematic literature review: examining the scientific literature as a whole by using strict criteria to select the highest quality studies and evaluating the results of the all of the studies as a whole. Although there may be individual studies within the review that support either side of an assertion, if a large majority of the studies support one side of an argument, we can be much more confident about their conclusions.

The 2007 report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer by the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research does just this. I will summarize the relevant findings of the review below. The full report is available here: http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/

Because obesity is an established cause of cancer, the report examined the risk factors for weight gain, overweight, obesity. The systematic literature review of this area covered 207 publications investigating the determinants of weight gain, overweight and obesity. The report concludes:

"The epidemiological evidence on physical activity is substantial and consistent. There is robust mechanistic evidence, particularly in relation to its impact on appetite regulation and energy balance. Overall, the evidence that all types of physical activity protect against weight gain, overweight, and obesity is convincing. It has this effect by promoting appropriate energy intake. Conversely, the evidence can be interpreted as showing that sedentary living is a cause of weight gain, overweight, and obesity."

The panel gives the evidence linking physical activity to a decreased risk of weight gain, overweight and obesity its highest ranking of convincing. The panel ranks the strength of evidence linking energy-dense foods, sugary drinks, and fast food to an increased risk of weight gain, overweight and obesity as probable.

Furthermore, while Siv has claimed that changes to appetite that accompany physical activity cancel the effects of exercise, the report claims otherwise:

"Control [of appetite] seems to be least effective at relatively low levels of physical activity, meaning that sedentary people tend to gain weight more readily than active people. Conversely, although high levels of physical activity increase energy requirements and appetite, the likelihood of consuming more than is needed is lower."

Therefore, although some may be able to produce studies showing otherwise, the preponderance of high quality scientific evidence strongly supports the assertion that physical activity can prevent weight gain, overweight and obesity.

Since this topic was originally on cancer, I will quote the panel's conclusions about the effects of sugar consumption on the risk for cancer:
"The evidence is hard to interpret. There is limited evidence suggesting that sugar is a cause of colorectal cancer."

This does not mean that there is convincing evidence that sugar is not a cause of cancer. Rather, the report concludes that there is not sufficient high quality evidence to reach a solid conclusion.


Good post!

[Siv]

you know i specifically used that study for appetite suppression.

but if you want something with more significance, try this one: http://www.annals.org/content/140/10/769.full

if you want something really rigid (heavily controlled inpatient vs. outpatient), then this is interesting: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC333231/
You claimed that Atkins weight loss was mostly water loss, so I thought your links would support that. Anyway lets look at what you have now ...

Ok, this is what I have from your first study - Changes in total body water explained most of the change in fat-free mass in both groups. The expected mean change in total body water was −2.4 kg (CI, −2.9 to −2.0 kg) in the low-carbohydrate diet group and −1.8 kg (CI, −2.3 to −1.3 kg) in the low-fat diet group (mean difference, −0.6 kg [CI, −1.3 to 0 kg]; P = 0.052). However, the low-carbohydrate diet group lost a greater amount of total body water in the first 2 weeks of the study than did the low-fat diet group (−1.1 kg versus −0.5 kg; mean difference, −0.6 kg [CI, −1.0 to −0.2 kg]). The differences are again very marginal. - 2.4 kg vs 1.8 kg and 1.1 vs 0.6 kg.
Come on, its not even statistically significant, IMO.

And lets look at the actual results from that study, shall we ? Results: A greater proportion of the low-carbohydrate diet group than the low-fat diet group completed the study (76% vs. 57%; P = 0.02). At 24 weeks, weight loss was greater in the low-carbohydrate diet group than in the low-fat diet group (mean change, −12.9% vs. −6.7%; P < 0.001). Patients in both groups lost substantially more fat mass (change, −9.4 kg with the low-carbohydrate diet vs. −4.8 kg with the low-fat diet) than fat-free mass (change, −3.3 kg vs. −2.4 kg, respectively). Compared with recipients of the low-fat diet, recipients of the low-carbohydrate diet had greater decreases in serum triglyceride levels (change, −0.84 mmol/L vs. −0.31 mmol/L [−74.2 mg/dL vs. −27.9 mg/dL]; P = 0.004) and greater increases in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels (0.14 mmol/L vs. −0.04 mmol/L [5.5 mg/dL vs. −1.6 mg/dL]; P < 0.001). Changes in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level did not differ statistically (0.04 mmol/L [1.6 mg/dL] with the low-carbohydrate diet and −0.19 mmol/L [−7.4 mg/dL] with the low-fat diet; P = 0.2). Minor adverse effects were more frequent in the low-carbohydrate diet group. Minor adverse effects at the initial stages aside (constipation, headache and the likes), the low carb results were spectacular !

Ok, your second study ... the period is for 50 days total, but in 3 10-day periods. That is very short, IMO. Even 24 weeks in the prev study were short but at least not as short as 50 days. So I dont really find anything significance in the very short term water weight loss.

In any case, the reason for the water loss has also been explained very well b Taubes and others. Carbs make people retain water, as I explained.

[Siv]

When studying the effects of various interventions on human health, it is notoriously difficult to glean actionable information from any one single scientific study. Often these are observational studies that are subject to many confounding factors and limited by small sample sizes, poorly controlled conditions, and short observation periods. Even well-controlled, randomized clinical trials can often reach opposing conclusions. That is true. But the whole problem with nutrition science (if you can call it science) is how people stretch epidemiological data to support their arguments.
Epidemiological data faces huge problems when it tries to take the place of scientific trials.

Here's an award winning article from Gary Taubes in the National Association of Science Writers on the limitations of epidemiology.
http://www.nasw.org/awards/1996/96Taubesarticle.htm

We can reach better conclusions, however, by performing a systematic literature review: examining the scientific literature as a whole by using strict criteria to select the highest quality studies and evaluating the results of the all of the studies as a whole. Although there may be individual studies within the review that support either side of an assertion, if a large majority of the studies support one side of an argument, we can be much more confident about their conclusions.

The 2007 report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer by the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research does just this. I will summarize the relevant findings of the review below. The full report is available here: http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/ Problem again, is that it is an epidemiological report. A meta analysis, but one based on epidemiological data nonetheless.

Therefore, although some may be able to produce studies showing otherwise, the preponderance of high quality scientific evidence strongly supports the assertion that physical activity can prevent weight gain, overweight and obesity. High quality evidence ? No.
I will go through the link in detail later when I have time.

Meanwhile, people who have tried to actual clinical trials find quite the opposite results.

Dr. Timothy Church for eg.
At http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004515

This was a 6 month study. But the surprising finding was that, the control group had a better outcome than the high exercise group :smile:
The primary finding from this large exercise intervention trial in postmenopausal women is that the difference between actual weight loss and predicted weight loss (compensation) increases with exercise dose. We confirmed the findings of previous studies that a relatively high dose of exercise (12 KKW or 194 minutes per week) results in compensatory mechanisms that attenuate weight loss in previously sedentary women. However, a dose of exercise consistent with the exercise prescription for general health (8 KKW or 136 minutes per week) did not result in compensation as the actual weight loss closely matched the predicted weight loss. An exercise dose of 4 KKW (72 minutes per week) also resulted in weight loss that slightly exceeded the predicted weight loss. Our findings are important because most exercise guidelines for weight loss recommend 200–300 minutes per week and we provide evidence that this amount of exercise induces compensation that results in significantly less weight loss than predicted. So 10-15 mins exercise per day (the most sedentary of the 3 groups) seems the most beneficial !

Please also see the Terry Wilkin study re: childhood obesity that I posted earlier.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/200...35012.abstract
There were no associations between physical activity and changes in any measure of body mass or fatness over time in either sex (e.g. BMI-SDS: r=-0.02 p=0.76). However, there was a small-to-moderate inverse association between physical activity and change in composite metabolic score (r=-0.19, p<0.01). Mixed effects modeling showed that the improvement in metabolic score among the more active compared to the less active children was linear with time (-0.08 z-scores/year, p=0.001). Again, this is an actual trial, not an epidemiological analysis.

