OT:Good Calories, Bad Calories....

-SWS wrote: That's traditional dieting advice. And I think it's exactly what Taubes disputes as pseudoscience. Admittedly the Taubes type diet appeals to my taste buds MUCH more than your friend's diet. The Taubes type diet also strikes me as an easier diet to stick with over the long run. Regardless, I think I should go with your friend's diet if it's truly healthier...

Well at least when it was first touted it was better then the opposing view which was diet had absolutely NO PLACE in helping heart conditions and no REAL cardiologist would soil his hands talking about it.

BlackSpinner wrote: Well at least when it was first touted it was better then the opposing view which was diet had absolutely NO PLACE in helping heart conditions and no REAL cardiologist would soil his hands talking about it.

Thanks. I'm under the impression the Taubes type diet is favored on this message board. Interestingly, many of those Taubes recommendations are coming from our members who are otherwise skeptical---analytically healthy skeptics IMO. They are reporting excellent results in blood panels, energy, etc. Interesting... and promising!

xenablue wrote:My cardiologist gave me a diet too - he was astounded when my cholesterol, kidney function, BP and T2 diabetes was so under control with NOT his eating plan but mine. How could he argue with the facts - my labs. I eat at least about a dozen organic eggs per week. I eat lots of good quality olive oil, avocados, real butter, real cream in my coffee - all organic if I can afford/get them.

Again, all in moderation and choose foods more from a farm than a factory.

Xena,

Yeah. Eight years ago I was told I must think of myself as already diabetic, and that I must get off my horrible, unhealthy diet, get rid of all the fats and eat lots of complex carbs.

I looked at the endo, and said, "Ever hear of the mind-body connection? If I think I myself as diabetic, I will be!" I also asked, "My understanding is that diabetes is a disease of the carbohydrate metabolism. If I cannot metabolize complex carbs, why in the world do I want to eat lots of what I can't metabolize?" He had no answer.

I don't do grains, myself, but I can highly recommend the Weston Price Foundation. Pastured meats and eggs, yeah! As much a percentage of our egg and meat consumption as we can afford!

Never trust anything reported about science in the newspapers.
Here's why - a 45 minutes hilarious lesson on the issue -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RXvBveht0

SleepingUgly wrote:Whole grains vs. no grains, meat vs. no meat, etc. I'm going to just stop eating all controversial food items until this is all sorted out. I'll be eating celery. I haven't heard anyone say anything negative about celery. And spinach. Who can say anything bad about spinach?!

They're steeped in herbiscides....

It's not a "Taubes Diet". Gary Taubes is not a diet guru. He is a science journalist that compiled 200 years worth of research that contradicts what we are spoon fed from our government, based on the interests of the agricultural, pharmaceutical and healthcare industries and their lobbyists.
Do you remember the '70s when there was "Governmant Cheese" available for people in financial straights? I ate that cheese. You don't hear about that anymore bacause poor people can eat cheap grain based foods and move down the line to the healthcare and pharmaceutical leeches.

If we have the best healthcare in the world, why don't we make people healthy? Because there is more money to be made off of treating sick people. It's good for the economy.

Look into farm subsidies and who gets them. I have neighbors who have recieved over a million dollars over the last 10 years for growing grains. It keeps the price down but you pay for it in taxes, not at the checkout where you can make a choice.
Why does China buy soybeans from us?? That's where we got soybeans. They can't grow then cheaper? It balances the trade deficit.
Find a processed food that does not have a grain product in it.

Google "William Banting" if you think low carb is new.

ozij wrote:

SleepingUgly wrote:Whole grains vs. no grains, meat vs. no meat, etc. I'm going to just stop eating all controversial food items until this is all sorted out. I'll be eating celery. I haven't heard anyone say anything negative about celery. And spinach. Who can say anything bad about spinach?!

They're steeped in herbiscides....

HA, In grade school I hated celery with peanut butter!! There was also that wierd pimento cheese they put in it too! Who thought of that? Now peanut butter and celery is kind of a go to snack. Who'd a thunk it.
Spinach and such gets into oxalic acid but I eat it anyway and cook it most of the time, as with kale, chickweed and dandelion greens.
I lost my dog 2 years ago so at least my weeds haven't been peed on!

ozij wrote:Never trust anything reported about science in the newspapers.
Here's why - a 45 minutes hilarious lesson on the issue -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RXvBveht0

Caveats of correlation versus causation.

This observational study on a neighboring channel (N=2) correlates vegetables with musical talent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK5A0rnTPpE

I haven't read the entire study yet, but the abstract alone contains a damning fact: it's an observational study. There is really no way to accurately control for confounding variables in an observational study that relies on self-reported information.

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content....2011.2287

Looks like it's one of those studies designed to arrive at a specific conclusion to support a specific agenda.

