Large analysis finds that low-fat diets have low impact | Hacker News Reader

Large analysis finds that low-fat diets have low impact

nature.com

47 pointscryoshon57 comments

We need to eliminate the idea of the diet. The only way to lose weight and to keep it off is to commit to a long term lifestyle change. Similar to how recovering addicts continue to go to meetings years have they've gotten sober, people need to make the same kind of commitment to their weight and general health.

Disclosure: I lost nearly 100lbs 15 years ago. The most I gained back was 20 pounds. Never going back.

I gained 100 lb in less than one year. Most of that showed up in 6 months.

That's the side nobody talks about. Losing a pound in a random week is easy. Keeping a pound off for 15 years is much harder and I commend your resolve.

If it's hard then you are doing it wrong. The point of the post you are replying to is that people shouldn't "go on a diet" and spend weeks or months not enjoying their life. Instead you should find a way to eat a normal amount of food and enjoy it. Then you'll lose weight and never gain it back.

I don't mean hard as in will power. Rather, there is a huge trend to gain weight as you age. http://stateofobesity.org/obesity-by-age/

PS: The 65+ numbers seem to be better except morbidly obese people tend to die young and weight loss is often a sign of a medical issue.

"Similar to how recovering addicts continue to go to meetings years have they've gotten sober"

Turns out, that's not a plan a plan supported by scientific evidence either ;)

You're probably referring to the recent debunking of 12 step program?

Isn't that more centered around getting clean, and not keeping clean, and also more centered around the 12 step programs themselves rather than the support groups?

I wouldn't call it recent per se, it's been unsupported by research since perhaps the 1970's. Anyway, I just meant that the support groups lack the backing of research.

True, it's always been BS, but there was a recent prominent article or study calling it out.

"No matter what the diet, the key to weight loss is to burn more calories than are taken in. Fats contain more than twice as many calories per gram as proteins or carbohydrates. It seemed logical, then, to reduce fat as a means of reducing calories overall, says Hall."

Translation: we were wrong, but it was logical to be wrong and we still have some other ways to be wrong, like the "all calories are equal" mantra to replace old wrongs that we can't say anymore with a straight face.

I call the logic behind 'burn more calories than taken in' the 'bucket with a hole in the bottom' theory of metabolism and homeostasis.

In summary, diets do not work (low fat or high fat). If you actually want to reduce your weight it really does comes down to permanent lifestyle changes.

Agreed, but a lot of this is just arguing over what "diet" means.

Short-term dietary changes (sometimes just called "diets") do not work -- at least not for a long time. Long-term dietary changes (i.e. changes to your "diet") work for a long time.

Low-carb diets do work.

They might just work because they make it easy to eat less - very simple rule to follow that rules out most unhealthy snacking.

When you look at ketogenic diets being used to control epilepsy you realise there is likely more to it than just behavioural.

You're also less hungry when you restrict carbs (bread, pasta, sweets, etc.).

They also might just work because they train your body to run off its energy reserves. Even in a "healthy" high carb diet, you are still requiring a constant intake of fruit/grains.

As do high-carb diets. The issue is one of keeping to the strict dieting requirements. The article states the issue being that diets, on average, enable you to lose 5kg over a year. This is not successful weight loss.

> And although there was a slight benefit to higher-fat diets that were also low in carbohydrates, Hall says that this difference — which is about 1 kilogram — is clinically meaningless.

Nope. Did you read the article? They're as effective as other diets over the long run.

You just said that they don't work, but they do work. Just as well as anything else does.

Key quote:

Dieters tend to adhere strictly to their diet in the beginning, but quickly begin to revert to old habits, says Hall. By about six months, dieters have often reached their lowest weight but are back to consuming nearly as many calories as they did before they started dieting. From there, they start putting the weight back on

So the dieting works, as long as people stay on the diet. Eating less is still a reliable way to weigh less. The hard part is keeping it up.

If something is reliable but almost impossible to keep up, I wouldn't exactly say that it "works". That's like saying to a student that they'll pass a course if only they study hard enough, without giving any further study or motivational advice. It's true but it's pointless.

I just wonder how many research dollars we're going to spend if the advice basically stays: "Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, don't eat more calories than you expend and do moderate exercise a couple of times a week. If you're overweight you shorten your life."

Probably until it gets driven home to the type of people who read and comment on studies like this that education alone is one of the worst interventions for behavioral change.

Edit: proper emphasis - "that education is" => "that education alone"

I have a big problem with this line of thinking. It's like saying the key to not having a fever is to keep your temperature down. Maybe you have a high temperature because you just don't have the willpower stop from shaking when you get the chills? Obviously we know that is not the case, but why do we assume that obesity is strictly a willpower issue?

