Meta-study says too much carbohydrate, not fat, leads to obesity
thatpaleoguy.com
thatpaleoguy.com
Seriously - how difficult would it be to just get a large population in a controlled environment for period of time (12-18 months), separate them into groups, and feed them pre-determined diets, and observe the results.
I'm sure there are lots of institutional opportunities where we have large populations of people who would be happy to volunteer for this type of study.
Controlled group studies are almost entirely non-existent and are typically limited to very specific conditions and goals, such as diets for epileptics.
I hope at some point we'll sit down and do a proper broad study on different diets where all meals are controlled for x amount of time and get a range of data that you could further divide and conquer and figure such a crucial part of our existence out.
A friend of mine is an MD who does weight management research. Apparently, people misreport their intakes by significant factors - either because they don't consciously remember, or because they try to make themselves feel better - but generally, you can't trust what people do when you are not watching, or describe what they did.
People don't self report accurately.
> I'm sure there are lots of institutional opportunities where we have large populations of people who would be happy to volunteer for this type of study.
Foxcon?
Most people don't know that carbs are not required to live. We've been sold a bill of goods on carbs and it's been hurting us for 2 decades.
And further, there are certain people who should be no where near carbs.
* Diabetics and pre-diabetics
* cancer patients
* the obese
* people who don't workout
Carbs aren't evil, they should just be used strategically. Namely, to gain weight. Bodybuilders and powerlifters have known this forever. To gain weight, eat everything but mostly carbs. To lose weight, keep protein high, fill the rest of your calories with fat and limit the carbs.
Minor nitpick, I know, but the two types get conflated often, leading to misinformation. I cannot count how many times people have been surprised that I am diabetic, since I am thin (which is normal, since it is not weight related, and actually leads to weight loss when untreated).
I went on the LCHF diet in March, and have gotten rid of my type II completely - i also lost 10KG of overweight in about a months time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_diet#Carbohydrates
http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/planning-meals...
That is not a "nowhere near carbs" diet.
Really?
During ketosis, the body forms substances known as ketones, which can cause organs to fail and result in gout, kidney stones, or kidney failure. Ketones can also dull a person's appetite, cause nausea and bad breath. Ketosis can be prevented by eating at least 100 grams of carbohydrates a day. [1]
Ketosis occurs when you don't have enough sugar (glucose) for energy, so your body breaks down stored fat, causing ketones to build up in your body. Side effects from ketosis can include nausea, headache, mental fatigue and bad breath. [2]
[1] http://www.webmd.com/diet/high-protein-low-carbohydrate-diet...
[2] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/low-carb-diet/NU00279/NSECT...
I haven't eaten meat or taken B12 supplement in over 20 years. According to those sources (unless they've updated in the last two years), I should be dead. (Well, maybe I am, but that's beside the point :) )
They state with the same level of authority things that have been proved without shadow of a doubt, and things which have been accepted hypothesis in the medical community but were never proved.
Yes, ketosis (by definition) means your body forms ketones. Yes, initially it changes body and breath odor, usually for the worse, and sometimes (rarely) also causes nausea (but so does kimchy or chutney if you start eating it as a main food). I haven't found any serious studies, but anecdata suggests that all of these symptoms pass within a couple of weeks.
That's to say, before we can really cut out carbs from our diets we'll need to re-examine where our current food production is heading. The past half-century of advances seems to mostly have gone towards producing the most carbs per acre, albeit those carbs are typically then inefficiently converted into fat/protein (livestock). Soy is pretty good for mass protein production. Not sure if it would really be up to the task of what corn puts out in caloric density.
This all changed in the 80's when fat became the culprit behind heart disease. Thus began the high-fat, low-carb diet trend we're on now.
Now we have the Swedes telling us fat is good for us, actually reducing the risk of heart disease. Seems like my grandma was right all along: watch out for that bread and pasta.
As I said elsewhere in this discussion: "I feel like all the simple answers in nutrition are BS and the only short answer is 'it's complex.'"
We need some vitamins, minerals and what not as well as protein and fat. We don't need carbs. Some of those vitamins and minerals come from plants, which have, as we say in the biz, trace carbs and fiber.
When I'm cutting down for a photoshoot I go keto. I might not have a veggie for weeks. My bloods and panels all look fine. I mostly eat veggies b/c I feel bad for not eating them.
I do take a multivit every day and I'm eating plenty of fat which helps the colon move things along.
