Why Is the Federal Government Afraid of Fat?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Public policy adds the additional problem that if they admit they were wrong about what was possibly the single clearest message the government has sent the US public in the last 50 years, "Fat is bad for you!", the public will very likely and entirely rationally start asking very pointy questions about how such volume could be combined with such error, and what else being communicated with such volume and confidence today may also be wrong.
The government has a ton of moral capital tied up in fat being bad for you, so it has to be bad for you. It has to be bad. It just has to.
As an individual, you may find it profitable to consider whether this is the sort of incentive structure that produces an authority you want to bet your life on. Considering whether there are similar issues where the government may have gotten stuck on a particular answer and now can not change its mind pretty much regardless of what facts come in left as an exercise for the reader.
I say "very large organizations" like it's one word because I fully consider "big business" and "government" to merely be two instances of that general problem, and I'm against both in general. It isn't really "government"... it's "the big organizations that humans tend to produce once you have an organization that is fully confident (rightly or wrongly!) that there is absolutely no meaningful threat to its continued existence". Large navel-gazing organizations are dangerous, in general.
Are you kidding? Every opinion held by the null set is wrong!
From http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm372915.ht...
Close enough to use the word "ban".
Probably a good idea
(see also: the War on Drugs)
In addition, dietary fat intake does influence triglycerides, LDL and VLDL; fairly good correlations exist between these levels and heart disease. It is only recently we have discovered that sub-types of these particles exist, and not all of them have the same impact on health. Additionally, the knowledge that excess carbohydrate intake can actually have a larger impact on these levels is somewhat more recent.
The bias against mono- and poly- unsaturated fats given all the research that exists on their beneficial health effects is still bat-shit crazy, though.
More recent studies, which generally don't get the same level of publicity, found no correlation between the two (though do confirm the adipose inflammation relationship):
One issue with Tierney et al. is that EPA/DHA have been shown to partially ameliorate the insulin desensitizing effects of saturated fatty acids. See http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/302/5/R598.
I am definitely not against carbs in general, though sugars containing fructose are definitely a bad choice in terms of general health. In my opinion, carbs are healthier than fats as long as you can dispose of them quickly; elevated blood glucose is a real problem though. For people who are sedentary and have poor insulin sensitivity, mono- and poly- unsaturated fats will generally be a better choice in terms of overall health.
The vilification of saturated fat has been widely shown to be based on poor evidence, and there are many arguments for it being healthy.
Furthermore, it is not clear-cut that mono- and poly- unsaturated fats are as healthy as you say they are.
Butyric acid (C4:0) and stearic acid (C18:0) are both saturated fatty acids. I would be very hesitant to claim that they are interchangeable for the purposes of human body chemistry.
Overfeeding Polyunsaturated and Saturated Fat Causes Distinct Effects on Liver and Visceral Fat Accumulation in Humans. http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2014/02/1...
Substituting dietary saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat changes abdominal fat distribution and improves insulin sensitivity. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-001-0768-3
Saturated fat stimulates obesity and hepatic steatosis and affects gut microbiota composition by an enhanced overflow of dietary fat to the distal intestine. http://ajpgi.physiology.org/content/303/5/G589
The influence of the type of dietary fat on postprandial fat oxidation rates: monounsaturated (olive oil) vs saturated fat (cream). http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/12037652
Saturated Fatty Acid-Mediated Inflammation and Insulin Resistance in Adipose Tissue: Mechanisms of Action and Implications. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/1/1.short
Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase-1 Mediates the Pro-lipogenic Effects of Dietary Saturated Fat. http://www.jbc.org/content/282/4/2483.short
A saturated fatty acid–rich diet induces an obesity-linked proinflammatory gene expression profile in adipose tissue of subjects at risk of metabolic syndrome. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/90/6/1656.short
Substitution of saturated with monounsaturated fat in a 4-week diet affects body weight and composition of overweight and obese men - Here they show consuming monounsaturated fat instead of saturated fat causes weight and fat loss. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...
