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Low Carb S.A
WHAT IF ITS ALL BEEN A BIG FAT LIE? WEIGHT LOSS WITH A LOW-CARBOHYDRATE, MEDITERRANEAN, OR LOW-FAT DIET STUDY SURPRISE: LOW CARB DIETERS EAT MORE, LOSE WEIGHT LOW CARB DIETS COMBAT METABOLIC SYNDROME LOW CARB DIETS IMPROVE CHOLESTEROL EVEN WITHOUT WEIGHT LOSS
What if its all been a big fat lie?
By Gary Taubes This is the article that finally convinced me that low carb is the best way to diet. It is something that everybody who wants to go on a diet whether it is low fat or low carb should read. This is a long article, and I'm going to comment on parts of it, but most of it makes a lot of sense to me. If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-inTimes-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.
The perversity of this alternative hypothesis is that it identifies the cause of obesity as precisely those refined carbohydrates at the base of the famous Food Guide Pyramid -- the pasta, rice and bread -- that we are told should be the staple of our healthy low-fat diet, and then on the sugar or corn syrup in the soft drinks, fruit juices and sports drinks that we have taken to consuming in quantity if for no other reason than that they are fat free and so appear intrinsically healthy. While the low-fat-is-good-health dogma represents reality as we have come to know it, and the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research trying to prove its worth, the low-carbohydrate message has been relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy. And who is behind the food guide pyramid? Who pays for the research on that pyramid? What foods are cheaper to manufacture and store? What foods make more money for businesses? And who profits from that and the obesity epidemic they have created? Now, there is a certain junk food company who is touting their junk food as being healthier than other junk food. It's made with whole grain, it's made using less/no trans fat, it has less salt/sugar, it's baked not fried, blah blah blah. Everyone is jumping on the obesity epidemic needs to be stopped bandwagon and they are ignoring the research that tells them they created it and continue to fuel it with their emphasis on whole grains and low-fat this, that, and the other. I'm not saying whole grains are bad for you, they're not. But I am asking "Do we really need to eat five or more servings a day?"
The alternative hypothesis also comes with an implication that is worth considering for a moment, because it's a whopper, and it may indeed be an obstacle to its acceptance. If the alternative hypothesis is right then it strongly suggests that the ongoing epidemic of obesity in America and elsewhere is not, as we are constantly told, due simply to a collective lack of will power and a failure to exercise. Rather it occurred, as Atkins has been saying (along with Barry Sears, author of ''The Zone''), because the public health authorities told us unwittingly, but with the best of intentions, to eat precisely those foods that would make us fat, and we did. We ate more fat-free carbohydrates, which, in turn, made us hungrier and then heavier. Put simply, if the alternative hypothesis is right, then a low-fat diet is not by definition a healthy diet. In practice, such a diet cannot help being high in carbohydrates, and that can lead to obesity, and perhaps even heart disease. ''For a large percentage of the population, perhaps 30 to 40 percent, low-fat diets are counterproductive,'' says Eleftheria Maratos-Flier, director of obesity research at Harvard's prestigious Joslin Diabetes Center. ''They have the paradoxical effect of making people gain weight.'' What's more, the number of misconceptions propagated about the most basic research can be staggering.
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Researchers will be suitably scientific describing the limitations of their own experiments, and then will cite something as gospel truth because they read it in a magazine. The classic example is the statement heard repeatedly that 95 percent of all dieters never lose weight, and 95 percent of those who do will not keep it off. This will be correctly attributed to the University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Albert Stunkard, but it will go unmentioned that this statement is based on 100 patients who passed through Stunkard's obesity clinic during the Eisenhower administration.
Some of the best scientists disagreed with this low-fat logic, suggesting that good science was incompatible with such leaps of faith, but they were effectively ignored. Pete Ahrens, whose Rockefeller University laboratory had done the seminal research on cholesterol metabolism, testified to McGovern's committee that everyone responds differently to low-fat diets. It was not a scientific matter who might benefit and who might be harmed, he said, but ''a betting matter.'' Phil Handler, then president of the National Academy of Sciences, testified in Congress to the same effect in 1980. ''What right,'' Handler asked, ''has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good?''