When I'm gaining muscle, I do eat carbs. Lots of carbs. But we don't need carbs.
Do you have any science to back up this bold claim?
And what are you claiming carbohydrates are? Simplex and complex carbohydrates - sugars and starches?
It seems like you're saying that we don't need carbs, but that eating a diet with no carbs means we lose out on all those foods that have other useful nutrients (ie green vegetables). So, we tend to eat diets that have carbs to get the other benefits. Is that right?
Fruits and vegetables offer fiber. For example, dark greens offer 6.4g of fiber per serving while whole grains offer 2.4g.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/080123/dq080123d-en...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/23/us-inuit-idUSN2362...
I dunno, that doesn't sound okay.
basic theory goes like this: the body doesn't need carbs to live, but cancer cells do. You are starving the cancer by not ingesting carbs. It seems the cancer cells lack the ability to derive energy from ketones and fatty acids, which is where humans would get the energy on a low-carb diet.
I don't think that's true of fat. Your body can synthesize the fat it needs from sugars. There is a bit of a debate about whether there are really "essential fatty acids" that people can't synthesize, but if they exist the quantities required are very small.
That there are essential fatty acids for humans could certainly be disproven, but "going long periods with zero fat intake" is not sufficient evidence to disprove established biochemistry.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...
Basically debunks the carbohydrate hypothesis:
"I hope you can see by now that the carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity is not only incorrect on a number of levels, but it may even be backward. The reason why obesity and metabolism researchers don't typically subscribe to this idea is that it is contradicted by a large body of evidence from multiple fields. I understand that people like ideas that "challenge conventional wisdom", but the fact is that obesity is a complex state and it will not be shoehorned into simplistic hypotheses."
"I'd like to begin by emphasizing that carbohydrate restriction has helped many people lose body fat and improve their metabolic health. Although it doesn't work for everyone, there is no doubt that carbohydrate restriction causes fat loss in many, perhaps even most obese people. For a subset of people, the results can be very impressive. I consider that to be a fact at this point, but that's not what I'll be discussing here.
What I want to discuss is a hypothesis. It's the idea, championed by Gary Taubes, that carbohydrate (particularly refined carbohydrate) is the primary cause of common obesity due to its ability to elevate insulin, thereby causing increased fat storage in fat cells."
Aside: if I only had time to follow one blog on nutrition, it would be Whole Health Source.
Where I get breakfast, they sell these pretzels. 300 calories for something that'll leave you feeling hungry immediately. Meanwhile a small container of 2% Greek yogurt will fill you up till lunch for half the calories.
My favorite lunch is a salad at chipotle: lettuce, chicken guacamole, cheese. At 450 calories, it's ridiculously filling and has about as many calories as a small sandwich that'll leave you hungry by the afternoon. Or a twelve piece nuggets at chick fil a. 400 calories for a tasty lunch that is so filling it's even a bit hard to eat in a sitting.
But have a cup of coffee and a scone at Starbucks? Same number of calories as the twelve piece nuggets, except people don't feel like fat asses having that before going home for dinner.
If you have trouble losing weight because you can't stay on the wagon, at least try a low carb diet. Realize that a bagel at 200 calories = 5-7 strips of bacon and the latter will fill you up and the former won't. Also eat lots of vegetables to add volume with low calories. If you have a sweet tooth, put a teaspoon of sugar in some FAGE. It's only 15 extra calories.
[citation needed]. I know that's the common wisdom, but I also know of countless anecdotes (see e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sam-feltham/weight-loss-advi... and his previous 6K-calorie diet, and some real data - a few of the references in http://media.sethroberts.net/about/whatmakesfoodfattening.pd... , don't remember which ones) where that simply does not work. And I've actually been looking for papers establishing the science behind "calorie counting", and came up mostly with contrary results -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506782/
Satiation has less to do with the absence of carbs as it does the glycemic index of the carbs. Foods like oatmeal have a low glycemic index and thus raise your blood sugar much slower than a candy bar which might cause a sudden spike. So its advisable to eat slow burning low glycemic index carbs in the morning to feel fuller during the day.
Also there are a lot of mixed views about dairy as well as the high sodium content of chipotle in the weightlifting and weight loss world.
This is particularly true if you're a typical busy, stressed person who doesn't have the time to prepare and plan his or her own meals. Restaurants make it very difficult to eat limited calories while balancing fats, protein, and carbs, because their dishes come with an overabundance of cheap carbs. To use Applebee's as a reference for a typical American suburban restaurant, the 12 oz new york strip has 480 calories, while the seasonable vegetables adds another 40-60. Almost all of the pasta dishes have 1100+ calories. If you're trying to stay under 600 calories for dinner, you're going to have much more success ordering the steak than you will ordering the pasta and willing yourself to eat only half the portion.