I wonder when someone will do a study correlating shopping at Whole Foods (or WalMart or .....) with death? You could realistically draw the same conclusions based on the same data....heck, one could even pretend to extrapolate shopping habits through the self-reported food logs and arrive at a conclusion with the same accuracy as this study.

Sheesh.

DocWeezy wrote:I haven't read the entire study yet, but the abstract alone contains a damning fact: it's an observational study. There is really no way to accurately control for confounding variables in an observational study that relies on self-reported information.
.

I was just part of that kind of study and the questions asked just didn't match my lifestyle. Do I remember how many times a year I ate this particular item!!! Everything was a guess to a multiple choice answer. Nothing in that questionnaire really reflected reality.

Isn't it odd that we are told simple carbs are worse for us than complex carbs;
but simple fats are better than complex fats?
All we know is based on what we are told; ---whether or not it is true.
Remember the nutritional advice in 'Sleeper" . . .

chunkyfrog wrote: Remember the nutritional advice in 'Sleeper" . . .

I had to look it up... and I'm not sure if I found the quote you had in mind: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes?qt0231370

BTW, has anyone here who advocates a low carb diet stumbled across ANY studies they think are valid support of the lipid theory or the traditional food pyramid? Are they ALL bad science? Conversely, has anyone here who has rejected a low carb diet done so because they believe they have encountered empirical evidence refuting the validity of low carb diets?

-SWS wrote:[snip]
BTW, has anyone here who advocates a low carb diet stumbled across ANY studies they think are valid support of the lipid theory or the traditional food pyramid? Are they ALL bad science? [snip]

If you go back through them, they'll all pretty much begin in 1953 with Ancel Keys' so-called "Seven Countries Study."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Countries_Study which concluded that the consumption of dietary fat was directly related to the incidence of heart disease in a number of countries. Less cautious scientists and activists made a leap of faith and said that the consumption of dietary fats and cholesterol CAUSE heart disease and stroke, though no study has ever confirmed that to be the case in humans. Sure, you can feed rabbits (an herbivore) cholesterol and it will produce heart disease rather quickly, but you can feed licorice to a schnauzer and it will kill him, too, so what does that prove?

I was later learned that Keys cherry-picked his data, throwing out data from 7 of the 22 countries in his study that didn't comport with the trend he thought he saw in the data. However Keyes was a well respected researcher and the study resonated in certain quarters and was widely cited. Subsequent studies cited those studies, which cited them, ending up with a dietary dogma that probably 90% of the population, and the political and medical Establishment still believes to be the truth.

Until along come people like Michael Eades, Gary Taubes and others who have reminded us of how we got the way that we are.

Thanks again for all the input!! Well, I'm still edging the low carb diet. But boy, do I have plenty of reading to do. I suspect I'm not the only one grappling with this controversial issue. I'm equally interested in hearing BOTH sides of the issue. And I suspect others are as well...

If anyone is also struggling with this controversial health issue, here are some potentially useful debates between Gary Taubes and Stephen Guyenet:
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=p ... 22&bih=656

So far I understand that Taubes does a tenable job of debunking traditional diet studies. Is there longitudinal empiricism yet supporting the Taubes diet. Althernately, is there any longitudinal empiricism disputing the specifics of what Taubes recommends? I haven't had a chance to search yet.

Absolutely there's a longitudinal study. It's called the whole of human history, until about the 1960's to 1970's when the low fat craze caught on. And look at what has happened since--the rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease have SOARED. Prior to that time, heart attacks and strokes certainly happened, but they were rare compared to today. People still ate carbs, but not anywhere near the amounts in the SAD (Standard American Diet) now, which is mostly CARBS and SUGAR with some lousy PUFA fats thrown in for good measure. (Polyunsaturated fats we've been told were good for us, like vegetable oil, canola, and safflower, are heavily oxidized and they are sources of inflammation in our bodies).

I think this video sums it up nicely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vr-c8GeT34 ("How Bad Science and Big Business Created the Obesity Epidemic").It's about an hour long and the real meat (no pun intended) is in the last few minutes, but watch the entire thing so that you really understand the entire message.

BTW, I regularly eat lots of whole eggs, use heavy whipping cream in my coffee and for "desserts", add in and cook with a lot of butter and coconut oil, olive oil, plus some chicken fat (schmaltz) and beef fat (tallow). I eat fatty fish (and supplement with fish oil), limited nuts and nut butters. I aim for 75% of my calories every day from FAT. Any guesses what my cholesterol numbers are? Excellent--my triglycerides are only 71, HDL is 79. Looking at the ratios, I have a very low risk for cardiovascular disease, despite the fact that I'm "pre-diabetic".

How's your cholesterol?