Nonetheless, once the N.I.H. signed off on the low-fat doctrine, societal forces took over. The food industry quickly began producing thousands of reduced-fat food products to meet the new recommendations. Fat was removed from foods like cookies, chips and yogurt. The problem was, it had to be replaced with something as tasty and pleasurable to the palate, which meant some form of sugar, often high-fructose corn syrup. Meanwhile, an entire industry emerged to create fat substitutes, of which Procter & Gamble's olestra was first. And because these reduced-fat meats, cheeses, snacks and cookies had to compete with a few hundred thousand other food products marketed in America, the industry dedicated considerable advertising effort to reinforcing the less-fat-is-good-health message. Helping the cause was what Walter Willett calls the ''huge forces'' of dietitians, health organizations, consumer groups, health reporters and even cookbook writers, all well-intended missionaries of healthful eating. Create an obesity epidemic and of course businesses are going to jump on the money-making machine of trying to end it (and end up making it worse, of course, contributing to the obesity epidemic while touting all they are doing to supposedly end it). Few experts now deny that the low-fat message is radically oversimplified. If nothing else, it effectively ignores the fact that unsaturated fats, like olive oil, are relatively good for you: they tend to elevate your good cholesterol, highdensity lipoprotein (H.D.L.), and lower your bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (L.D.L.), at least in comparison to the effect of carbohydrates. While higher L.D.L. raises your heart-disease risk, higher H.D.L. reduces it.What this means is that even saturated fats -- a k a, the bad fats -- are not nearly as deleterious as you would think. True, they will elevate your bad cholesterol, but they will also elevate your good cholesterol. In other words, it's a virtual wash. You will gain little to no health benefit by giving up milk, butter and cheese and eating bread instead.
The crucial example of how the low-fat recommendations were oversimplified is shown by the impact -- potentially lethal, in fact -- of low-fat diets on triglycerides, which are the component molecules of fat. By the late 60's, researchers had shown that high triglyceride levels were at least as common in heart-disease patients as high L.D.L. cholesterol, and that eating a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet would, for many people, raise their triglyceride levels, lower their H.D.L. levels and accentuate what Gerry Reaven, an endocrinologist at Stanford University, called Syndrome X. This is a cluster of conditions that can lead to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. It took Reaven a decade to convince his peers that Syndrome X was a legitimate health concern, in part because to accept its reality is to accept that low-fat diets will increase the risk of heart disease in a third of the population. ''Sometimes we wish it would go away because nobody knows how to deal with it,'' said Robert Silverman, an N.I.H. researcher, at a 1987 N.I.H. conference. ''High protein levels can be bad for the kidneys. High fat is bad for your heart. Now Reaven is saying not to eat high carbohydrates. We have to eat something.'' Yeah, we do have to eat something. How about a balanced diet of meats, fats, nuts, seeds, fruits, veggies, and dairy? One that doesn't rely on a food pyramid that doesn't have a clue (or care) how it really affects people's health. There is a lot more information in the article, but you can read it yourself . The full article can be read here:
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9F04E2D61F3EF934A35754C0A9649C8B63&sec=health. Gary taubes is the author of the book "good calories bad calories" which received the following review from Richard Rhodes, winner of the Pulitzer Prize Gary Taubes's Good Calories, Bad Calories is easily the most important book on diet and health to be published in the past one hundred years. It is clear, fast-paced and exciting to read, rigorous, authoritative, and a beacon of hope for all those who struggle with problems of weight regulation and general health--as who does not? If Taubes were a scientist rather than a gifted, resourceful science journalist, he would deserve and receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Weight Loss with a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet
Background Trials comparing the effectiveness and safety of weight-loss diets are frequently limited by short followup times and high dropout rates. Methods In this 2-year trial, we randomly assigned 322 moderately obese subjects (mean age, 52 years; mean body-mass index [the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters], 31; male sex, 86%) to one of three diets: low-fat, restricted-calorie; Mediterranean, restricted-calorie; or low-carbohydrate, nonrestrictedcalorie. Results The rate of adherence to a study diet was 95.4% at 1 year and 84.6% at 2 years. The Mediterranean-diet group consumed the largest amounts of dietary fiber and had the highest ratio of monounsaturated to saturated fat (P<0.05 for all comparisons among treatment groups). The low-carbohydrate group consumed the smallest amount of carbohydrates and the largest amounts of fat, protein, and cholesterol and had the highest percentage of participants with detectable urinary ketones (P<0.05 for all comparisons among treatment groups). The mean weight loss was 2.9 kg for the low-fat group, 4.4 kg for the Mediterranean-diet group, and 4.7 kg for the low-carbohydrate group (P<0.001 for the interaction between diet group and time); among the 272 participants who completed the intervention, the mean weight losses were 3.3 kg, 4.6 kg, and 5.5 kg, respectively. The relative reduction in the ratio of total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol was 20% in the low-carbohydrate group and 12% in the low-fat group (P=0.01). Among the 36 subjects with diabetes, changes in fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels were more favourable among those assigned to the Mediterranean diet than among those assigned to the low-fat diet (P<0.001 for the interaction among diabetes and Mediterranean diet and time with respect to fasting glucose levels). Conclusions Mediterranean and low-carbohydrate diets may be effective alternatives to low-fat diets. The more favourable effects on lipids (with the low-carbohydrate diet) and on glycemic control (with the Mediterranean diet) suggest that personal preferences and metabolic considerations might inform individualized tailoring of dietary interventions.