I would love to look at counterpoint articles if you have any.
It shows you the human factors that led to the distortion and exaggeration of the science to maintain the position of the originating scientists.
Someone provides a long list of peer-reviewed published studies; you respond with a shitty book.
Everyone's a fucking expert, can disregard science because [someone on tv] disagrees with peer-reviewed studies, and there's no obvious correct answer.
At least on HN it's moderately fact-based, even in disagreement. If you dare to read discussions--dare I call them that--on somewhere like Facebook or Reddit...well, godspeed.
Both the parent comment and the book are essentially distillations of the current scientific knowledge on the effects of fat in a person's diet.
Still, you clearly know more than the Economist, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the BMJ who all gave it good reviews. We're totally lucky to have you here to enlighten us.
A pretty huge collection of studies I have show that a low-carb diet, high in fats (saturated and unsaturated) is hugely effective in reducing bad LDL and increasing good HDL and LDL.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzEPvoDPVTV5SzJlSHV0Y21rZ0k...
When I was a neurology professor at a highly-ranked Children's Hospital, half the staff was on a LCHF diet.
One of the big wins for low carb high fat diets is that people tend to self regulate better. I hear people say "I ate as much as I wanted and I lost weight" all the time. Thus it is important that calories also be controlled.
The big issue with carbs is that when you have too much glucose floating around, the liver responds by converting it into palmitic acid. Palmitic acid seems to be one of the worst saturated fatty acids in terms of metabolic effects, and hepatic fat production tends to result in increased levels of low density lipoprotein. Fructose is even worse than glucose in this respect, as its primary metabolic fates are hepatic glycogen storage (which is very limited) or conversion to fat. Note that these issues only occur when you consume carbohydrates in excess of your body's ability to readily store or metabolize them - consumed in moderation, carbs are just fine.
"Fraction" is related to words like "fracture" and "fragment". When you fraction something into pieces, they are always smaller than the whole (barring strange spatial partitionings: Banach-Tarski paradox and all that).
Maybe you were playing hooky in grade 3 when the teacher explained that 101/100 is an improper fraction, which can be rewritten as 1 1/100: the whole number 1, combined with a proper fraction. See? "Improper!" Mathematics recognizes a special status for fractions where the numerator has greater magnitude.
Also, ever heard of the "integral" and "fractional" parts of a floating-point number? See the ISO C99 function modf, for instance.
"a fraction of ..." is commonly used in informal and/or non-technical contexts to mean what would be expressed in a more technical context as "a positive, proper fraction of ..."
I haven't seen any research that controls for calories while varying the saturated fat content of the diet which shows improved weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity for the saturated fat case. I have seen ad libitum feeding studies where people were instructed to eat fatty foods of their choice with that result, but I strongly suspect that the results in those cases were due to reductions in calorie intake.
And of course people want mono and poly unsaturated fats, but they're more expensive and harder to eat in quantity than saturated fats.
Plus when I went on a high fat diet (nothing but fat, protein, fruit and vegetables), I cut my triglycerides and LDL in half, lost 40lbs, dropped my blood pressure to well into the athletic level, and felt better than ever before. All in 6 months.
[Edit to add personal note]
The fact that you lost 40 pounds in that time frame indicates to me that you were running about an 800 calorie a day deficit. This is important because calorie restriction has been shown to directly improve those numbers, as has weight loss. It is very likely if you cut your calories by the same amount, and lost the same amount of weight with a diet higher in carbohydrates and lower in fat, you would have had similar results.
With that being said, if those dietary restrictions allowed you to lose weight with ad libidum feeding, then they were the right choice for you.
For example, I can eat 2 eggs for breakfast and not think about food for 4+ hours. Before I would eat an oat-based muesli with dried fruit (no refined sugar), which contained twice the calories - I'd invariable be hungry within 2 hours. Maybe it's also possible that the drop in blood glucose after eating carbs has a hunger 'signalling' effect.