Other studies are mentioned in this article
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/05/07/school-exercise-obesity-child.html

Rather than relying on epidemiological evidence, if you end up doing actual studies, however faulty they may be, the results are far more accurate and practical.

Blaming our sedentary lifestyles for obesity without any actual evidence is something for which Jean Mayer requires the most credit. And he promoted his pro-exercise message with a religious zeal like a moral crusade.

People are exercising far more today than they did several decades ago. So, has the obesity declined or gone up ?!

[bobze]

That is true. But the whole problem with nutrition science (if you can call it science) is how people stretch epidemiological data to support their arguments.
Epidemiological data faces huge problems when it tries to take the place of scientific trials.

Here's an award winning article from Gary Taubes in the National Association of Science Writers on the limitations of epidemiology.
http://www.nasw.org/awards/1996/96Taubesarticle.htm

Problem again, is that it is an epidemiological report. A meta analysis, but one based on epidemiological data nonetheless.

High quality evidence ? No.
I will go through the link in detail later when I have time.

Meanwhile, people who have tried to actual clinical trials find quite the opposite results.

Dr. Timothy Church for eg.
At http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004515

This was a 6 month study. But the surprising finding was that, the control group had a better outcome than the high exercise group :smile:
So 10-15 mins exercise per day (the most sedentary of the 3 groups) seems the most beneficial !

Please also see the Terry Wilkin study re: childhood obesity that I posted earlier.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/200...35012.abstract
There were no associations between physical activity and changes in any measure of body mass or fatness over time in either sex (e.g. BMI-SDS: r=-0.02 p=0.76). However, there was a small-to-moderate inverse association between physical activity and change in composite metabolic score (r=-0.19, p<0.01). Mixed effects modeling showed that the improvement in metabolic score among the more active compared to the less active children was linear with time (-0.08 z-scores/year, p=0.001). Again, this is an actual trial, not an epidemiological analysis.

Other studies are mentioned in this article
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/05/07/school-exercise-obesity-child.html

Rather than relying on epidemiological evidence, if you end up doing actual studies, however faulty they may be, the results are far more accurate and practical.

Blaming our sedentary lifestyles for obesity without any actual evidence is something for which Jean Mayer requires the most credit. And he promoted his pro-exercise message with a religious zeal like a moral crusade.

People are exercising far more today than they did several decades ago. So, has the obesity declined or gone up ?!

3 quick points because I'm running late. Firstly, as Ygg pointed out Systematic/Meta-Reviews>>>>>> case-controls, cohorts or any other primary literature findings. Because, systematic reviews offer to us a summation of findings from many different sources, we are able to derive trends in them. As Ygg's review also points out that trend is to show that when you exercise a long with watching your diet you lose weight.

Secondly to your underlined sentence above. Many people do exercise more, however people also eat larger meal portions than they did in say the 50's or 60's. A serving of meat for most people should be about a deck of cards, when was the last time in America you've seen a correct portion of meat on the menu? Being a medical student, I eat out a lot--Restaurants take the "American dream" (more for less) approach to advertising. In fact, that approach to advertising is everywhere around us in the food industry--"More for less".

And finally, can you propose a biochemical mechanism whereby different types of carbohydrates are preferentially stored as fat? Without being able to show this any evidence of differential carb storage is anecdotal and more likely attributed to confounding factors (even if the confounder is a food specific factor, for example something else in the food with those "bad" carbs which promotes more fat storage)


Thanks

Edit: Your BMJ link isn't working by the way.

[Siv]

3 quick points because I'm running late. Firstly, as Ygg pointed out Systematic/Meta-Reviews>>>>>> case-controls, cohorts or any other primary literature findings. Because, systematic reviews offer to us a summation of findings from many different sources, we are able to derive trends in them. As Ygg's review also points out that trend is to show that when you exercise a long with watching your diet you lose weight. Unfortunately, whether its one study or a meta analysis, if its epidemeliogical data, its pretty much often always misleading. Did you read the link I posted with Taubes award winning article on that ?

And finally, can you propose a biochemical mechanism whereby different types of carbohydrates are preferentially stored as fat? Without being able to show this any evidence of differential carb storage is anecdotal and more likely attributed to confounding factors (even if the confounder is a food specific factor, for example something else in the food with those "bad" carbs which promotes more fat storage) Its been beautifully explained, by Taubes and others. Carbs drive insulin drive fat storage (and other bad things). Read the book, its hard for me to summarize an entire book with tons of studies into one post. As I was telling someone else on this forum, the book is like pubmed, so its hard reading. But the plethora of evidence is worth it.

Your BMJ link isn't working by the way.Oops, sorry. It was working yesterday. Let me check.

[mtc1973]

Not sure why there seems to be so much sure footed posturing in this thread. Obesity - is evidently a spectrum disorder - not a single disease. And as a spectrum disorder will have a spectrum of causes. Until we are in a position to ascribe the different causes of obesity to their respective populations - none of these studies will be in a position to make specific claims. All that remains is statistical correlation and postulation.

[Proton Soup]

Not sure why there seems to be so much sure footed posturing in this thread. Obesity - is evidently a spectrum disorder - not a single disease. And as a spectrum disorder will have a spectrum of causes. Until we are in a position to ascribe the different causes of obesity to their respective populations - none of these studies will be in a position to make specific claims. All that remains is statistical correlation and postulation.

i suppose you could make the same argument about alcoholism and drug use, but it's not helpful for explaining what is going on in the majority of the population. it's really just excuse-making for a population whose primary problem is they enjoy continuing their behavior more than they dislike the negative side effects.

the really interesting thing about this "disease" of obesity is that if you take away their freedoms and only allow them to consume a healthy amount of calories, they will lose weight.

[Proton Soup]

You claimed that Atkins weight loss was mostly water loss, so I thought your links would support that. Anyway lets look at what you have now ...

Ok, this is what I have from your first study - The differences are again very marginal. - 2.4 kg vs 1.8 kg and 1.1 vs 0.6 kg.
Come on, its not even statistically significant, IMO.

And lets look at the actual results from that study, shall we ? Minor adverse effects at the initial stages aside (constipation, headache and the likes), the low carb results were spectacular !

Ok, your second study ... the period is for 50 days total, but in 3 10-day periods. That is very short, IMO. Even 24 weeks in the prev study were short but at least not as short as 50 days. So I dont really find anything significance in the very short term water weight loss.

In any case, the reason for the water loss has also been explained very well b Taubes and others. Carbs make people retain water, as I explained.

where did you explain that carbs make people retain water?

and yes, low-carb diets (temporary diets for fat reduction(my fave would be the protein-sparing modified fast, with almost no fat at all)) can be spectacular for a number of reasons. as mentioned before, ketosis can have a significant appetite-suppressive effect, and this makes it easier for people stay on the diet. it also makes it easier for them to control their intake and consume fewer calories. and that is the important point i'm trying to get across. there is nothing magical about carbs making you fat, it's an excess of calories consumed that makes you fat.

and look again at the inpatient study. i think what you will see is that when you actually control what people eat (they can't cheat by sneaking candy and lying about it - skewing your results), fat loss on either a low or med. carb diet is similar.

the other thing to remember is that these studies are primarily about dieting for fat loss, and really don't make a case for eating a ketotic diet on a chronic basis. for that, go look up the papers where they mention the problems with keeping epilepsy patients on keto diets.

[mtc1973]

Agree totally Proton - its the only approach that works. I just find it strange that people want to ascribe it to all these different specific things - whats the point. We dont know - but as you say - what we do know is that if you limit intake and expend more energy - its a solution - irresepective of the specifics of the problem.

Of course people dont want to hear that because it means that they can control the problem - it just takes a heck of a lot of effort and fighting against what our evolutionary biology has dictated we do! In a world of scarcity it was wise to crave fatty sugary food! The scenario has changed!

Manufacturers also dont want to hear it because they cant make money out of people by selling supplements, plans, pills etc

I always am amazed at the amount of money spent on diabetes and CV research - when in fact if we changed attitudes at a young age - we could prevent themajority of these diseases even occuring. Prevention is ultimate, cure is an expensive band aid.

[bobze]

Unfortunately, whether its one study or a meta analysis, if its epidemeliogical data, its pretty much often always misleading. Did you read the link I posted with Taubes award winning article on that ?

