Reversal on Carbs: Scientists now blame carbohydrates for America's ills
latimes.com
latimes.com
How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense?
I also find it annoying that we continue to discuss a universal "Diet", when, in fact, different people react very differently to different types of food.
I sometimes think we're still in the dark ages in terms of certain fields of endeavors.
Politics is only distantly interested in truth and widely interested in lobby parties.
The government was involved?
Any wonder that America's obesity epidemic started around that time?
I don't know if anyone has done a toxicity study on organic vs non-organic vegetables, but, I think it would be a great area of research. Keep in mind, that if you aren't spraying on pesticides, you need to rely on "organic" methods to reduce crop loss to things like Fungi/insects/disease, etc... One of those "organic" methods is to breed (naturally) a hardier strain that is more resistant. That, in itself, can be dangerous - these new strains defend themselves with toxins. There are certainly records of amateurishly bred potatoes killing people.
See http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0207E/T0207E08.htm for some useful data on organic toxins found in vegetables.
There is something to be said about toxins that have a well documented and well-defined behavior versus whatever is being randomly grown in the organic farm.
Regardless - It would pay not to come to any conclusions before the traditional double-blinded statistically valid scientific studies are done, which was the point of the grandparent-post.
I know this is not a good reply, but I have to say it. Why didn't humanity die off between when we discovered agriculture and before we invented pesticides?
From a cost-benefit perspective, I'd be willing to wager that pesticides have saved on the order of 1000x more people than they've killed.
Best case scenario, I'd wager, is no toxins in our food at all. Most people aren't willing to pay the price for that type of low yield crop.
It seemed to work so that was the pyramid. I'm not sure they did studies comparing different diets to arrive at that conclusion, I think it was just "common sense" nutrition.
One of the most amazing parts for me was the video of the senate commission tasked with coming up with dietary guidelines (the commission that created the food pyramid) outright rejecting the majority consensus that it's foolish to publish guidelines at a time that so little is truly known and that, if anything, it's carbs, not fat that are the problem. (Yes, the scientific community back then was leaning towards carbs being the problem.) One of the senators has an amazing quote along the lines of: I don't have the luxury of waiting to make an informed decision like a scientist.
Anyway, long story short it was politicians blessing the lipid hypothesis and then later removing all funding from anyone with a contrary opinion. The nutrition "scientists" are almost all funded by the government and therefore started to self-censor and never publish anything contradicting the anointed hypothesis. If they did they were basically booted out and never funded again.
Finally it seems the breaking point has been reached and we might get actual scientific research done in nutrition science instead of the quack research that's been the norm for the past 40 years.
What is going on, such that there's so many Alpha males who seem to think this way?
This reveals a belief system so corrupted and jaded, the notion of truth is completely lost.
"I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses" - Crichton
Funny. You really thought the government and industry were actually looking for the scientific truth, or otherwise had your health in mind.
Now that you have been disillusioned, you should start questioning other government policies. I'll spoil the fun and tell you what you'll find: It's all about commercial interests, and you can easily see which ones in retrospect by tracing where regulators go to work after they leave their government job.
Now, ask yourself, is this an object lesson on having such a prominent role of government in everyone's daily lives? If so, what can we learn from it?
"Tell us what you think: Are carbs to blame? Add your own comments to the discussion"
What I generally tell people: Carbohydrates generally follow this pathway: carbs-> glucose-> used for energy vs stored (mainly as fat).
Eat less carbs, store less fat in general. Unless one is very active either growing or running marathons it is very difficult to burn through all of the energy in 300 grams of carbs per day (which is the RDA recommendation).
Eat protein with each meal. This will not get stored as fat and whatever is not needed is generally eliminated. It also keeps one full for a longer period of time by slowing digestion. It also slows the digestion of carbohydrates.
Get lots of fiber. This is an indigestible carbohydrate which again helps to keep one full, yet does not get moved down the sugar to fat pathway.
Therefore balance the meal:
Carbs (moderate to low unless very active), protein with each meal (lean meat, fish, chicken, nuts, eggs, cheese, etc), and fiber with each meal (especially green vegetables but also fruit).
Above all: All Things in Moderation.
Also things in medicine change all the time so good judgment and common sense always trump the latest "brilliant" scientific study or fad.