Fun fact: the glycemic index of oatmeal isn't that low. See: http://www.amsa.org/healingthehealer/GlycemicIndex.pdf. Oatmeal has a glycemic index of 61. Table sugar is 65. Whole milk is 27. Peanuts are 14. Low fat yogurt is 33. Oatmeal is better than say white bread or a bagel, but what isn't?
I feel like all the simple answers in nutrition are BS and the only short answer is "it's complex."
But I definitely do agree with the calorie-is-a-calorie line of thought. Gaining weight is an I/O issue.
Also, two apples have 200 calories. That's basically a slice and a half of bread. Very few people would find either filling. But at 270 calories a lot of people would find an 8 piece nuggets at Chick Fil a pretty filling.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/01/dining/nacho-g...
There seems to be a zero-sum mentality that will (maybe) never die off that if one food group is good others must be bad. As for me, I'll listen to Michael Pollan's advice:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Try it. No carbs, just fat & protein, 10,000 calories.
Seriously, try it. Just one day. Won't hurt you.
It is possible to consume 10,000 calories of carbs in a day. Short of physically stuffing it in, you will find it effectively impossible to eat 10,000 calories of fat and protein. You'll probably find it a challenge to go beyond 3,000. (Though if you switch to a high-fat, high-protein diet you might manage in the first couple of days before your body adjusts fully. And I'm assuming you're average; a large man might get 4K, but again, that'll be a challenge.)
Calories are not fungible. And once you accept that, it's frankly hard to look at the evidence, the biochemistry and how the hormones work, and not end up fingering carbs as the source of the obesity epidemic, not fat.
You may find it interesting to note that carbs all come from plants. (But not all plants, of course.)
It's funny because most of the "carbs are bad" and "carbs are fine" people agree that in reality it's calories that make you fat. For some reason when they talk to each other that point gets lost and it turns into two people talking past each other who agree in actuality.
The correct question is, why do people over consume calories? And for that you get two very different answers. One is an external answer about how food has been made very available and appealing and is manufactured to be overconsumed (and often more than a faint whiff of Puritan moralism, indeed, often a great deal more than a faint whiff), and the other is about the biochemistry of consuming food and what happens to the satiety mechanisms and your blood sugar and where the blood sugar goes and why and how it comes back out again.
There's a real difference at that level.
I think the problem is that carbs, much more than either of the other 2 macros, have more complex mechanisms at play.
For instance, carbs in the morning or at night? Most people know that you are burning fat when you wakeup from your overnight fast. But what most people don't know is that the first time you eat carbs, the fat burning stops.
6 meals or 2? Smaller insulin spikes over time lead (it appears) to insulin resistance moreso than one or two big spikes. The jury is a bit out on this, but the data is leaning this way (last I looked).
The meal frequency doesn't really matter with protein and fat, just carbs it seems.
Those are just some examples, but I think you get the idea. My mother (65) recently asked me what she should do for her diet in old age. Simple, I told her, eat lots of fish, meat, veggies, cream and some nuts. Avoid grains, bread, over doing it on fruit etc. She's worried about living a long time, heart health and cancer. No reason she should be anywhere near carbs.
You probably want to be getting a substantial fraction of your calories from sugars and starches, mixed with fat and protein. Ya know, like portions in cuisine all around the world has favored for ages.
I used to buy this high fat idea before reading more broadly. Firstly, non-saturated fats should be avoided to the extent possible, and that's hard to do on a high fat diet. Secondly, high fat meals are clearly inflammatory. More inflammatory than carbs. They cause endotoxin absorption and promote dysbiosis. The hormone profile of being a "fat burner" is not so great either. Cortisol goes up, because that drives fat metabolism. This is why people who go atkins or go on a fast say they feel great. It's elevated cortisol, just like a runner's high. That's fine in short doses, but sustained it leads to breakdown and damage.
Relax and have some sugary chocolate milk. It's perfectly healthy. Almost a balanced meal, in fact.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbohydrates+insulin+fa...
With no exercise (I sit 8-10 hours/day at a desk) I lose about 1 pound every 2-3 days. Your body literally sheds fat on a low/no carb diet.
