Well, that's a little hard to believe.

Well, I saw this article in the New York Times website today. It's pretty crazy so I thought I'd post it here. It's a little long but is sort of fascinating and worth the read. I'm not saying I buy it, really, because I've seen so many instances where excersize and calorie restriction has worked. Anyway, still thought it was an interesting take on things (if a little gloomy- imagine that we don't actually have any control over our weight! Boo. No thanks.).

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Well I just read over this...and although I appreciate Gary Taubes as a science writer ( I'm reading his book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" right now - it takes a similar approach to low fat/low cholesterol ).

From what I read, he's talking about what exercise does to an 'ad libitum' diet.  Where people eat what they want.  This is significantly different from a calorie restricted diet since in the former one of your major stimuli to eat is hunger.  In a calorie restricted diet you are, presumably overriding your desire to eat.

Anyway I haven't had a chance to review the sources.  His writing style is a bit ponderous for me, since he wants to illustrate where a particular idea came from.  I'd rather just see a cite and have the link to the studies involved. 

That's sort of the impression I got, but at the same time, he mentions that he doesn't think our bodies are "dark voids" where calories go in and come back out, or something like that. I don't know. It's completely within the realm of possibility that I misinterpreted what he was saying in that part of the article, but he seemed to be disagreeing with the math behind calorie counting.

How is his book? Does it deal more with the whole fat cell/working out issue? Because I found that kind of interesting.

He hasn't touched on that yet but from the article it looks like he will ( last line says that it was adapted from the book).

Right now he's just talking about Fat/Cholesterol Intake being unrelated to serum cholesterol.  So far he's citing a lot of old research and studies.   Demonstrating that the popular opinion ( Cholesterol intake implies serum cholesterol rising) were derived from research that was misinterpreted, ambiguous, incorrect or spun in some way.

My beef so far is that:

a) We don't get to see the methodology of these studies - so we can weigh them for ourselves.  They are too old to look up in most databases.

b) IMHO the math and methodology of modern medicine is better.  

What I figure though is that he is using this to tell a story of how he thinks we got the ideas we have about Cholesterol and heart disease.   Hopefully he will cite some modern research in the next chapter or two.

He also alludes (and he does this in the article) that he's rather Atkins-esque.  Protein & Fat shouldn't be avoided, you will lose more weight eating the same number of calories of that over carbs.  I've read at least one abstract of a study that agrees with that opinion.  However a couple of the reviews ( where many studies are compared and analyzed ) seem to say that it's not true.

I'm still thinking about this stuff.  I was hoping to post a review of the book when I'm done.

Hope this helps. 

Sark, from what I've read, it appears that whether or not a higher-protein/lower-carb diet works better than the opposite depends in part on the individual.  Some respond to it, and some don't (possibly having to do with an individual's level of insulin resistance and a number of other factors.)  This may explain some of the differences in results in recent studies.  Apparently, that there is one right way to eat for every body may be the outmoded idea, rather than carbs good/fat bad or fat good/carb bad.  Makes sense to me.

Original Post by cc:

Sark, from what I've read, it appears that whether or not a higher-protein/lower-carb diet works better than the opposite depends in part on the individual. Some respond to it, and some don't (possibly having to do with an individual's level of insulin resistance and a number of other factors.) This may explain some of the differences in results in recent studies. Apparently, that there is one right way to eat for every body may be the outmoded idea, rather than carbs good/fat bad or fat good/carb bad. Makes sense to me.

It's interesting but it only explains differences in studies that measure those factors. Otherwise you've got to come up with why some combination of factors just happens to end up in the low-carb group and the other combination of factors just happens to show up in the high-carb group. There are plenty of other well-established factors in showing incongruent correlations. Like improper blinding, poor controls, small samples and bad math. :D

Also the larger the number of contributing factors someone comes up with, as a rule of thumb the less likely I would be to believe them. Simply because it's less likely that someone measured and analyzed sixteen different factors than two and therfore it's less likely that this is based on experimental evidence rather than conjecture.

Some of my criticisms of the 'there isn't a single right way to eat' idea is that 'right way' isn't well defined. Considering that we don't know every factor (let alone every dietary factor) that leads to good health a 'holistic' definition is not going to be achievable.

Now if you restrict yourself to 'losing weight' then obviously that caloric intake correlates better than anything else studied. So it kind of makes the point moot.

Not to mention that if there are 'two' significantly diets high-carb, low-carb. Why not three? Why not N? If there's N then again I'm leaning closer to calling 'bull' on someone because it doesn't seem likely that this is based on experimentation.  In fact the large N gets I'd assert that the more likely that the hypothesis is unprovable.

I think it's better to ask the question: "What are the largest causes of death?"( In the US it's something like Heart disease, Cancer, Stroke - Iatrogenics if you're counting that way ). Then ask "Are there diets that affect these factors?".

 

its always importen when you read somthing like that to rember Coralation dose not equal Causeation. and visce versa