Its been beautifully explained, by Taubes and others. Carbs drive insulin drive fat storage (and other bad things). Read the book, its hard for me to summarize an entire book with tons of studies into one post. As I was telling someone else on this forum, the book is like pubmed, so its hard reading. But the plethora of evidence is worth it.

Oops, sorry. It was working yesterday. Let me check.

No I don't mean how carbohydrates drive insulin regulation and vise-versa. I'm well versed in that.

However, you claimed that various types of carbohydrates promoted this more than others, if I'm remembering correctly (a couple pages back I believe).

What I was asking for is, what is the biochemical mechanism or hypothesis that would explain this. Otherwise, as I pointed out, its just as likely that other confounding factors associated with those 'types of carbs' are the culprit in the up-regulation of insulin and not the 'type' of carb itself.

For example. You claimed that HFCS (a mix of fructose and glucose) is 'worse' for you than sucrose (fructose and glucose). What is the proposed biochemical mechanism for this? And on what basis do you discard the hypothesis that foods with HFCS may contain another factor that promotes obesity over sucrose based ones (if it does at all)?

[Ygggdrasil]

That is true. But the whole problem with nutrition science (if you can call it science) is how people stretch epidemiological data to support their arguments.
Epidemiological data faces huge problems when it tries to take the place of scientific trials.

Here's an award winning article from Gary Taubes in the National Association of Science Writers on the limitations of epidemiology.
http://www.nasw.org/awards/1996/96Taubesarticle.htm

Problem again, is that it is an epidemiological report. A meta analysis, but one based on epidemiological data nonetheless.

You would have a valid point if the report relied solely on epidemiologial evidence. But, it does not. Of the studies considered linking physical activity to weight maintenance and change, the panel considered 17 randomized controlled trials versus 62 consort studies. No doubt, the experts on the panel gave more consideration to the randomized trials than the consort studies.

For example, we can consider the studies that examined the effects of total physical activity on weight maintenance and change in adults. In this category, there were three randomized controlled trials and 16 consort studies. Two of the randomized controlled trials showed positive effects of physical activities while one of the trials showed no effect. All of the 16 consort studies in this area showed a positive effect. The citations for the three randomized trials are below:

Schmitz KH, Jensen MD, Kugler KC, et al. Strength training for obesity prevention in midlife women. Int J Obes 2003;27:326-33.
Borg P, Kukkonen-Harjula K, Fogelholm M, et al. Effects of walking or resistance training on weight loss maintenance in obese, middle-aged men: a randomized trial. Int J Obes 2002;26:676-83.
Fogelholm M, Kukkonen-Harjula K, Nenonen A, et al. Effects of walking training on weight maintenance after a very-low-energy diet in premenopausal obese women: a randomized controlled trial. Arch Intern Med 2000;160:2177-84.

As I said before, some studies will show no effect and some studies will show a positive effect. However, considering the evidence as a whole shows that the bulk of the evidence points to physical activity as a protective factor against weight gain.

Meanwhile, people who have tried to actual clinical trials find quite the opposite results.

Dr. Timothy Church for eg.
At http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004515

This was a 6 month study. But the surprising finding was that, the control group had a better outcome than the high exercise group :smile:
So 10-15 mins exercise per day (the most sedentary of the 3 groups) seems the most beneficial !

I'm not so sure you're reading the study correctly. Look at at the data in Figure 3 (http://www.plosone.org/article/showImageLarge.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj ournal.pone.0004515.g003&representation=PNG_L). While the control group showed a weight change of -0.9 kg, the 4 kcal/kg/week exercise group showed a weight change of -1.4 kg, the 8 kcal/kg/week exercise group showed a weight change of -2.1 kg, and the 12 kcal/kg/week exercise group showed a weight change of -1.5 kcal/kg/week. All three experimental groups showed more weight loss than the control group. The authors are merely saying that as exercise dose increases, you get decreasing returns on weight loss (due to the compensatory increases in appetite that you discussed earlier). However, this compensation does not lead to any of the exercise groups to show less weight loss than the control group.

[Siv]

Ok, read this news article yesterday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1323758/Can-cutting-Carbohydrates-diet-make-live-longer.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Can cutting carbohydrates from your diet make you live longer?
Professor Cynthia Kenyon, whom many experts believe should win the Nobel Prize for her research into ageing, has discovered that the carbohydrates we eat — from bananas and potatoes to bread, pasta, biscuits and cakes — directly affect two key genes that govern youthfulness and longevity.
Scientists already knew how to make laboratory animals live longer and healthier lives — you just cut back their calories to about three-quarters of their normal amount.

It’s not a practical solution for humans, because you feel cold and hungry all the time.

But what Professor Kenyon found out was why *drastically reducing calories has such a remarkable effect.

She discovered that it changed the way two crucial genes behaved. It turned down the gene that controls insulin, which in turn switched on another gene, which in turn switched on another gene, which acted like an elixir of life.

We jokingly called the first gene the Grim Reaper because when it’s switched on, the lifespan is fairly short,’ she explains.
Discovering the Grim Reaper gene has prompted the professor to *dramatically alter her own diet, *cutting right back on carbohydrates. That’s because carbs make your body produce more insulin (to mop up the extra blood sugar carbs *produce); and more insulin means a more active Grim Reaper.
One clue came from a small remote community of dwarves living in northern Ecuador who are cancer-free. They are missing the part of the Grim Reaper gene that controls a hormone called insulin-like growth factor. The downside is they only grow to 4ft tall because the hormone is needed for growth.

But this missing bit of the Grim Reaper gene also means they don’t develop cancer and are less likely to suffer from heart disease or obesity.

Professor Jeff Holly, who specialises in insulin-like growth factor, confirms that it is linked to cancer of the prostate, breast and colon.

In fact raised insulin levels, triggered by high carbohydrate *consumption, could be what *connects many of our big killers.
One way to reduce insulin levels is to exercise, which makes you more sensitive to it, which in turn means you need less of it. It also gives another health benefit in a surprising way. Exercise actually increases the level of damaging free radicals which stimulates the body to produce more protective anti-oxidants.

So should we all be trying to cut back on carbs to reduce our insulin levels?

It is a suggestion that flies in the face of 30 years of health advice to have a lower fat intake and eat plenty of long-lasting complex carbo*hydrates to keep the body supplied with energy.

[Siv]

For example, we can consider the studies that examined the effects of total physical activity on weight maintenance and change in adults. In this category, there were three randomized controlled trials and 16 consort studies. Two of the randomized controlled trials showed positive effects of physical activities while one of the trials showed no effect. All of the 16 consort studies in this area showed a positive effect. The citations for the three randomized trials are below:

Schmitz KH, Jensen MD, Kugler KC, et al. Strength training for obesity prevention in midlife women. Int J Obes 2003;27:326-33.
Borg P, Kukkonen-Harjula K, Fogelholm M, et al. Effects of walking or resistance training on weight loss maintenance in obese, middle-aged men: a randomized trial. Int J Obes 2002;26:676-83.
Fogelholm M, Kukkonen-Harjula K, Nenonen A, et al. Effects of walking training on weight maintenance after a very-low-energy diet in premenopausal obese women: a randomized controlled trial. Arch Intern Med 2000;160:2177-84.

As I said before, some studies will show no effect and some studies will show a positive effect. However, considering the evidence as a whole shows that the bulk of the evidence points to physical activity as a protective factor against weight gain. Hmm. Exercise definitely has other benefits and I have admitted that. It improves your insulin resistance, among other things, which could definitely help you reduce weight.
What I dont believe, and what I dont think there is evidence for is the simplistic calories in calories out interpretation of saying that the more you exercise, the more calories out and therefore you will lose weight. Thats nonsense. Because the body will compensate by making you hungrier. We have evolved a very complicated system over millions of years to preserve homeostasis.