EDIT: After I'm down to my goal weight (150-155lbs), I plan on powerlifting. With large amounts of exercise, anaerobic or aerobic, you need to start consuming carbs to have the energy required. You're no longer at an energy surplus; based on your exercise level, you're shooting for coming out energy neutral.
I've been a lean 168, an obese 250, and am now a pretty healthy 175-180 pounds. As a matter of principle (I love food!!), I don't change what I eat over time. It's a healthy balance...but it's a lot of calories. If I'm active, I lose weight. If I'm sedentary, I gain weight. The fact is, if I have a consistent surplus of calories, I'm going to get fat. Period.
Question is still based on a fundamentally flawed premise, which is that we can just talk about the human body as if it's a bag in which you stuff a certain amount of calories, and the bag passively accepts the stuffing with no reaction. Stuff it with 2000 calories or 10,000, it doesn't care.
This is so obviously wrong that as soon as you examine the assumption consciously it's obviously flawed, but people don't, usually. The point is, if you eat nothing but protein and fat, you will find yourself unable to overconsume. (Barring a real medical disorder, like thyroid problems.) Whether you would hypothetically gain weight if you forced the food in isn't very relevant, except in a very abstract scientific sense.
The truth is that humans aren't special, and just like the entire rest of the animal kingdom, our bodies have no particular inclination to become morbidly fat. Even in abundance, your body will self-regulate. It is not as if abundance is that unusual thing in the real world, not even sustained abundance, but you do not see morbidly obese deer waddling around or fat squirrels getting splattered in the road. What's wrong is what we eat, not our bodies. The idea that our bodies could be this... stupid is frankly just absurd.
If you eat protein, fat, and natural high-complexity carb in moderation (not Russet potatoes or the modern biological candies that some fruits have been turned into), you body will regulate itself. Any discussion of weight gain or loss without discussion of regulation mechanisms is so flawed it can just be ignored; the body is full of them. I don't count calories; I watch what I eat. The calorie counting is done by ancient and well-honed parts of my brain I have no conscious access to, but I don't need that and don't want it. All "me" could do is mess it up.
(I find my body is tending to self regulate to the "just barely overweight" part of the BMI spectrum. There is significant recent evidence that this is actually quite normal and healthier than fighting your way down to the "officially" correct BMI.)
I can easily go lean by going down to a 500-calorie-a-day diet for 2 months; And then, for 6-8 months, my intake doesn't seem to matter - I stay lean - until all of a sudden, with no change of intake, and within a couple of weeks, I balloon 20-30 lbs, that stay there until the next "low-calorie" period. Yes, this is baffling. No, I haven't figured it out yet, though gut bacteria and similar explanations seem much more relevant than anything else at this point.
Read this guy about consuming 6k/day: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sam-feltham/why-i-didnt-get-... - I've known other examples. calorie counting is NOT science, physics or thermodynamics, and produces miserable results for some people.
Re-feeding programmes for people with anorexia are carefully worked out to avoid problems. How were you re-feeding after this extreme modification to your diet?
This ruins your credibility.
> calorie counting is NOT science, physics or thermodynamics,
It is. Really, truly, it is.
> and produces miserable results for some people.
This may well be true. Reading this thread is clear evidence that people have horrible understanding of diet and nutrition, and that people get information from weird sources. I can easily imagine someone reducing calories to 1,800 per day but having a miserable time because they're also following some stupid advice they got from a quack.
Just gradually ramping back over a week. And you may want to read the definition of Anorexia, because from this post, it's probably NOT what you think it is.
> It is. Really, truly, it is.
[citation needed] "calorie counting" for the purpose of weight loss, as commonly practiced, is not. I've posted a few links https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6779151, some from pubmed, in case you are interested.
Calorie counting is only useful for weight management in the tautological sense (that eventually invokes E=MC^2) meaning not at all.
If it's science, you would be able to provide reference to an experiment that demonstrates it, I guess? Not bomb calorimeter measurements, mind you (these imply you can eat paper - it's carbohydrate!, or drink gasoline). Real results that indicate, in no uncertain terms, that all energy is done through aerobic or anaerobic glycolysis (for which bomb calorimeter measurements have some relation), and never through fermentation (which is about 1/8th as energy efficient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_hypothesis ), and that all edible carbohydrates (what's the scientific definition), all fat, all protein, and all alcohol (but not fiber, hydrocarbons, etc) are used for energy.