Because we are being manipulated by multi-billion dollar industries to believe it is a willpower issue.

Carbohydrates are broken down into sugar during digestion. Sugar causes a hormone called insulin to be released by the pancreas. Insulin causes the body to store energy as fat. Therefore, carbohydrates cause your body to store fat. It's that simple.

Americans are obese because of carbohydrates, not willpower. As someone who never got to know his grandfather because of obesity, I have very little patience for the "calories-in, calories-out" myth.

Eat fat.

One of the problems we have when talking about diets is that most of the participants assume that people want to lose weight. They don't. They want to feel healthier and lose body fat. I would quite happily be 150 kg if I were a towering slab of raw meat. That likely feels quite a bit better than being even a 130 kg jiggly lump of suet.

Never mind that in order to maintain that weight as a meatwall, I'd have to wolf down six whole fried chickens a day and knock down hardwood trees with bare-knuckle punches. Maintaining that weight as a fatblob is as easy as eating some candy and drinking a liter or two of soda pop in front of the TV.

As a result, the conversation is too often how to turn a 150kg fatty into a 100kg fatty, rather than turning a 150kg fatty into a 150kg liftbro, and then letting the adiposity problem take care of itself.

I don't have a problem with the number on my bathroom scale. My problem is that I don't have action-hero movie-star abs. And maybe also some fear of adiposity-correlated diseases, like diabetes or atherosclerosis.

I would rather rearrange my life in such a way that becoming more unhealthy is the thing that requires the constant upkeep of unyielding willpower, rather than the other way around. That's why diets fail. The biochemical feedback loops between gut and brain make it progressively more difficult to lose more fat and not replenish it at the very first opportunity--which is always, because western society is saturated with cheap, calorie-dense foods. The hard part shouldn't be keeping it up; it should be harder to go back. And that requires changing the brain, particularly in the limbic system. Calorie restriction is, to the primitive parts of the brain back behind the prefrontal cortex, a punishment to be avoided.

Perhaps exercise equipment that dispenses gratis cocaine whenever you break a previous personal workout record? What could go wrong?~

Humans had largely remained thin rather than fat for most of human history.

It's not like we wake up one day and suddenly decided we want to be fat and eat a lot more calories.

No. The error is more subtle; it's wrong to equate "weight" with "health". Humans are well adapted to protect their health, and if put on a diet which will kill them, they'll usually stop following it. You see that they stopped following their diet, and regained weight. What you don't see is the counterfactual, where if they kept following the diet, they would've developed non-weight-related health problems and possibly died.

Humans _were_ well adapted to protect their health. Now they're adapted to eat when it's available and conserve energy if possible.

If not on a "diet", are prone to overeating, weight gain and subsequent health problems.

And possibly died.

A pretty cool study, IMO. This finding plays directly into the oft-mentioned HN biases against nutritional sciences.

saturated fats are still thought to be associated with poor heart health

When you remove the passive voice from this, you get something like "The people who've been telling you all fats are bad have been wrong for decades, but they still think saturated fats are bad." Why should we trust what these people think? I'll have some whole pastured eggs cooked in grass-fed ghee, thank you very much.

I eagerly await reading the next headline in 10 years:

"Even larger analysis finds that low-fat diets have low impact"

And then in 20 years:

"Large analysis finds that low-salt diets have low impact"

But I think I'll die before low-fat and low-salt foods stop being marketed, since there never really was any good evidence for them in the first place...

The way marketing goes is something else, all right. Back in the '70s my mother fed us standard Oscar Meyer bacon, which I still think is the best (albeit perhaps under-cooked by most people's standards). Back then it was advertised as being "Sugar cured", that's evidently part of its unique taste.

I just started adding ~100 calories explicitly including some fat to my normal 200 calorie bagel breakfast, and that includes a couple of slices of said bacon every few days. Which is no longer advertised as "Sugar cured", (instead it's "Hardwood smoked" or the like), it still has sugar in the label ... and it needs only a bit of salt to be every bit as good as it was in the '70s.

People seem to very readily believe that things which they enjoy are bad for them. It's a funny thing. So the appeal of "low x" where x is something generally nice will probably not go away.

One of the most amazing is "r/nofap" in reddit.

Some dude said in TED talk that "We have no idea how porn affects brain. Porn happened suddenly and now we don't even have a control group because everybody is doing it." And with some logic this is good reason to stop masturbating altogether.

This of course doesn't work out. Regular guy is going to get pretty irresistible urge at some point. And that's instrumental for it too. Because relapses enforce your quilt and wallowing in quilt is part of the appeal. Another part is "competing in faith", they have no-fap clocks there too.