I'm not so sure you're reading the study correctly. Look at at the data in Figure 3 (http://www.plosone.org/article/showImageLarge.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj ournal.pone.0004515.g003&representation=PNG_L). While the control group showed a weight change of -0.9 kg, the 4 kcal/kg/week exercise group showed a weight change of -1.4 kg, the 8 kcal/kg/week exercise group showed a weight change of -2.1 kg, and the 12 kcal/kg/week exercise group showed a weight change of -1.5 kcal/kg/week. All three experimental groups showed more weight loss than the control group. The authors are merely saying that as exercise dose increases, you get decreasing returns on weight loss (due to the compensatory increases in appetite that you discussed earlier). However, this compensation does not lead to any of the exercise groups to show less weight loss than the control group. Here's the chart
There is a marginal reduction, I agree. But its marginal.
And the more the intensity increases the lesser it is. Which kind of negates the simplistic calories in calories out theory.
Plus how are you controlling for the other improvements due to exercise, like insulin resistance ?

Have you read this article from Gary Taubes ? You dont seem the kind of person who dismisses folks without reading the evidence, so please do read it.
http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/
There is other evidence too, let me try and dig it out. Wish I had more time.

[Siv]

No I don't mean how carbohydrates drive insulin regulation and vise-versa. I'm well versed in that. Great. So you do realize the truth in that.

However, you claimed that various types of carbohydrates promoted this more than others, if I'm remembering correctly (a couple pages back I believe).

What I was asking for is, what is the biochemical mechanism or hypothesis that would explain this. Otherwise, as I pointed out, its just as likely that other confounding factors associated with those 'types of carbs' are the culprit in the up-regulation of insulin and not the 'type' of carb itself.

For example. You claimed that HFCS (a mix of fructose and glucose) is 'worse' for you than sucrose (fructose and glucose). What is the proposed biochemical mechanism for this? And on what basis do you discard the hypothesis that foods with HFCS may contain another factor that promotes obesity over sucrose based ones (if it does at all)? Here are my posts. They present what I said and some of the studies. Please read them.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2948044&postcount=17
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2941054&postcount=2
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2943978&postcount=13

[Ygggdrasil]

Hmm. Exercise definitely has other benefits and I have admitted that. It improves your insulin resistance, among other things, which could definitely help you reduce weight.
What I dont believe, and what I dont think there is evidence for is the simplistic calories in calories out interpretation of saying that the more you exercise, the more calories out and therefore you will lose weight. Thats nonsense. Because the body will compensate by making you hungrier. We have evolved a very complicated system over millions of years to preserve homeostasis.

It is certainly true that strong homeostatic mechanisms regulate weight gain in humans. Perhaps strengthening this homeostasis through exercise provides much of its protection against weight gain. However, it is also true that this homeostatic system evolved under conditions where humans were much more physically active than modern humans. All homeostatic systems have limits and it is plausible that at very low levels of physical activity the homeostatic system does not work so well. If this is the case, increases in physical activity from very low levels to moderate levels could have some positive effect. But, this is speculation.

Although the World Cancer Research Fund study shows that physical activity is protective against weight gain, it does not delve deeply into the mechanisms behind the protective effect. They do cite some evidence suggesting that the increased insulin sensitivity from regular physical activity may play a role. So, you certainly could be right that the positive effects of exercise on weight maintenance are not primarily due to the increased energy expenditure due to physical activity. Certainly the Church study shows that compensatory effects do exist. Whether the simple calorie in/calorie out explanation or some other explanation mediates the protective effect of exercise is an a question that probably requires further study.

Have you read this article from Gary Taubes ? You dont seem the kind of person who dismisses folks without reading the evidence, so please do read it.
http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/
There is other evidence too, let me try and dig it out. Wish I had more time.

I agree with the general point of the article: exercise alone will not help one lose weight. Controlling one's diet is another important factor and can often be more important than exercising. If the sole goal is weight loss, exercise may not be the most important factor (although I haven't seen any good evidence yet showing that it hurts weight loss as suggested by the article). Consistent with this view, the WCRF report cites many randomized controlled trials that show that a combination of physical activity and dietary interventions are effective at promoting weight loss.

Finally, the fact remains that strong scientific evidence demonstrates that exercise helps to maintain body weight and protects against weight gain as well as other diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Even though regular physical activity may not promote weight loss as well as people think, there are still many good reasons to exercise regularly. Exercise may not necessarily make one thinner, but it will certainly make one healthier.

[Siv]

Very well written, Ygggdrasil.
While you and I may differ on some points, overall I think I agree with what you say.

[Proton Soup]

Ok, read this news article yesterday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1323758/Can-cutting-Carbohydrates-diet-make-live-longer.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Can cutting carbohydrates from your diet make you live longer?

i certainly have doubts about much of it. we're certainly not worms or lab rats. very little of the stuff that works in rats re obesity pans out in humans, fwiw.

some things are fairly obvious. kids are eating a bit too much and not exercising as much now. this tends to accelerate some things physiologically, like puberty. it will be interesting to see how that pans out (after i'm dead and gone, most likely), but i'm guessing it shortens their lifespan. being obese is bad, there's not much controversy there.

the other side of the coin is to presumably increase lifespan by decreasing caloric intake, perhaps even below what used to be considered normal. you probably don't want to do this in children and adolescents, especially females. one obvious problem is that most women are prone to osteoporosis in old age, and by age 30, they've got all the calcium they will ever have in their bones. from there it is all downhill. both diet and exercise are important here, as exercise will provide hormonal stimulus to build stronger bones.

later in life, you run into other things. elderly people actually have a better life expectancy if there is a little bit of chub on them. and as always, being too obese will never help, but that typical J-shaped curve(if you're underweight, mortality goes up, overweight and mortality goes up) for longevity shifts to the right a bit.

in general, it seems that optimum BMI is neither too high, nor too low, and optimum may vary by life stage.

and there are other things. for one, we humans don't seem well-designed for conserving calories. we seem designed for keeping our big brains alive, generating copious amounts of heat. we also seem well-designed for traversing long distances on foot, wearing down lesser animals with not speed, but sheer persistance. both of these functions demand copious and efficient fat storage. and come with the expectation that there will be intermittent periods of starvation.


another idea i'd like to throw out there (and i think this is a fairly new topic of research, so there isn't a mountain of data yet) is the protein leverage hypothesis (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15836464). the general idea is that we have a metabolic need for a certain amount of protein. and if our food choices have a low percentage of protein, we will simply eat more of that food until our protein requirement is met. under this point of view, for an unregulated, free-eating human, it is not the carbs per se in the diet that are causing the obesity, but the poor ratio of protein in the chow (http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/262465/Bachelor+Chow/). just mice here (http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v16/n3/full/oby20089a.html), but hey, it's a start, and explains the idea a bit. also, spider monkeys (http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/4/685.full).

[mtc1973]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2491496/?tool=pubmed

I love this mouse!! I read about it a few years back - but he shows some definite and drastic changes in phenotype in response to a single gene overexpression in a place where it usually ain't!!! Put a liver enzyme in skeletal muscle - change how the muscle is fuelled - and watch him go! It's pretty amazing.

As usual - its a mouse - so I aint saying anything about the human condition - but its very interesting nevertheless.

[hamster143]

Ok, read this news article yesterday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1323758/Can-cutting-Carbohydrates-diet-make-live-longer.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Can cutting carbohydrates from your diet make you live longer?

There is an obvious question that arises after reading this article.

Your body needs energy. This energy can come from carbs, fat or protein. Regardless of the source, the only way the energy can get to your internal organs is via blood glucose. Insulin is released by the pancreas in response to blood glucose. Even if your diet is 100% fat, that fat is converted into glucose via ketogenesis/gluconeogenesis before the energy can be used.

What reason is there to think that consuming 2000 calories/day of "slow release" complex carbs will result in significantly different levels of insulin from consuming the same 2000 calories/day of fat and protein?

[Siv]

There is an obvious question that arises after reading this article.