This is the crux of the problem; years of social programming is hard to reverse. Try to explain to someone that fat is good and carbs are bad. It shouldn't be hard to convince someone, but even the basic premise is tantamount to heresy to most Americans. Fat gives you clogged arteries! Fat makes you fat!
Carbs and sugar are the American Way™.
I've seen comments here and elsewhere pop up across the entire internet in response to this article saying that obviously it's a government conspiracy and a lobbying issue and they're all trying to keep us fat and stupid but that's some serious tin foil hat lines of thinking.
Also: But rather than focusing on total fat or other numbers on the back of the package, the emphasis should be on eating more minimally processed fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, fish, yogurt, vegetable oils and whole grains in place of refined grains, white potatoes, added sugars and processed meats.
Which seems to be saying "hey, if you don't eat processed stuff and instead eat more whole foods from a variety of sources and strive for lots of variety in your diet then you're probably going to be healthier and less likely to gain a bunch of weight" which seems to be pretty ridiculously obvious nutrition science.
In particular, table 2 summarizes what we know about each type of food (sodium, saturated fat, trans fat, carbs, sugar, ...) and what type of study we know it from (e.g., randomized trial or association study?): http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/123/24/2870/T2.expansion...)
The best type of evidence you could have is a randomized trial of clinical end points--divide people randomly into (say) low fat and low carb diets, run the study for a few years, and measure what percentage of people have a heart attack. That's column 4, and it's nearly empty. The only things we seem to know are that total fat seems to be neutral, and substituting polyunsaturated fat for saturated fat reduces heart attacks.
In the absence of that gold standard evidence, we're relying on weaker but more convenient types of study designs -- randomized trials that measure surrogate metrics (e.g., blood cholesterol and blood pressure), or various types of association studies.
As of now, those seem to be telling us that alcohol, dietary fiber, and unsaturated fats help our risk factors for a heart attack, and trans fats, sodium, carbs, and cholesterol make our risk factors worse. But those conclusions can easily change since they're based on a surrogate, and indeed, we've already seen the recommendation against eating cholesterol reversed: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/nutrition-panel-cal...
it will make your life longer, and more interesting in the process, in practically every aspect (yes, including sex). We are all unique, so find whatever makes you sweat and feels like fun & challenge. Heck, after not consuming processed sugars for few weeks, eating something with them is rather disgusting experience, same goes for overly fatty foods. Taste for anything natural improves HUGELY.
of course, ideal scenario is good food + healthy activities. but the more you do work out, the less importance there is on quality of food to make you stay & feel healthy (this one is more complex topic, so let's say keep eating healthy).
what i would propose is similar to tobacco treatment - anything clearly unhealthy, add a tax that will go directly to health system treating all those heart attacks, diabetes and other conditions that people bring upon themselves by being weak and/or stupid. i know it's not that simple, but at least that's a move into some direction...
I confirm this. I used to love honey with anything, but now that I've been avoiding it for some time, It repulses me.
Maybe I should stop eating so many nuts too, and see if they become disgusting.
Maybe I'm being a bit cynical, but I'm not sure we have any tax that that goes directly into any direct remedial use for any type of issue.
I can't think of one, anyway. If tobacco tax does, then color me impressed (and surprised).
70% of the US population is overweight. Being overweight is bad for you.
If your diet contains a lot of fat, you're consuming more calories than if you substituted the fat with something else (e.g. by avoiding deep fried foods, and eating leaner meat).
If you are not overweight, then feel free to eat as much fat as you like, but know you are unusual.
It's simply not true that you can't lose weight by eating primarily fatty foods.
Why not?
It can't be national policy because there's a huge portion of the population that couldn't afford that diet.
But we can still self-experiment based on dietary hypotheses. An anecdote is not data, but it can be a counterexample! When someone says, "You can't lose weight by eating mostly fat," and someone else says, "I lost X weight on a diet that was 60% fat," that casts strong doubt upon the validity of the hypothesis.