This is just incorrect. 300g of carbohydrates makes only about 5000kJ (1200kcal), a figure well under baseline consumption. About 2 hours of easy to moderate jogging or cycling would take care of it, too, depending on the person.
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Moderation is indeed good. All this talk about specific food substances is just bullshit when the real problem is people stuffing their face with 2-3 times the calories they need.
In fact, the best diets are the ones where people are forcing themselves to choke down food they aren't interested in, because their appetite control system has basically said "No More." Upside - zero caloric excess. Downside - food becomes much more dismal/boring.
People almost never make a conscious choice about A) the amount of food they eat and B) how quickly they metabolize it. How much you eat really is not much more than a function of a fairly complex system of your hormones, stomach, and autonomic nervous system. Changing your specific foods is effectively "gaming" or "hacking" that system so you _lose_ the desire to eat. Almost nobody effectively sustains a diet through "willpower" beyond the initial 6-9 months of a sprint where they drop 30 pounds, and put it all back on.
I have a colleague at work who runs 5 miles in the gym at lunch, every single day, and is about 20-30 pounds overweight. He is a master of discipline, never misses a day - but simply can't drop the weight he's trying to. All that exercise simply results in him being hungrier, and eating more.
Yes. The problem is people eating too much (although 1h of exercise is not that much, and certainly not a marathon…)
Saying that fat people eat too much is like saying alcoholics drink too much or that insomniacs don't get enough sleep. It's trivially true, but does nothing to help solve the problem. In fact, it's harmful. To imply that a problem is trivial is to suggest that the solution is easy: just don't be stupid. That's far from the case with alcoholism, insomnia, or obesity.
Carbohydrates are, however, fairly useful in terms of overloading the body's metabolism. (That's why you lost the 30 lbs.) Back in college, I used to burn protein pretty badly, and my performance in the gym was severely hampered. I had a meeting with the S&C coach, where he imparted the need to carbo-load after a workout to prevent metabolism from using protein as quick energy. (At the time I was eating around 6-7k calories a day while losing weight, this helped me drop to a manageable diet.) Since carbohydrates are largely energy stores much in the same way as fat is, but without the added benefit of fat-soluble vitamins, they should be the first thing to cut down on. Well, probably fatty meat as well.
For a while I've been playing with spices, in all the good senses of "play", and I've been upping my culinary game. Even more recently I've started to get into sort of "gourmet" cooking; I'm scare quoting it because I'm not really in it for the attitude, but just the flavor. I have a small collection of vinegars, cooking wines, various extracts and oils (you can pry my sesame oil out of my cold dead fingers), and have been experimenting with a variety of cheeses. My wife, who isn't quite as into this yet, has also become hooked; she's discovered she really likes Balsamic Vinegar in a couple of recipes. (We buy the, ahem, "fake" stuff that doesn't take decades to create and only costs slightly more than other vinegars in the store; I'm sure it's not as good but it's good enough.)
And lo, it turns out that there are entire culinary traditions around the world that have centuries of history working with these ingredients, and it is good. My "boredom" level has plummeted in the past six months as I've opened these doors, and lately I'm getting to the point where I couldn't go back.
It isn't that hard, and it isn't actually that expensive. It does take some experimentation, though; you can follow recipes but I've found that my tastes and the tastes of those who are really "into" the culinary thing diverge quite strongly, even as we agree on ingredients. These are expensive ingredients relative to other foods in the store, yes, but typically you only use them in very small quantities; per use they are monetarily insignificant.
Example: I like hamburgers. For other reasons, I have to eat them without a bun, but I now wouldn't eat them with a bun anyhow. I do not know what it is exactly, but I find that adding one drop of sesame oil to a pound of hamburger can really change things. Don't forget to salt the meat. Toss in some dried onions for even more fun. Mix it all together, then form the patties. This is not a normal burger. I say "I don't know what it is" because something is really opening up the sesame oil, usually one drop does not have such an effect on a meal, but don't dribble much more in or you will actually ruin it. (Unless you really like sesame flavor.)