Your body needs energy. This energy can come from carbs, fat or protein. Regardless of the source, the only way the energy can get to your internal organs is via blood glucose. Insulin is released by the pancreas in response to blood glucose. Even if your diet is 100% fat, that fat is converted into glucose via ketogenesis/gluconeogenesis before the energy can be used. I am no biochemistry expert (Dr. Stephan Guyenet is, BTW) but here's what it says from everyone's favourite source - wiki -
Most advocates of low-carbohydrate diets, such as the Atkins Diet, argue that the human body is adapted to function primarily in ketosis.[62][63] They argue that high insulin levels can cause many health problems, most significantly fat storage and weight gain. They argue that the purported dangers of ketosis are unsubstantiated (some of the arguments against ketosis result from confusion between ketosis and ketoacidosis which is a related and very dangerous condition).[64] They also argue that fat in the diet only contributes to heart disease in the presence of high insulin levels and that if the diet is instead adjusted to induce ketosis, fat and cholesterol in the diet are not a major concern (although most do not advocate unrestricted fat intake and do advocate avoiding trans fat).

On a high-carbohydrate diet, glucose is used by cells in the body for the energy needed for their basic functions, and about 2/3 of body cells require insulin in order to use glucose. Excessive amounts of blood glucose are thought to be a primary cause of the complications of diabetes; when glucose reacts with body proteins (resulting in glycosolated proteins) and change their behavior. Perhaps for this reason, the amount of glucose tightly maintained in the blood is quite low. Unless a meal is very low in starches and sugars, blood glucose will rise for a period of an hour or two after a meal. When this occurs, beta cells in the pancreas release insulin to cause uptake of glucose into cells. In liver and muscle cells, more glucose is taken in than is needed and stored as glycogen (once called 'animal starch').[65] Diets with a high starch/sugar content, therefore, cause release of more insulin and so more cell absorption. In diabetics, glucose levels vary in time with meals and vary a little more as a result of high carbohydrate content meals. In non-diabetics, blood sugar levels are restored to normal levels within an hour or two, regardless of the content of a meal.

It is worth noting that while there are Essential Fatty Acids(EFA) and Essential Amino Acids(EAA) there are no essential carbohydrates of any sort and while a diet devoid of EFA or EAA will result in eventual death, a diet completely without carbohydrates can be maintained indefinitely without health detriment.

What reason is there to think that consuming 2000 calories/day of "slow release" complex carbs will result in significantly different levels of insulin from consuming the same 2000 calories/day of fat and protein?I guess no other reason than the fact that it does. Have you measured your insulin and blood glucose levels after a mostly fatty meal ? People have. My mom has (she is a diabetic). If you add carbs, the difference is marked.

[cosmos 2.0]

I am no biochemistry expert (Dr. Stephan Guyenet is, BTW) but here's what it says from everyone's favourite source - wiki -



On a high-carbohydrate diet, glucose is used by cells in the body for the energy needed for their basic functions, and about 2/3 of body cells require insulin in order to use glucose. Excessive amounts of blood glucose are thought to be a primary cause of the complications of diabetes; when glucose reacts with body proteins (resulting in glycosolated proteins) and change their behavior. Perhaps for this reason, the amount of glucose tightly maintained in the blood is quite low. Unless a meal is very low in starches and sugars, blood glucose will rise for a period of an hour or two after a meal. When this occurs, beta cells in the pancreas release insulin to cause uptake of glucose into cells. In liver and muscle cells, more glucose is taken in than is needed and stored as glycogen (once called 'animal starch').[65] Diets with a high starch/sugar content, therefore, cause release of more insulin and so more cell absorption. In diabetics, glucose levels vary in time with meals and vary a little more as a result of high carbohydrate content meals. In non-diabetics, blood sugar levels are restored to normal levels within an hour or two, regardless of the content of a meal.

while i agree with this , it should be kept in mind this is normal mechanism in the body. People have tendency to eat excess carbohydrates mostly refined carbs, the body is given a new challenge to tackle this excess carbs. The normal mechanism is to secrete insulin which makes the cells in the body to take up the glucose and rest to store in liver as glycogen. what happens when we constantly take this excess carbs in the diet along with a sedentary lifestyle, is why the body has to adjust and undergo physiological changes like conversion of excess carbs into fat stored in body. The excess carbs also leads to increased insulin secretion which becomes limited or exhausted in the sense that it cannot be produced more after it reaches a certain level.


What reason is there to think that consuming 2000 calories/day of "slow release" complex carbs will result in significantly different levels of insulin from consuming the same 2000 calories/day of fat and protein?

I would like to see studies where calories got from fat and protein is better than calories from slow release complex carbohydrates, otherwise it only becomes an assumption.

[cosmos 2.0]

It is worth noting that while there are Essential Fatty Acids(EFA) and Essential Amino Acids(EAA) there are no essential carbohydrates of any sort and while a diet devoid of EFA or EAA will result in eventual death, a diet completely without carbohydrates can be maintained indefinitely without health detriment.

There are various types of fats and all are not essential for our body except linoleic acid,omega 3 fatty acids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid


No nobody is going to die if they don't eat carbs, carbohydrates are the easiest and most usable fuel in the body.

Proteins and fat are essential , but they are not easily used in the body - that is why the term ketosis usually arises whenever atkin's type of diet is suggested.

Most advocates of low-carbohydrate diets, such as the Atkins Diet, argue that the human body is adapted to function primarily in ketosis.[62][63] They argue that high insulin levels can cause many health problems, most significantly fat storage and weight gain. They argue that the purported dangers of ketosis are unsubstantiated (some of the arguments against ketosis result from confusion between ketosis and ketoacidosis which is a related and very dangerous condition).[64] They also argue that fat in the diet only contributes to heart disease in the presence of high insulin levels and that if the diet is instead adjusted to induce ketosis, fat and cholesterol in the diet are not a major concern (although most do not advocate unrestricted fat intake and do advocate avoiding trans fat).

what are long term effects of high protein and fat diet ? These studies are limited. Yes, better outcomes are seen, as some studies have indicated with regards to low carb diet.
Also there is a tendency to avoid foods such as vegetables and fruits even though they contain nutrients and fiber because they have carbs.

Not all fats are good. Trans fats are bad. Even proteins, high amount of red meat intake is associated with heart diseases , cancers .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_meat

[hamster143]

I guess no other reason than the fact that it does. Have you measured your insulin and blood glucose levels after a mostly fatty meal ? People have. My mom has (she is a diabetic). If you add carbs, the difference is marked.

I found this article

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/66/5/1264?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=holt&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

Things are not as simple as one might think. Beef produces higher insulin response per calorie than pasta, and white bread produces more response than apples... And I bet there are some nonlinear effects too, e.g. eating twice the amount of food more than doubles the insulin response in the short term (though what happens to the integrated response, no one knows).

And I'm 99% sure that your mom has not measured her insulin levels after different kinds of meals. Glucose yes, insulin no. There are simply no commercially available blood insulin level meters on the market.

[miami]

The success rate of diet pills is very low and they seem to be a perfect recipe for self destruction as they can apparently cause heart attacks, strokes and numerous other major health problems.

When you peruse the link below you will be absolutely astounded (as I was) and you will probably wonder why diet pills were not banned a long time ago.

[Siv]

I would like to see studies where calories got from fat and protein is better than calories from slow release complex carbohydrates, otherwise it only becomes an assumption. Studies? You have a whole big fat book, called Good Calories, Bad Calories. And its a very dry read, because it has pages and pages and pages of data and studies, plus of course tons of references.

And thats not the only book, there are many others.

[Siv]

And I'm 99% sure that your mom has not measured her insulin levels after different kinds of meals. Glucose yes, insulin no. There are simply no commercially available blood insulin level meters on the market.Yes, my mom has measured her insulin on three occasions (not at home, in the hospital). The insulin response of an egg meal was significantly lower than a fruit one. Rice and lentils was high, a bit higher than the fruit meal, in fact.