Some people do the similar guilt tripping with food and exercise. I hear lot of: "It's bad to drink after workout. You reset your hard work." Also some people seem to think that chips and anything "organic" balance each other out.

Well there are also people on there who really do have a problem to the point of addiction. It absolutely can negatively effect your sex life and even your entire life. What I see on there is more that people like to accept that a panacea exists to improve their entire life. It's a nice thing to believe, but it's rarely true.

Lurked for months, finally registered in order to post the following opinion: when somebody is very obviously overweight, they got that way by eating and exercising abnormally. To get healthy, sometimes the best route is, then, to eat and exercise abnormally.

'Lifestyle change' is in order -- agreed -- but it's honestly a lot easier when you push harder. For some people anyway.

It's like smoking. Sometimes just quitting cold turkey works better than continuing to reward yourself with a cigarette.

My brother lost 70kg in 2 years by hitting the treadmill for an hour a day. He's now just 70kg, and still runs for an hour a day. The extreme worked for him (he doesn't under-eat).

The first bite of food in a day starts the pangs for more, so sometimes delaying works really well. If you hit the gym for 90 mins (including commute, let's say) and cook instead of getting fast food, and get 7-8 hours of sleep, suddenly the time you have to stuff your face is drastically reduced. That's one benefit of doing stuff other than sitting.

What you do has a lot more of an impact on your diet than the actual food. You won't feel like eating a 500-calorie chocolate bar when you can see the spectre of 500-calorie-burning you sweating tonight at the gym.

Low carb high fat diet is easier to follow because one doesn't feel hungry. The problem is carbs are everywhere and often hidden in sauces etc, so it takes immense will power to sustain unless you're a hermit. Intermittent fasting also definitlyworks and has significant health benefits,butter in coffee mct oil - ideas promoted by David Asprey Bullet proof executive - helps. Ignorent nonsense opinions on saturated fats still promoted as factual, even in this article, saturated anaimal fats such as grass feed butter are much much healthier than vegetable oils, unsaturated oilds degrade easily and become poisonous easily esp at high temp, olive oil and coconut oil are the only ones safe. Most oils have to much Omega 6 wich is danngerous for health.

From the article:

> And although there was a slight benefit to higher-fat diets that were also low in carbohydrates, Hall says that this difference — which is about 1 kilogram — is clinically meaningless.

It's frustrating that the low-carb people keep saying "all the science was bollocks, and low carb is the way to go", but then ignore the science that says that low carb might not be the way to go after all.

To be more specific, they talk about low-fat, moderate-carbs and moderate-protein, processed and toxic food. In that case it doesn't matter if it's low-fat or not. Drinking all day coke ore eating all day fruit are both low-fat. Guess what, there is a difference.

What's so great about fruit? I bet people just think it's healthy because it's in the phrase "fruits and vegetables". You're not going to get scurvy or colds or anything if you go without.

> "No one knows for sure why this strategy failed"

We've launched the Hubble but the general public is still reading horoscopes, there's gonna be a reality vs culture disagreement.

Completely ignoring the psychological impact. You are fat you suck you are a lower class loser you should be made to suffer we should all shame you now go cry in a corner and eat horrible tasting unsatisfying high carb / low fat special diet food, oh look high carb makes you even fatter well being fat is the modern witchcraft trial so you deserve your pain and suffering you suck now die young you need will power. You will crave and suffer and you should enjoy it because thats what your kind deserves, craving and pain. That's traditional neopuritan original sin dietary advice as pounded into us for decades, in a nutshell. Personally I think its a complete load of crap, and medical science has advanced beyond it but culture still hasn't.

Compare that with the psychological impact of: its not your fault, there was a major scientific and marketing screw up and high carb actually makes you very fat, aren't steaks tasty and savory and luxurious and aren't salads yummy now enjoy your low carb diet. Tastes great, doesn't it? Life should be without cravings and suffering, isn't it awesome not to feel bad? And oh my god does it piss people off that you're losing weight without neopuritan suffering, like they want to slap you so you can feel the pain you deserve as a loser fatty subhuman how dare you climb out of the lobster pot, its a sin to say you don't belong in purgatory how dare you blaspheme against the holy authorities. They can't feel good unless they see you suffer. That's before you try to get between an addict and his corn syrup fix, then the freak out really gets started. You think you've seen alcoholics and nicotine addicts rationalize, you haven't really seen anything until you get between a sugar addict and his corn syrup.