For the full study go to: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/3/229
Study surprise: Low-carb dieters eat more, lose weight
The dietary establishment has long argued it's impossible, but a new study offers intriguing evidence for the idea that people on low-carbohydrate diets can actually eat more than folks on standard lowfat plans and still lose weight. Perhaps no idea is more controversial in the diet world than the contention -- long espoused by the late Dr. Robert Atkins -- that people on low-carbohydrate diets can consume more calories without paying a price on the scales. Over the past year, several small studies have shown, to many experts' surprise, that the Atkins approach actually does work better, at least in the short run. Dieters lose more than those on a standard American Heart Association plan without driving up their cholesterol levels, as many feared would happen. Sceptics contend, however, that these dieters simply must be eating less. Maybe the low-carb diets are more satisfying, so they do not get so hungry. Or perhaps the food choices are just so limited that low-carb dieters are too bored to eat a lot. Now, a small but carefully controlled study offers a strong hint that maybe Atkins was right: People on low-carb,
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high-fat diets actually can eat more. The study, directed by Penelope Greene of the Harvard School of Public Health and presented at a meeting here this week of the American Association for the Study of Obesity, found that people eating an extra 300 calories a day on a very low-carb regimen lost just as much during a 12-week study as those on a standard lowfat diet. Over the course of the study, they consumed an extra 25,000 calories. That should have added up to about seven pounds. But for some reason, it did not. "There does indeed seem to be something about a low-carb diet that says you can eat more calories and lose a similar amount of weight," Greene said. A calorie just a calorie? That strikes at one of the most revered beliefs in nutrition: A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. It does not matter whether they come from bacon or mashed potatoes; they all go on the waistline in just the same way. Not even Greene says this settles the case, but some at the meeting found her report fascinating. "A lot of our assumptions about a calorie is a calorie are being challenged," said Marlene Schwartz of Yale. "As scientists, we need to be open-minded." Others, though, found the data hard to swallow. "It doesn't make sense, does it?" said Barbara Rolls of Pennsylvania State University. "It violates the laws of thermodynamics. No one has ever found any miraculous metabolic effects." In the study, 21 overweight volunteers were divided into three categories: Two groups were randomly assigned to either lowfat or low-carb diets with 1,500 calories for women and 1,800 for men; a third group was also low-carb but got an extra 300 calories a day. The study was unique because all the food was prepared at an upscale Italian restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so researchers knew exactly what they ate. Most earlier studies simply sent people home with diet plans to follow as best they could. Each afternoon, the volunteers picked up that evening's dinner, a bedtime snack and the next day's breakfast and lunch. Instead of lots of red meat and saturated fat, which many find disturbing about low-carb diets, these people ate mostly fish, chicken, salads, vegetables and unsaturated oils. "This is not what people think of when they think about an Atkins diet," Greene said. Nevertheless, the Atkins organization agreed to pay for the research, though it had no input into the study's design, conduct or analysis. Raising questions Everyone's food looked similar but was cooked to different recipes. The low-carb meals were 5 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 65 percent fat. The rest got 55 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 30 percent fat. In the end, everyone lost weight. Those on the lower-cal, low-carb regimen took off 23 pounds, while people who got the same calories on the lowfat approach lost 17 pounds. The big surprise, though, was that volunteers getting the extra 300 calories a day of low-carb food lost 20 pounds. "It's very intriguing, but it raises more questions than it answers," said Gary Foster of the University of Pennsylvania. "There is lots of data to suggest this shouldn't be true." Greene said she can only guess why the people getting the extra calories did so well. Maybe they burned up more calories digesting their food. Dr. Samuel Klein of Washington University, the obesity organization's president, called the results "hard to believe" and said perhaps the people eating more calories also got more exercise or they were less apt to cheat because they were less hungry.
"http://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/diet.fitness/10/14/lowcarb.mystery.ap/
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LOW CARB DIETS COMBAT METABOLIC SYNDROME:
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2007/07/20/hscout606585.html
LOW CARB DIETS IMPROVE CHOLESTEROL EVEN WITHOUT WEIGHT LOSS: Often when diets are compared, especially when weight loss is involved, its hard to tell if changes in health indicators (such as blood pressure or triglycerides) are due to the diet itself or the resulting weight loss. This study from Ronald Krauss and his colleagues attempts to address this issue. Four groups of men eating different carbohydrate levels and different levels of saturated fat were followed for changes in blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides). First, they all ate the same diet, then they were divided into the different diet groups -- first without weight loss, then with reduced calories. Overall results: The low-carb groups improved on most of the parameters of cholesterol and triglycerides, even without weight loss. With weight loss, there was further (but smaller) improvement in the low-carb groups, and the high carb group partially caught up, but not all the way. These trends included LDL particle size, with the low-carb groups going in the good direction. Additionally, the group that was higher in saturated fat had the greatest increase in particle size. Most of the changes with the medium carb diet were intermediate between the higher and lower carb diets. On a calorie intake designed to keep weight stable, the low-carb groups still lost weight. http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/science/a/lowcarbcholest.htm
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