Even so, this is yet another rehash of the "food energy hypothesis" poster versus "body chemistry hypothesis" poster. We have seen it before, both on HN and in other places. I have never observed this particular debate to yield useful results, anywhere. I am, personally, a "body chemistry hypothesis" person. I don't think humans are glorified bomb calorimeters. And I don't think that the "food energy hypothesis" folks provide useful guidance to people who are currently overweight. So what; who cares? That's just, like, my opinion, man. Hypotheses are judged by the experiments that support or refute them, not by the number of people who believe they may be true.
So don't be like the national health bodies. Let the science speak for itself. Nobody should be touting any sort of dietary maxims when the available evidence is still inconclusive, especially when they have no meaningful accountability if they get it wrong.
The problem with the food energy hypothesis as a path to weight loss is that it is a lot of work to accurately count and limit calories, and that it is difficult to accurately estimate calorie consumption (a good way is to count calories for a long time and calculate consumption based on the corresponding change in weight). Once there is an accurate estimate of consumption, sustaining intake below that level will result in weight loss.
As you suggested, the element that makes it useless for practical adiposity management is the fact that human bodies adjust resting metabolic rates, psychological impulses to consume food, and psychological impulses to adjust physical activity levels in response to dietary intake. One person drinks a sweetened beverage and starts bouncing off the walls for the next two hours, burning off that extra energy. Another drinks an identical portion, then becomes lethargic and turns every last sugar molecule into stored lipids. We don't [yet] have a model that can predict a structured diet for a specific person that can reliably produce the desired effect.
The labels on food packages and the calorie counting websites get their numbers from nutritional assays, rather than in vivo measurements in actual humans. The latter would be prohibitively expensive, would produce results that are far less precise, and offer foods suppliers no competitive advantage.
This is why diet plans that don't require calorie counting are relatively popular. People just want to follow a diet where they can consistently lose excess adipose tissue without either literally working their asses off for hours a day, or constantly suppressing the psychological impulse to eat more than is allowed by the plan. Whatever other mechanisms may be in play, some diets work best for some people for just one reason: they can feel satiated and stop eating at a caloric intake level consistent with fat loss, without having to constantly do math during their day.
Raises hand.
I don't constantly count calories, but carefully tracking calories for a medium length of time was a valuable tool in helping me make better food choices over the long term (which means I consume less calories).
All things being equal calorie-wise fat is better for weight loss than carbs are.
In such experiments, certain foods do have a significant impact upon the calories later consumed from that buffet. Some foods are more filling than others. I forget the exact results, other than the one that was surprising to me: whole boiled potatoes were the grand champion of fullness, and 3 times as filling as a calorie-equivalent portion of french fries.
So do your experiment for real, with some volunteers. You will need to make some oatmeal, and pour some oil shots, and have a buffet ready. And you will have to continue the experiment for multiple days, so you can get same-person comparisons for different foods.
Please actually do the experiment before you declare your hypothesis confirmed. For what it's worth, I think it probably would be, but there is always the possibility that we will be surprised by the results.
Naturally, to avoid accusations that your experiment cherry-picked specific foods that are not representative of their fat/carb classes, you would also have to test other foods, like coconut oil, glazed doughnuts, rendered beef suet, dry white toast, butter, and bananas.
But wait. That's still oversimplifying the issue. Boiled white potatoes are three times as filling as plain white bread. If some carbs are more filling than other carbs, how can you meaningfully compare all carbs against all fats?
I guess you can't. The experiment would have to serve isolated food components. Rather than olive oil, serve a shot of caprylic acid, or stearic acid, or DHA. Rather than oatmeal, serve pure starch, or pure glucose syrup, or fructose. Maybe also test the effects of added MSG, aspartame, or table salt.
Everyone is oversimplifying the issue.
A higher fat:carb balance than mainstream diets leads to less hunger, because of the satiety of fat when combined with other foods (especially fibre and protein) and mor importantly because of the reduced insulin spike when carbs are reduced.
