Time to Retire the Low-Carb Diet Fad | Hacker News Reader

Time to Retire the Low-Carb Diet Fad

theatlantic.com

8 pointsjamesbritt10 comments

Pretty sure the title is alarmist and inacurrate.

The paper itself notes an increase consumption of fat and decreased consumption of carbohydrates. That is not the same as a low carb diet. For example (from the paper):

> Fats used for spreading on bread and cooking, dairy products, oil for salad dressing or cooking, various types of meats and sausages as main dish or on sandwiches, pizza, deep- fried potato chips (French fries), and non-sweet snacks (including potato and maize crisps (chips), cheese-flavoured puffed products, popcorn, and peanuts) were identified to be associated with high fat intake (fatE%) in the study population by PLS.

Few of these foods are recommended in low carb diets. Nor do the percentages of calories from carbs given in the study come anywhere near those recommended by low carb diets.

The thing to remember when you see a headline like this about an observational epidemiology study is that you're basically looking at educated superstition.

The authors can go to great lengths to remove all of the confounding factors they can possibly think of, but ultimately the best they can do is show a correlation. And almost every time a follow-up interventional study will fail to demonstrate a causal relationship.

(Full disclosure: I've been eating relatively low-carb for about 15 years and in the last two years reduced my intake even further. I'm currently by far the leanest I can remember being, despite being just a few pounds shy of the heaviest I've ever been).

There are limits to what you can do in terms of rigorous double blind nutritional studies on humans, unless you're a dictator or have free reign over a prison camp.

That said I'll take their gigantic 25-year study designed by people whose life work is nutrition over your personal n=1 study. I might not take over my n=1 study if I did one, though. So, I definitely see where you're coming from.

Unfortunately the article doesn't distinguish between high/low GI carbohydrates, which is the main focus of low card diets.

This article should have been titled "Time to Retire the High-Animal-Fat Diet Fad".

Nothing in the article cast doubts on the wisdom of avoiding fast (high-glycemic) carbs, nor did it present any reason to question the long term toxic effects of high-fructose diets.

I lost 8kgs on a low carb diet. Aimed to keep my carb intake between 20-30 carbs per day for about 2 months (Christmas was in the middle, so I cheated and ate all kinds of horrible foods and that screwed up my progress).

After getting down to my ideal weight I stopped the diet and now eat normally but try to avoid high carb foods.

It may be a fad, but it works if you're strict.

> It may be a fad, but it works if you're strict.

You can eat nothing but twinkies and lose weight if you're strict about calories.

A nutrition professor did! Here's the link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...

To a certain extent, he did. From the article:

"Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks."

So he provided the calories that he needed with the junk, but kept the processing machinery of his body running with supplements and real food.

I wonder how he'd feel at the end of the experiment if he lost all that weight eating nothing but twinkies.

Yeah, credit to him for proof of concept. I used to say McDonalds when I made the argument, but after seeing that guy's story I now say Twinkies.

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