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Comment by cjp | Hacker News Reader

Negative. You miss the entire point of the article.

Why are people consuming 6000 calories? They are always hungry and eat too much food.

Why are they always hungry? They eat and drink too many carbohydrates. Too many carbohydrates leads to high blood sugar which leads to too much insulin. After the insulin does its job, the blood sugar crashes causing hunger. The cycle repeats, causing problems including insulin resistance, excess fat storage and type 2 diabetes.

What is the solution? Don't consume carbohydrates and avoid the hunger/sugar/insulin cycle.

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Erm... did you read the article?

The only mention of carbohydrate's effect is because it's chosen as a large, easy number to reduce in favor of raising the protein amount, raising the overall inefficiency of the system. They listed, in Atkins-like diets, that shifting from 55% carbs to 8% carbs (with the change going to increased protein intake) results in about 140kcals less useful energy.

That's it. From where in the article are you drawing insulin/diabetes/hunger connections?

Its not in the article but its a very well know phenomenon. If you research "low-carb diet" or "paleo-diet" you'll find more information.

As soon as your insulin spikes due to high amount of carbs ingested, your body immediately starts to convert excess carbs into fat.

I've done very low carb diets and easily lost 20 lbs in a month even though I've never weighed over 200lbs. Its pretty difficult though.

I'm not disagreeing. I'm just pointing out it has nothing to do with the article.

After stating that the now-great-great-grandparent had missed the point of the article, they proceeded to talk entirely about things not at all contained in the article. I'm sure there's a better term for it, but the post is pretty blatantly contradictory in that way.

You are right that clp is incorrect in his suggestion that he criticizes his parent. Rather, he amends the information there with things unrelated to the article, but very much related to the general subject and, frankly, indispensable for anyone seeking to understand weight gain/loss.

Upvoted y'all :)

Don't consume carbs? This sounds insane. What about a balanced diet of caloric value inline with one's caloric output?

This argument has been rehashed several times here on HN. Do a site search (use Google or searchyc) for Gary Taubes, or pretty much any nutrition-related subject, and there will be a thread about why a calorie-balanced diet is only a very small part of the nutritional picture.

> Don't consume carbs? This sounds insane. What about a balanced diet of caloric value inline with one's caloric output?

What about it? It's not necessary. If you look for it, you can find lots of examples of societies that were quite healthy on diets that weren't "balanced". One popular example is the Inuit, who got 75% of their energy intake from fat (largely seal and whale blubber) because that was what was available to them whereas fruits and grains and vegetables were not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit#Diet

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