Fat, with its extremely high calorie density, is some of the least satiating food you can eat.
This oversimplifies it a bit, because there are multiple signals and sensations related to satiety and hunger. The mechanics of snacks are different from meals because you will never get "full" from eating snacks, although you may cease being "hungry".
Blood sugar, insulin, the combination of foods eaten, fibre levels, all contribute to satiety. And in this context adding more fat and less carbs to your diet does increase satiety
So? Americans are not subjects, they are citizens. They do not belong to you or the government or any other institution that has a constitutional basis to be telling them to be healthy. If someone chooses to be fat too bad. If you a freaking out because it's going to cost you so much money to deal with their health problems, you should have thought of that before you voted for someone who promised you universal health care.
I don't think I'd be physically capable of eating the same weight in fat as I used to eat in carbs.
Fat makes you fat without a proportional decrease in your appetite, it's as simple as that.
A wrong thing in no way makes other stuff right.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food...
About 4.2 billion bushels of U.S. corn per year are used to feed livestock (dairy, beef, hogs, poultry). About 1.4 billion bushels go toward uses including sweeteners like HFCS, as well as toward cereals (and booze).
This per: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...
Impact of obesity on the brain, memory and intelligence:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/obesity-messes-brain
"Obesity has been associated with a reduced total brain volume and diminished gray matter density."
http://www.mpg.de/4280661/obesity_brain_structure
"But as scientists are learning more about the critical role white matter plays in cognition, new research suggests that obesity may target white matter integrity, leading to a decline in human cognitive performance."
http://www.dana.org/News/Obesity_Linked_to_Changes_in_Brain_...
EDIT: downvoting is one way to cope with cognitive dissonance but it does not help motivate those that are trying to lose weight.
When you study the longest-living peoples of the world, you also find extremely varied diets: the carbohydrate-rich Greeks rely heavily on fruits, veggies and whole grains. They also love goat's milk and wine. While natives of costa rica are primarily relying on "evil" white rice and beans, and heavy on pork and chicken. The people of Japan are also heavy on white rice, and virtually no fat in their diet, since their diet is primarily plant-based[2].
The truth is that everyone's needs are different. As an anecdotal example, I was convinced that keto was the right way, and that carbohydrates were not going to help me. Did I lose fat? Yes. Did I feel great? Sure. It turns out that even with great HDL and Triglycerides, my LDL and fasting glucose were still high. And I'm not alone in this problem from keto either [3].
After switching to a broader, less-restrictive diet, which now includes whole grains (quinoa, oatmeal, and wild rice), beans, and fermented vegetables (kimchi, sauerkraut), lots of fruits and vegetables (including starchy carbs like sweet potatoes and squash), I've lowered my LDL and fasting glucose (yes, now that carbs are back in my diet). Different things work for different people because everyone has a different metabolism. It seems that, if you study the longest-living people, the trends are as follows:
* Don't overeat.
* Eat mostly plant-based, whole or minimally-processed/refined foods.
* Leave 10-20% of your diet for indulgences. Virtually all of the longest-living peoples drink alcohol or coffee on the regular. And even then, by allowing yourself that affordance, you don't risk binge eating or rebounding for days/weeks/months on end.
* Ignore fad diets. Stick with the whole foods that you like to eat, get in some variety, but don't be dogmatic about dietary approaches, because not only will you likely not adhere to such restrictions, but you'll probably find yourself being contradicted by another study in the next 3-10 years.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/why-nutriti...
[2] http://www.nsca.com/uploadedfiles/nsca/inactive_content/prog...
[3] https://www.google.com/webhp?#safe=off&q=keto+fasting+glucos...
I think at the end of the day, we're just going to find that calorie in, calorie out is what's really going on here. Sure, heavy eaters binge on carbs or fats or whatever, but that's not the root problem here. Its our portions and snacking culture that might be the real culprits.
Armchair dieticians?
The government wants dumb unhealthy people that depend on it so it can perpetuate its existence.