This is before we get into the staggering secondary effects of high carb making people lethargic and tired whereas low carb subjectively feels like being on energy drinks all the time, and that leads to a lot of bro-science about protein magically melting away fat, when reality is high carb leads to laying on the couch two hours later watching TV while snacking feeling exhausted and low carb leads to playing with the kids in the park or going on a hike an hour later and feeling energized. Sure you are the same 800 calories but two hours later the high carb guy is eating a 400 calorie snack while laying exhausted on a couch watching TV and the low carb guy is exercising burning 50 calories per hour on a hiking trail ... its not magic that protein and fat seems to melt fat off a body.

I dont even know where to start with this wall of text.

There's a lot of fat people self-persecuting to find a reason to be upset. More to the point, medical science still says that being fat lowers your life span, and you seem to be implying there is even an iota of truth to the Health At Every Size nonsense being spewed for fat justification and medical science denial. If I stood a room with 10 fat people selected at random 9 would have no willpower, and one MIGHT have a condition warranting their weight. In fact, being fat IS your fault even with a condition, because you are not being considerate of your personal needs, or overindulging in dopamine releasing delicious carbs because you're a fiend.

High carbs don't make you fat, just like low carbs don't make you fat. Avoiding carbs altogether eliminates many bad foods that make you fat, and as a by product causes you to lose weight. Weight loss is strictly calories in vs calories out, and always will be. Want to lose weight? Have some self control and eat less - its that simple. How do you explain the average weight of an Asian person being much lower than ours, and they consume a considerable amount of carbs?

You have a lot of sources to cite regarding carbs. A LOT. When I was bodybuilding I ate 400g of carbs a day - more than your average fat person, and felt like I had more energy to do things than when I was on a 100g of carbs a day cut.

I'm pretty sure you actually have no idea what you're talking about. Quit trying to rationalize being fat and do something about it.

I'm pretty sure you actually have no idea what you're talking about.

As with all things, it depends.

If you mostly engage in moderate-to-low intensity physical activity (of short or long durations), low carb diets can work because your body's fats can theoretically supply all the energy you need.

High-intensity (i.e., anaerobic) physical activity requires carbs, as fats and proteins cannot be converted into the appropriate fuel (i.e., ATP) fast enough to meet the body's demands. (For anaerobic activity, the body relies primarily on glucose stored in the muscles and blood.)

However, the dividing line between high intensity and moderate intensity comes down to the individual's physical fitness. For example, a professional marathoner could run a 7 minute pace as an easy/recovery pace for dozens of miles relying solely on their fat reserves to fuel the run; for most people a 7 minute pace is faster than they can run a quarter mile and would be fueled out of glucose stores.

Processed fat?

There is absolutely no problem within population with cultures traditionally relying heavily on fresh/unprocessed (0-day fresh chicken/mutton) meat diet (Kashmir, Ladakh, Pakistan, etc).

Heavy? The per-capita meat consumption in Pakistan is five to ten times less than in the West.

That means nothing. What is important is what are traditional everyday dishes and how they cook them. Hint: everything that was brought 0-day fresh in the morning has been sold/eaten till night. The cooking is also quite simple - no overheating, mostly boiled (different kinds of curries, to get maximum value for a money spent).

Perhaps, before conducting studies one has to understand cooking. That overheated fat is not the same as slowly boiled fat, that pure butter has nothing in common with margarine, and no one knows what kind of shit corporations and fastfood joints are using to save costs while processing junk food.

Tribal/traditional foods tells you what is good and what is bad (and most economically efficient for given location) without any crappy studies.

There is also Chinese/Thai tradition in cooking of not overboiling foods, which, it seems, has a substantial impact on health in the long run.

And to hire a professional cook in the research team is a good idea.)

> That means nothing.

That's an empty claim without evidence.

I've explained my logic.

One doesn't have to be a machine learning expert to notice the correlation between health issues and overconsumption of processed/junk foods. Traditional foods, on the contrary, are evolved, so causation is not in the base ingredients, but in processing and substitutes.

One sees what one wants to see. There's also a correlation of consumption of any meat and health issues. I don't claim to know what is the real causation here, but presumably it's more complicated than "processed==bad", especially as "processed" has no good definition and is mostly used as a fnord to make people uncomfortable.

>There's also a correlation of consumption of any meat and health issues.

Nope. Meat is just an evolutionary adaptation which allows the human race to inhabit northern regions.

There are obviously some crosscultural differences in comsumption of meat, but there are no replicable studies that meat eaters of, say, Japan, Middle East, Greece, Georgia or Nepal are worse off than strict vegetarians of India.

This adaptation happened, perhaps, at Homo Erectus time, so, do not worry, everything is already OK.

What we never had in our long past are supplements and substitutes. One should look here.

We also never in our long past lived past 60.

I should have put supplements in double quotes.

Processed food is how we eat food for thousand of years.

Smoked, salted, fermented, whatever you called it, it's processed.

Even cooking rendered the food 'processed'.

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