From this link < http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/90/4/986 >
" Interestingly, in the present study, the fat content of the mixed meal showed a significant inverse relation (r = –0.60) with observed insulin responses and was a more reliable predictor of insulin demand than the amount of carbohydrate. "

This is standard, actually. Everyone knows that fat results in very low rises in blood sugar and insulin, and yet diabetics are told to reduce their fat. The standard myth being that fat is calorie dense and also that fat can cause CVD and CHD. Saturated fat esp, has been given a terrible reputation, which is totally undeserved.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/5/1102
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/5/1175
http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/24/3/498

And the best of all, a nice paper from Nutrition journal, which summarizes all the myths and how useless nutrition science really is today.

http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/PIIS0899900710002893/fulltext

I love the Summary. A bit long but worth reading. Summary: What can be done?
Is there nothing of value in the DGAC Report? On the contrary, there are valuable suggestions made regarding improving nutritional literacy and cooking skills; restructuring the food environment, including farmers, agricultural producers, and food manufacturers; and improving the availability of affordable fresh produce. However, none of these recommendations makes sense in the context of nutritional guidance that is not based on sound scientific principles and demonstrable results. Reforming the food environment must begin with a re-evaluation of 30 y of nutritional policy that was originally implemented without a thorough and unbiased evaluation of the science.

It is of interest to consider the opinion of the American Medical Association (AMA) with respect to the first implementation of dietary guidelines [80]. In an editorial, it was stated:

We believe that it would be inappropriate at this time to adopt proposed national dietary goals as set forth in the Report on Dietary Goals for the United States. The evidence for assuming that benefits to be derived from the adoption of such universal dietary goals as set forth in the Report is not conclusive and there is potential for harmful effects from a radical long-term dietary change as would occur through adoption of the proposed national goals.

The guidelines recommended at that time show great similarity to the current recommendations:

The Report sets forth six dietary goals of the United States. These goals are as follows:


1.Increased carbohydrate consumption to account for 55% to 60% of energy (caloric) intake.


2.Reduce overall fat consumption from approximately 40% to 30% of energy intake.


3.Reduce saturated fat consumption to account for about 10% of total energy intake; and balance that with polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, which should account for about 10% of energy intake.


4.Reduce cholesterol consumption to about 300 mg/day.


5.Reduce sugar consumption by about 40% to account for about 15% total energy intake.


6.Reduce salt consumption by 50% to 85% to approximately 3 gm/day

In the three decades since, carbohydrate consumption has increased; overall fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol consumption have decreased to near or below targeted levels; caloric intake remains within recommended levels; and leisure-time physical activity has increased slightly (pp. D1-1, D3-10, B2-3). At the same time, scientific evidence in favor of these recommendations remains inconclusive, and we must consider the possibility that the “potential for harmful effects” has in fact been realized. Notably, “the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the US has increased dramatically in the past three decades” (A4); the number of Americans diagnosed with T2D has tripled [81].

The AMA concludes:

The Report suggests that the incidence of heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, obesity and tooth decay could be reduced by making qualitative and quantitative changes in “the American diet.” The goals are laudable; however, the American Medical Association believes that there are insufficient data to recommend such changes in the diet on a nationwide scale.

Laudable as the goals were, the application of those recommendations has constituted a population-wide dietary experiment that should be brought to a halt. Lack of supporting evidence limits the value of the proposed recommendations as guidance for the consumer or as the basis of public health policy. We ask whether the Dietary Guidelines for Americans process as it stands should continue or whether there might not be better alternatives.

It is time for public health leaders, scientists, and clinicians to stop blaming Americans for not following the recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and instead to re-examine the process used to formulate the US dietary guidelines and determine whether or not it is still appropriate for our current needs.

We ask whether it would be preferable to convene an impartial panel of scientists consisting of biochemists, anthropologists, geneticists, physicists, etc., who are not directly tied to nutritional policy. Such a panel would be able to hear all sides in the debate with few preconceived notions. Recommendations issued by this group would be more likely to be moderate, circumspect, and established on a complete and accurate assessment of available science rather than a narrow perspective of accepted nutritional practice. Public health nutritional policies produced from such recommendations may then serve the honorable intentions of those first dietary goals “to maximize the quality of life for all Americans” [5].

[hamster143]

The insulin response of an egg meal was significantly lower than a fruit one.

The immediate response, maybe. After a fruit meal, insulin levels drop down to fasting levels within 2 hours. An egg meal may take much longer to absorb completely.

Everyone knows that fat results in very low rises in blood sugar and insulin,

not just fat, but presence of fat. Amounts of water and fiber also seem to matter.

[Siv]

Hamster,

Guess what ? I was looking at some of Gary Taube's online stuff and he has a response to the exact study you posted.

Here's the Q&A.

From http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/36758/20088/gary-round-3

Insulin Index
In some follow-up reading, I ran into the concept of the insulin index, which purports to index the insulin response of foods. This index appears to indicate that certain protein rich foods (like beef and fish) may actually have more impact on insulin that certain carbohydrate foods. This is counter-intuitive based on the science that Gary writes about. I would be interested to know whether Gary has any comments about this index.


It's always been known that protein stimulates an insulin response, because some of the amino acids in the protein are converted to glucose. The assumption has always been that this effect is small compared to that of carbohydrates, and that it is muted because it takes considerably longer to digest protein from meat, for instance, than it does glucose from high glycemic index carbohydrates. Moreover, protein also stimulates secretion from the pancreas of a hormone called glucagon, which is not the case with carbohydrates. Glucagon works opposite insulin on the fat tissue itself and so would be expected to mute or counteract entirely any fat accumulation stimulated by the insulin.

Another factor to keep in mind is that the paper cited most often as evidence for the insulin secretion in response to meat and fish -- a 1997 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition titled "An insulin index of foods: the insulin demand generated by 1000-kJ portions of common foods" -- used extremely lean steaks and whitefish for the measurement. The fish was roughly 90 percent calories protein and 10 percent fat and the meat was 70-30. The more interesting question, and the one more relevant to the arguments in the book, is what happens when the meat and fish are more in the neighborhood of 70 percent or even 80 percent fat by calories. That hasn't been addressed. In short, the assumption that our insulin is primarily regulated by the carbohydrates in the diet is a reasonable one and will tell us most of what we need to know when it comes to fat accumulation and chronic disease.

[Moonbear]

I'm entering this discussion late, and have not read every study posted. A few points and questions come to mind though.

First, I don't think you've demonstrated that there has been a "huge increase" in cancer in the population, which is required to make your initial claims that somehow carbohydrate consumption is responsible for this. With better diagnostics, there certainly is more cancer detected/diagnosed, but that doesn't mean it is more prevalent now than at other times in history.

Second, I don't think you've shown that a high carbohydrate diet is a big part of the problem. Can it contribute to some types of cancer? Yes. That seems to be the gist of the articles you've presented, but even in those, it seems the common denominator is actually development of type II diabetes. That first list of articles presented do not even all address cancer; several only address development of type II diabetes, which is not disputed by anyone reputable that I know of. The remainder discuss a specific type of breast cancer (the non-estrogen-receptor related type of breast cancer, which is not the most common type of breast cancer; the study in fact concluded there was no OVERALL increase in breast cancer, just of that one minor subtype), and pancreatic cancer. Since the pancreas is the secreter of insulin, it is perhaps not surprising that it would be the organ to malfunction in people who have consumed so much carbohydrates that they've become diabetic. Likewise, it could be that the cause and effect are reversed, and that those who have dysfunctions of their pancreatic cells predisposing them to cancer could also be more likely to develop diabetic complications.

Obesity severe enough to lead to type II diabetes is associated with a lot of other complications. If those people are overconsuming any nutrient to the point of developing diseases from it, that hardly means the nutrient is a bad nutrient if consumed in more reasonable quantities.

You seem able to locate peer-reviewed literature, so I'm wondering why you are continually referring to one particular book by one author rather than evaluating the literature as a whole for yourself? There are many types of cancer and trying to pin one single nutrient as the blame for all of it is not particularly reasonable, especially when even the literature you're providing is showing that there are prevalent forms of cancer that are NOT more frequent in people over consuming this nutrient.

Epidemiological studies are useful, but primarily for the development of hypotheses to test, not for forming strong conclusions. I think that's the issue here, that the opening post contained a fairly strong conclusion (blame carbohydrates) based on a premise that was not strongly supported in the first place (a huge increase in cancer). The evidence presented is far from conclusive. That's not to say there isn't something to the idea; maybe there is a connection between carbohydrate intake and certain types of cancer, and maybe that's particularly a concern for people predisposed to a particular type of diabetes, or maybe if they have already developed diabetes, there is a higher risk of certain types of cancer when particular diets are consumed.