And this is just one example. It really isn't surprising (in hindsight, remember I've been there) that trying to take a typical American diet and subtract the bad stuff, which also happens to be where all the flavor is, has a boring result. But there are other traditions and ways of cooking that are as good or better; after all, the recommended American diet is a local aberration, not what we've been eating for centuries.
This leads to a positive feedback loop, because the stored calories require maintenance (heavier people must eat more to maintain their bodies, regardless of whether that weight comes from muscle or fat). This feedback loop causes all sorts of other problems, too.
That's not even getting into the ancillary effects of the other stuff that we get from grain.
I'm not a big fan of singling out HFCS because it misses the forest for the trees. Any refined carbohydrate is going to cause a strong insulin response. White bread is pretty awful for similar reasons, for example.
I do assert that the average modern human's diet contains much more fructose than his great-grandfather's. I do not believe this is debated anywhere, although I will accept evidence to the contrary.
I am not sure what you mean when you say that heavier people do not generally eat more. Base metabolic requirements increase with body mass; as such, if a heavier person does not eat more, he will cease to be a heavier person.
Also, your subordinate clause could only be true if fructose were less difficult to assimilate than glucose. It's not. It's more difficult. It has to be converted into glucose in order to be metabolized.
Dates and figs, staple foods throughout human history, are over 20% fructose by weight. Many fruits and vegetables derive more than half their calories from fructose and, in a few cases, fructans. Throughout the evolutionary development of our diets, fruits and vegetables supplied the majority of our calories. So saying fructose "simply didn't exist in modern quantities during the evolutionary development of our appetites" is false. Fructose could indeed be a major cause of health problems, but not because it was a small component of our ancestral diets. It might be a slightly larger component today, but I suspect it's actually considerably less because of the higher protein and fat content of modern diets.
Metabolic rate per kilogram varies widely among people, and within the same person over time. Epidemiological studies have shown that, at least in the US, heavier people have a much lower metabolic rate per kilogram, to the point that heavier people generally tend to eat less. There's lots of speculation on why this is — do they have thyroid disorders? are their bodies conditioned by widespread yo-yo dieting? do they get less exercise? — but I'm not aware of a consensus yet.
Scientists have known about insulin sensitivity and why and how weight gain/loss happens for a long time. Bodybuilders and other sportsmen and women listen.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=139058 is an interesting article on what actually happened. In contrast with the "oh those silly scientists, always changing their mind" headline, that article states 'scientists have known what makes us fat for almost half a century'.
White rice still isn't great in this regard, but it's not as bad as comparable American staples.
Many health-conscious Asians have moved to brown rice, much like how many Western folk have moved off white bread.
My general impression is that refined carbs are simply not great for you.
Of course not. Asians eat more white rice, perhaps, but they also eat more fish, seaweed (in the case of the Japanese), more vegetables, walk more, eat more soy, etc... The effect of all of these variables, combined, may result in better overall health, and yet it could also be true that white rice in and of itself isn't that good for you.
I don't think they stay skinny by eating more. (I know, you mean "eat more of this good thing relative to the bad things".) But eating less on an absolute scale is probably a critical component.
This part is huge. I moved to a new city a year and half ago and started walking everywhere. Where I used to struggle keeping the weight off, nowadays without even going out of my way to exercise, it just stays off.
And now bear in mind my city is far less walkable than your average developed Asian city...
I'm convinced that if America finally got rid of its car obsession, health levels will improve dramatically, and all this talk of the obesity epidemic will fizzle.
First, the suburbs take up so much space and distances living areas from the store areas. If we had a New Urbanist city, it would get people to walk. Now, you can't walk. Walking is impossible. You can't walk to a Walmart and grab fresh food every day. In China, my family would get food from the market every day. Now, we get food once a week and it's in big bags. That's because buying food is inconvenient.
Second, the suburbs take up space and creates the dreaded long commute. You can't walk to work. This makes public transportation unfeasible. Everyone buys a car.
It's all a big self-propelling problem. It creates its own problems, and to fix them, you have to contribute to the problem. Long distance? Get a car. A lot of cars? Build more roads. The vicious cycle continues...
EDIT: Biking is possible. But does anyone do it to commute, with so many cars and such long distances? Nope.