It's not science. It really, really isn't. Not anymore than e.g. the lipid hypothesis, which was never proved though is accepted as gospel by "scientists".
They will lose weight faster than those who continue to eat carbs. I don't think it's even an argument anymore that cutting carbs helps to lose weight. By saying "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" you are agreeing with less carbs..?
Those who do anything while keeping their caloric intake in check relative to their caloric expenditure will lose weight.
Controlling carbs may be particularly effective for some people in acheiving this, particularly because some people are relatively resistant to the satiating effect of carbohydrates, and thus have a higher tendency to overeat when eating carbs.
There's no magical obesogenic property of "carbs."
I know a lot of people think low-fat = healthy, and that fat makes you fat, which isn't really the case.
This article just seems to be confirming that "simple carbs" should be moderated, which is commonly suggested in health and fitness books.
An influential Swedish health organisation has recommended a diet that is low in carbohydrates but not low in fat for people who are overweight or obese or have diabetes.
...
“...When all recent scientific studies are lined up, the result is indisputable: our deep seated fear of fat is completely unfounded. You don’t get fat from fatty foods,” Nyström said.
Those are both pretty solid endorsements for eating A LOT of fat/fatty foods. If they meant "A diet consisting of a calorie count appropriate for your body size should have a higher proportion of fats to carbs to make your target weight loss more efficient." But they didn't. They simply said/implied 'don't eat carbs but don't worry about how much fat you take in'.
However seems people are really bad understanding what's healthy and following common sense when it comes to eating. Many people have grown up with that butter is unhealthy and vegetable oils or cereal are healthy.
Also if you eat lots of carbohydrates you're more likely to feel hunger and loss of blood sugar every two hours, and you eat more. When you eat mostly plants, meat and fat, you feel satisfied longer and don't eat extra snacks, calories or other things, which makes eating sane amounts of food and calories easier.
I don't think the obesity or health problems are completely going away by changing the macronutrient ratio but probably anything is better than high-carb & low-fat advice. In the end people need to learn moderate and balance their diet.
You are describing symptoms of metabolic syndrome, typically caused by being fat, not an affect of carbohydrate. I am thin, and therefore not insulin resistant. I can and do add sugar to OJ sometimes for a quick meal. I don't get hungry again for hours.
A liter of olive oil.
Ah yes, the Tautology Diet.
Instead of discussing some paleo nonsense or how carbs are evil, we should tell people to find a sport they enjoy and join a local club..
We know of one simple principle (eat less, to the point of losing weight), that's extremely hard to practice. Turns out that no other principle works consistently for all the population (usually around 80%), and this one simple principle (doctors hate it!) leads some people (I heard estimates range from 5-20%) to significantly worse quality of line (including depression, sleep problems, anxiety, concentration problems).
It is easy to change your routine in many ways - e.g., a lot of people have no problem adding a couple of jelly donuts per day. Or to stop going to the gym even if you've done it for years. It is possible that such a change of routine is possible for overweight, but it hasn't yet become popular (or discovered).
From all the anecdata I've been able to collect, Soylent seems to leave people satisfied for long, compared to foods with similar caloric content (Not comparing to other meal replacements here - to your random everyday food). So does fat in general, if consumed sufficiently far away from carbs (Bullet proof coffee) or flavour (shangri-la "diet"). None of these seem to work for everyone, but e.g. 80% of people on shangri-la self-report an immediate, considerable, appetite suppression affect.
The accepted body of knowledge with respect to nutrition, appetite and hunger seems to be all wrong; nutrition "science" is not. There's actual science to be done here, but it is not done in academic institutes - mostly by individuals, so it's taking longer than you expect to get quality results (and even longer to take them seriously when they are found).
It is certainly a win for their health, because obviously eating "healthy stuff" does not actually make you perfectly healthy.
It pretty much all comes down to properly adjusted eating habits.
But very few people can actually do that reliably, and even less can then transform that into properly adjusted eating habits. Exercise makes the process considerably easier.
Our politicians made a deal with the agri-business devil to ensure (most) everyone is fed relatively cheaply. The toll for this deal is that some people end up fat and sick. I'm convinced this is known and understood; nothing will be done about it.
It's left to the individual to adjust their lifestyle to suit their biology.
I also suspect that lower proportions of protein and nutrients play a role in carbs not being handled well by the body.
1. http://www.wholeandnatural.com/catalog/Erewhon%20Organic%20R...
2. https://www.localresearch.com/site_media/media/uploads/img/2...
3. http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2011/02...
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