In the longer term, developing appropriate nutritional advice for a population requires more than consideration of a single type of risk factor. For example, if you're trying to advise diabetics on how to adjust their diet, and certain foods put them at a higher risk of pancreatic cancer, but other foods put them at a higher risk of developing neuropathies, or a more rapid progression toward kidney failure and pulmonary edema, or atherosclerotic plaques leading to stroke, how would you weigh the risks and benefits of those different diets? That's the challenge with real patients and real diets.

So, I don't dismiss out of hand that a particular diet might have benefits for certain types of diseases, or in particular patient populations, or that there is more to study and learn about the mechanisms of those diets. However, when anyone promotes one single diet as a panacea for a broad class of diseases and across all members of the population, I become highly suspicious that they are just trying to sell books for a profit, and not really promoting scientific knowledge in a responsible way. I'm not sure if that's what's being done in the book you're discussing, because I have not read it. I'm basing that assumption on what you've presented of it here.

[Siv]

Hello Moonbear,

The reason I cite the book is because it is basically a compilation of tons of research, as I mentioned multiple times. GCBC is not a diet book, its a compilation of research by an award winning science journalist whose previous award winning works dealt with cold fusion and other physics subjects.

It is a very dry read and basically references tons of research to show how the current low-fat dogma has no research supporting it and how all the evidence points to carbohydrates (especially refined carbs and fructose) being responsible for most of the diseases of modern civilization.

He in fact does cite the serious limitations of epidemiological studies (I posted a link).

I respect his work, mostly becuase of the evidence based nature of it, but more importantly, becuase he is not a guy trying to sell a diet or make money off supllements. He is a science journalist who happened to look at the science being practised in the nutrition field, got appalled at the (lack of) quality there, and wrote a book.

[hamster143]

The reason I cite the book is because it is basically a compilation of tons of research, as I mentioned multiple times. GCBC is not a diet book, its a compilation of research by an award winning science journalist whose previous award winning works dealt with cold fusion and other physics subjects.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials. ... researchers were frequently manipulating data analyses, chasing career-advancing findings rather than good science, and even using the peer-review process—in which journals ask researchers to help decide which studies to publish—to suppress opposing views.

...

49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years, as judged by the science community’s two standard measures: the papers had appeared in the journals most widely cited in research articles, and the 49 articles themselves were the most widely cited articles in these journals. These were articles that helped lead to the widespread popularity of treatments such as the use of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, vitamin E to reduce the risk of heart disease, coronary stents to ward off heart attacks, and daily low-dose aspirin to control blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes. Ioannidis was putting his contentions to the test not against run-of-the-mill research, or even merely well-accepted research, but against the absolute tip of the research pyramid. Of the 49 articles, 45 claimed to have uncovered effective interventions. Thirty-four of these claims had been retested, and 14 of these, or 41 percent, had been convincingly shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated.

Don't trust anyone who has an agenda. Gary Taubes has an agenda. Dipping in the sea of contradictory medical research, he's virtually assured of finding enough articles to confirm his agenda to make him sound scientific.

[Moonbear]

It is a very dry read and basically references tons of research to show how the current low-fat dogma has no research supporting it and how all the evidence points to carbohydrates (especially refined carbs and fructose) being responsible for most of the diseases of modern civilization.
These are the sorts of over-generalizations I am taking issue with. Trying to point a finger at a single nutrient as responsible for most diseases is just as likely to end up proven wrong over time as pointing the finger at any other single nutrient.

I respect his work, mostly becuase of the evidence based nature of it, but more importantly, becuase he is not a guy trying to sell a diet or make money off supllements.
Okay, so he's just trying to make money selling a book. :wink:

He is a science journalist who happened to look at the science being practised in the nutrition field, got appalled at the (lack of) quality there, and wrote a book.
Science journalists are notoriously bad at understanding science. I cringe at how badly they tend to misrepresent scientific research. So, he's appalled at the lack of quality of research in a field, yet uses that research to support his opinions? Do you see the disconnection there? It sounds like he might simply not understand the scientific process. A lot of journalists don't, sadly. The journalists are often the ones guilty of over-hyping various fad diets and promoting unsound nutritional advice. Yes, there is a lot of popular dietary advice that is not well supported by the research, but that is primarily because of the journalists, not the scientists. Some of these newer diets are still being studied to find out if they are all they claim to be. You are correct that there are many diets around that have no scientific backing to them. It doesn't mean the science is bad, it means people have been doing a good job ignoring the science for a long time.

These articles might interest you. It gets at what nutritionists have known for years; it's not only the type of nutrient, but the source of it. Basically, not all sources of nutrients are created equal. So, a low carbohydrate diet can have different effects depending on what the source of the other nutrients in that diet include, such as animal fats/proteins, or vegetable fats/proteins.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20820038
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17093250
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258623

Not too surprisingly, cutting back both carbohydrates AND animal fats/proteins seemed to have the best overall health outcomes in these studies.

Here are others comparing low fat vs low carbohydrate diets:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20807884
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20713651
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17556688

Of course, most of these studies are focusing on caloric restriction and weight loss, and none really compares a modest diet with more of a balance of nutrients and prevention of the weight gain in the first place. Obesity is a serious health problem in society today. However, the same nutrients that cause trouble when trying to lose weight may not be the ones that were to blame for the original gain of that weight. When an obese person is trying to lose weight, often they already have metabolic dysfunctions. That can change how they utilize nutrients compared to someone who hasn't developed those types of dysfunctions already.

[Siv]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

Don't trust anyone who has an agenda. Gary Taubes has an agenda. Dipping in the sea of contradictory medical research, he's virtually assured of finding enough articles to confirm his agenda to make him sound scientific. :confused:
Your article in fact supports my point that medical research has been abyssmal the past many decades. Something Taubes repeatedly reveals as well.

BTW what is his agenda ?!

On the contrary, many of the so-called studies claiming carbs are not so bad etc are often funded by the food industry :smile:

Here's another interesting article on the same - how pathetic the current medical establishment is ...
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/170/9/749
Less Is More - How Less Health Care Can Result in Better Health

[Siv]

These are the sorts of over-generalizations I am taking issue with. Trying to point a finger at a single nutrient as responsible for most diseases is just as likely to end up proven wrong over time as pointing the finger at any other single nutrient. Thats a nice sounding statement.
However, its an over-generalization as well. It may be your opinion, sure.
However, it is quite possible that one nutrient is responsible for a whole host of modern diseases, simply because we never ate so much of it for most of our evolutionary history.
Science journalists are notoriously bad at understanding science. I cringe at how badly they tend to misrepresent scientific research. Another over generalization and opinion.
So, he's appalled at the lack of quality of research in a field, yet uses that research to support his opinions? Do you see the disconnection there? It sounds like he might simply not understand the scientific process. A lot of journalists don't, sadly. Wow, tons of opinion and prejudices there.
I dont see a disconnection there.
What he is saying is that the current low-fat dogma is not based on any evidence. And in fact shows what the real research indicates. And the low-fat mantra has made people gobble up carbs like there is no tomorrow, which has resulted in tons of problems.

I think instead of spewing generalizations and prejudices, you should read his book and refute the evidence there. A google search can throw up articles that support both low-carb and low-fat. Depending on what agenda the person has.

Plus remember, its hard for the establishment to admit that it has been wrong. How many times have we seen that before ? So thats nothing new.


These articles might interest you. It gets at what nutritionists have known for years; it's not only the type of nutrient, but the source of it. Basically, not all sources of nutrients are created equal. So, a low carbohydrate diet can have different effects depending on what the source of the other nutrients in that diet include, such as animal fats/proteins, or vegetable fats/proteins.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20820038
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17093250
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258623

Not too surprisingly, cutting back both carbohydrates AND animal fats/proteins seemed to have the best overall health outcomes in these studies.