I personally witnessed this myself. I had to come home from school one day and today's roads aren't good for walkers. There's no sidewalk, so I had to walk on the grass or in the ditches. In many places (in the burbs, not in the city, the city is fine for walking), there were no walk signals. If there were, you had to walk along the road to the signal which often required adding more walking to the trip. For example, I had to cross the street from the library to a restaurant for lunch. I had to cross the middle of the road, and no one wants to do that.
For more informations (and scientific peer reviewed papers that back me up), I'd recommend googling for "fructose metabolism". There is also a great lecture about fructose on youtube called "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
(Australia, land of locally-grown cane sugar.)
Probably, the worst thing about HFCS is its cheapness, so they put it on everything.
Also, I'm not so sure that even an Italian-sized dinner portion of pasta compares in sheer carbs per person to the typical castigated lower-class American diet. White bread and soda alone provide a mind-boggling amount.
In regions of Italy that DO eat mostly carb loaded diets (like Sicily) there has been a relatively long running obesity issue. Walking is important, and it's a great thing. But even walking several miles a day does little to combat obesity when you're offsetting it with thousands of calories of carb-loaded food every day.
It's also a good strategy for preventing diabetes...
I'm not even hardcore about it and don't go to the extent of maintaining ketosis, but I've definitely noticed that I feel my best and control my eating easiest if I limit carbs to about 30% of my caloric intake.
If this fully pans out, as I think it will, nutritionists of the past fifty years or so are going to have the unenviable task of being used as an example of how an entire discipline with billions of dollars in funding and the best possible science apparatus can get it horribly, horribly wrong for a very, very long time.
If history is a guide, within 30 years school textbooks will read as if this was just a logical conclusion and was easily reached -- instead of the brutal infighting and confusion that it actually was.
One of the weirdest things I learned as an adult was that science does not progress linearly like they teach in school. Instead people get emotionally attached to ideas, and miracle of miracles, the evidence shows they are correct.
Until the evidence shows they are not. Then it's this long struggle for changing gears, finally ending up in a spot where nobody ever talks about what went on before.
I think the human part of science is at least as interesting as the science itself. Lots of complexity and randomness, yet parts are very predictable. Neat.
You, me and my pet monkey can all start calling ourselves nutritionists tomorrow, and charge money for ridiculous dietary advice.
Dietitians, on the other hand, are certified professionals and actually say things worth listening to. Any time I read anything quoting a nutritionist, I stop reading immediately, as all credibility is lost.
Then I moved closer to work, and had a total of maybe 20 minutes on my bike every day - but this being a cheaper bike I could leave it locked up outside (with a decent lock, natch) so it was my primary form of transport for everything - going to the shops, commuting to work or meeting friends out and about in town. I was still eating whatever I wanted albeit in slightly smaller portions without putting on a pound.
Whilst it's interesting and valuable science to discover quite what on earth goes on when we eat things, if your biggest concern is not putting on weight, why not do exercise that makes you sweat for 20 or 30 minutes 5 days a week? Seems much easier to me - and satisfying because you don't have to deny yourself anything!
Mainly because getting fat is not the only thing that happens to us when we eat thing we didn't evolve to eat.
My anecdotal experience is that, lean meats, veggies, fruits are expensive, but are the best things for me personally. It is astounding how much sugar, carbs and fat is in the products I used to be eating. Obviously you need calories to survive, but I've been aiming to consume more calories that are slow burning (lean protein) and mix in "healthy" fats (omega 3 etc) with veggies fiber and vitamins.
I've been loosing weight, feeling better, and managed to cut my bad cholesterol by more then half, all without taking any medication to do so. I consider this a success of information and personal experimentation to find what works for me.
Prior to this health condition, I never put a high value the quality of the food I was eating. I cared about what food would keep me awake, revved, and burning the midnight oil, rather then what was good for my long term health.
After encountering all the sugar in our (US) food supply, I'm very much for removing the corn subsidies the federal government provides. It would remove the supply of cheap sugar that seems to permeates everything we eat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...
Tom Naughton's "Fat Head" is now available on Hulu:
Perhaps the real problem is seizing on one simplistic explanation for a complicated problems ("Meats!" "Fats!" "Sugars!" "Carbs!") and beating on it endlessly, then when that doesn't solve the problem, switching to another simplistic explanation.
How about there's more in it for them if they find something new?