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tpush

"It means:

72% of calories come from carbohydrates compared with 52% in the US

14% from fat compared with 34% in the US, Tsimane also consume much less saturated fat

Both Americans and Tsimane have 14% of calories from protein, but Tsimane have more lean meat"

That really does seem counter to the low-carb diets that seem to be all the rage among internet communities (also HN).

But, maybe it's just the constant exercise the Tsimane people are getting: "They are also far more physically active with the men averaging 17,000 steps a day and the women 16,000."

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>That really does seem counter to the low-carb diets that seem to be all the rage among internet communities (also HN).

Generally people discussing “low carb diets” really mean managing blood glucose/insulin spikes. So high glycemic carbs, refined sugars, refined carbs.

Not all carbs are created equal when we talk about impacts on blood glucose and/or the liver.

This is true.

It's likely that beside the rice and maize, most of their carbs come from vegetables. It's one of the reasons why high-performance diets are usually heavy on the broccoli!

Another absolutely killer carb in western diets comes out of refined flour which makes it into a ton of stuff. My wife is gluten-free currently for health reasons and we've experimented with using more raw starch sources to great success. Most of these flour based foods don't need to be super-refined bleached flour.

Most "whole wheat" flour is literally the same refined flour from the same vat, but with some bran (fiber) and germ (nutrients) mixed back in. This could happen at the refinery shortly after refining, or weeks to months later using bran and germ sourced from a warehouse somewhere. Very unpredictable and not indicated anywhere on the label.

What seems consistent is that both diets high in whole grains and high-fiber diets in general have some heart health benefits. My guess is that refined+enriched flour in a high-fiber meal is not much, if any, worse than whole flour in a medium- or low-fiber meal. Those pastries and chips between meals, on the other hand...

Tangentially, there are two professors that swear by the idea of taking glucose readings soon after eating to know the impact of different foods in your diet. Theoretically, if you eat things that don't raise your glucose too much you can lose weight.

It sounds logical, but I don't know if it's really useful if you're not diabetic.

Edit: the book is called "The Personalized Diet."

I’d say all things being equal if you have the same person on two timelines and on both they over consume calories but on one they spike their insulin and the other they don’t, the time line with the insulin spikes will carry more fat/dangerous adipose tissue. Insulin acts as a hormone and tells the body to store calories as fat and simultaneously enlarges cells throughout the body, especially fat cells, allowing the body to store more fat than otherwise.

It’s probably very useful to measure what spikes ones insulin so the individual can avoid those foods.

For example I know whey, a protein powder with zero carbs/sugars will spike my insulin (because it knocks me out of ketosis). Probably not a bad idea for a body builder who wants to replinish their muscle glycogen stores after a hard workout, but not going to be necessary and over long term even harmful to someone who isn’t depleting their muscle glucose/glycogen stores. In fact protein that can’t be used is generally converted into glucose which when not used is store in fat cells.

Carbs are great if you're actually going to use the energy! The best even! The problem with Western habits is we tend to carb load until we have a tremendous excess of energy which we then use to... sit down for several hours while our body gets busy turning all that unused energy in to fat.

Converting carbs into fat is fairly inefficient. It comes at about a 40% calorie loss. So you can put on fat eating carbs alone but it’s not easy. More often than not we eat carbs together with fat so your body will very happily just directly store the fat and burn the carbs for energy.

This is why things like french fries or pizza are so fattening.

But if you eat just proteins and fat, the fat is not stored (see e.g. keto diet)

How can this be explained?

Yes it is:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5326984/

There’s no magic in keto. People lose weight on keto because they wind up eating fewer calories, usually because they cut back on processed junk food as part of going keto.

When you eat fat and carbs, the fat is stored and the carbs used for energy. When you subtract carbs, your body still needs energy so it starts using fat.

I’d guess it’s because in that case you don’t produce much insulin which is starting to be called the fat storage hormone.

Protein also stimulates insulin release. You’ll get a bigger spike of insulin from eating a steak than a plate of spaghetti.

Exactly. Humans are meant to move, and not moving makes us fat. Now that we're extremely sedentary, we literally have no use for the amounts of rice and pasta we consume. We're victims of our own success.

I’d say 8 miles a day has a lot to do with it.

I love the title in the article:

"Is it only diet and exercise?"

Lol. So... they are telling the 'news' that people who eat well, are very physically active, live in close communities with little individual isolation... and they are healthy?

Hold the presses! Seems like BBC had a day where they needed to put in some filler news articles.

One of the main intriguing things about this group of people is that they do not eat particularly well.

> That heart health is in spite of the fact that they consume between 2,433 to 2,738 calories per day ... strangely, their diets aren’t incredibly healthy, though we can still learn a thing or two from their lifestyle.

https://www.inverse.com/article/50572-tsimane-amazon-healthy...

> One of the main intriguing things about this group of people is that they do not eat particularly well.

That is only if you take for a fact we know what a healthy diet is and there is a single clear definition.

For me, Healthy eating is a diverse diet that leads to good health. Particularly eating foods where caloric density is offset by nutritional value. Based on my own definition and the facts of the article, these people do eat healthy.

I think the surprise comes from people who think they know what a 'healthy diet' is.

As the article states, 'this is definitively not keto diet' - for me this means about zero to me. If that point is surprising to you or to a group of people, I think you are right, it is a surprising study from that point of view. Thanks for helping me understand the newsworthy part of this.

Seems like exercise is probably a big factor here. Exercise can help curb insulin spikes caused by high carb intake, among its other benefits

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