Here are others comparing low fat vs low carbohydrate diets:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20807884
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20713651
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17556688

Of course, most of these studies are focusing on caloric restriction and weight loss, and none really compares a modest diet with more of a balance of nutrients and prevention of the weight gain in the first place. Obesity is a serious health problem in society today. However, the same nutrients that cause trouble when trying to lose weight may not be the ones that were to blame for the original gain of that weight. When an obese person is trying to lose weight, often they already have metabolic dysfunctions. That can change how they utilize nutrients compared to someone who hasn't developed those types of dysfunctions already. Your second study concludes this - "CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that diets lower in carbohydrate and higher in protein and fat are not associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease in women. When vegetable sources of fat and protein are chosen, these diets may moderately reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. "

Your third study : "CONCLUSION: These data suggest that diets lower in carbohydrate and higher in fat and protein do not increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in women. In fact, diets rich in vegetable sources of fat and protein may modestly reduce the risk of diabetes."

Shall I now cite studies showing low carb, high fat/protien is good ? :wink:

http://www.annals.org/content/153/3/147.abstract?aimhp
"Conclusion: Successful weight loss can be achieved with either a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet when coupled with behavioral treatment. A low-carbohydrate diet is associated with favorable changes in cardiovascular disease risk factors at 2 years. "
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/297/9/969
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa0708681

But seriously, do you know how complicated a subject nutrition actually is ?
It is nothing as simple as low-carb is good or low-fat is bad.

There are tons of subtleties. Industrial seed oils for eg. are the devil, because they are sky high in omega-6 fats which are terrible for us. So any high fat diet which makes rats gorge on tons of O6 really is not showing anything.
Similarly, there is lots of difference between pasture fed dairy and grain fed dairy.
Also, today's meat farms inject all sorts of hormones and antibiotics into the animals, which have been known to be very harmful.

Even in carbs, tubers, although they do make your blood sugar shoot up are far less harmful than refined flour, sugar or HFCS. All vegetables have some carbs but are definitely ok (except for the real high carb ones).

Its the trying to simplify objective that resulted in this mess in the first place. The simplistic notion that dietary fat gets simply converted into body fat. Or that calorie dense foods are to be avoided, period.

Please read the blogs of some modern experts who are not afraid to question established dogma in nutrition.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/
http://www.paleonu.com/
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/cholesterol-blog.html

[Proton Soup]

Siv, do you think Michael Phelps is going to get diabetes?

QXRvXtcSu14

[Proton Soup]

These articles might interest you. It gets at what nutritionists have known for years; it's not only the type of nutrient, but the source of it. Basically, not all sources of nutrients are created equal. So, a low carbohydrate diet can have different effects depending on what the source of the other nutrients in that diet include, such as animal fats/proteins, or vegetable fats/proteins.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20820038
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17093250
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258623

Not too surprisingly, cutting back both carbohydrates AND animal fats/proteins seemed to have the best overall health outcomes in these studies.

Here are others comparing low fat vs low carbohydrate diets:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20807884
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20713651
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17556688

Of course, most of these studies are focusing on caloric restriction and weight loss, and none really compares a modest diet with more of a balance of nutrients and prevention of the weight gain in the first place. Obesity is a serious health problem in society today. However, the same nutrients that cause trouble when trying to lose weight may not be the ones that were to blame for the original gain of that weight. When an obese person is trying to lose weight, often they already have metabolic dysfunctions. That can change how they utilize nutrients compared to someone who hasn't developed those types of dysfunctions already.

speaking of these, i think a lot of what the DASH studies and some of these others are pointing to wrt to vegetable instead of grain sources of carbs is an increase in consumption of potassium and reduction of sodium. perhaps also magnesium.

[Siv]

Siv, do you think Michael Phelps is going to get diabetes?
Depends on what his genes and diet are, doesn't it :wink:

[Verimius]

Gary Taubes' bio indicates he thoroughly understands science: http://www.garytaubes.com/bio/. If you want to refute him, you'll have to do it based on the science he uses, not on the percentage of medical studies that may or may not be reliable.

His thesis is exactly that a single macronutrient, carbohydrates, is responsible for obesity, diabetes, and many other diseases that plague us. If you actually read his work, you'll find that he rigorously supports his thesis with a vast body of research going back over a century.

For those who found Good Calories, Bad Calories hard going, Taubes has a new book coming out at the end of December, "Why We Get Fat, and What to Do About It". This will be an easier, but still persuasive read.

[Siv]

Hey Verimius, thanks for joining this discussion - everyone was kind of ganging up on me :wink:

[Proton Soup]

i thought this recent story was interesting. will someone pass the ho-hos?

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html?section=cnn_latest)

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.

His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.

But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.

Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.

[Siv]

Haven't visited PF for a while since there wasn't much happening on this thread.

i thought this recent story was interesting. will someone pass the ho-hos?

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html?section=cnn_latest) All low-carb bashers are grabbing on to this one study now :wink:

But there have already been lots of rebuttals on the web.

Here's my favourite one :
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/11/twinkie-diet-for-fat-loss.html

[douglerner]

His thesis is exactly that a single macronutrient, carbohydrates, is responsible for obesity, diabetes, and many other diseases that plague us. If you actually read his work, you'll find that he rigorously supports his thesis with a vast body of research going back over a century.

But is it "good science" to simply ignore the data which doesn't fit his thesis?

For example, the obesity rate in Japan is just 3%. Yet the typical diet is extremely high carbohydrate (multiple servings of white rice each day).

An overall theory has to explain this as well.

doug

[Albern]

Hello every one .,,
I totally agree with you.,.... carb consumption and explosion of sugar are the reasons but Smoking Is also another reason of cancer that is increasing day by day..

[nismaratwork]

Hello every one .,,
I totally agree with you.,.... carb consumption and explosion of sugar are the reasons but Smoking Is also another reason of cancer that is increasing day by day..

Smoking is associated with a fairly limited (althogh stil large) number of cancers. You don't see any other reason for increased diagoses... nothing environmental, or to do with an aging population?

[treehouse]

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/87/5/1384
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/84/5/1171
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/2/348
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/5/1495
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/4/899
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/3/535

More and more evidence suggests carbs are the culprit, not fat - not just for cancer but diabetes, CHD and CVD. Please read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes for a ton of evidence, journal articles and references. Also read Dr. Bernstein, the Whole Health Source Blog, Heart Scan Blog and Panu.

Does the last one suggest that sugar is carcinogenic?

[treehouse]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/



Don't trust anyone who has an agenda. Gary Taubes has an agenda. Dipping in the sea of contradictory medical research, he's virtually assured of finding enough articles to confirm his agenda to make him sound scientific.

Benevolent agendas are. When a doctor recommends a course of treatment, that plan is an agenda toward the end of patient health. Ask this man: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/ehrlich-scientist-advocates-081111.html

you can deduce an object's trajectory within a tactically satisfactory margin of error without computing the vectors that determine exactly where it winds up in that margin. Science can inform us of a correct course of action.

[tkav1980]

the increase in obesity isn't about carbs, it's about eating too many calories. Taubes is a fruitcake.

I have a fantastic example of this. If you look around online you can find a diet outline called skiploading. You're literally eating doughnuts, fruitty pebbles, pasta, candy etc on the weekends and ending up sub 6% bodyfat. Total calorie expendature in any given time frame is greater than total caloric intake with the exception of re-feed days. However, from my understanding of it, these high carb re-feeds are used to restore glycogen levels that have been severely depleted through extremely low carbs, less that 50 Grams per day, while doing extremely strenuous weight training.


I used this diet for contest prep 2 years ago and it worked wonders as long as the re-feed is timed so that you start it a few hours before the contest, right after you drop your water.

[treehouse]

I have a fantastic example of this. If you look around online you can find a diet outline called skiploading. You're literally eating doughnuts, fruitty pebbles, pasta, candy etc on the weekends and ending up sub 6% bodyfat. Total calorie expendature in any given time frame is greater than total caloric intake with the exception of re-feed days. However, from my understanding of it, these high carb re-feeds are used to restore glycogen levels that have been severely depleted through extremely low carbs, less that 50 Grams per day, while doing extremely strenuous weight training.


I used this diet for contest prep 2 years ago and it worked wonders as long as the re-feed is timed so that you start it a few hours before the contest, right after you drop your water.

Timothy Ferriss would say that the weekly binging keeps the body from slowing its metabolism to adjust to the diet.