RSS
From the NYT:
A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR SEPT. 1, 2014People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades, a major new study shows.
The findings are unlikely to be the final salvo in what has been a long and often contentious debate about what foods are best to eat for weight loss and overall health. The notion that dietary fat is harmful, particularly saturated fat, arose decades ago from comparisons of disease rates among large national populations.
But more recent clinical studies in which individuals and their diets were assessed over time have produced a more complex picture. Some have provided strong evidence that people can sharply reduce their heart disease risk by eating fewer carbohydrates and more dietary fat, with the exception of trans fats. The new findings suggest that this strategy more effectively reduces body fat and also lowers overall weight.
The new study was financed by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It included a racially diverse group of 150 men and women — a rarity in clinical nutrition studies — who were assigned to follow diets for one year that limited either the amount of carbs or fat that they could eat, but not overall calories.
“To my knowledge, this is one of the first long-term trials that’s given these diets without calorie restrictions,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who was not involved in the new study. “It shows that in a free-living setting, cutting your carbs helps you lose weight without focusing on calories. And that’s really important because someone can change what they eat more easily than trying to cut down on their calories.”
Right. In the late 1990s, I vaguely took up the low carb diet promoted by noted scientific authority Suzanne Somers, and I’m down about 35 or 40 pounds since my peak fatness. I should lose another 20 pounds, but that would require effort and will power and sacrifice, and, to be honest, I’m not into that. I haven’t even tried very hard on this diet: I just stopped buying a bunch of high carb / low fat foods like breakfast cereal and orange juice.
This little experiment tried the same thing: eat as much as you want of the assigned diet. I think for a lot of people a low carb diet is easier. And that’s not a bad thing.
… The average person may not pay much attention to the federal dietary guidelines, but their influence can be seen, for example, in school lunch programs, which is why many schools forbid whole milk but serve their students fat-free chocolate milk loaded with sugar, Dr. Mozaffarian said.
Eating less carbs has certainly worked better for me than my 1990s diet of eating less fat. But, would it not be wise when writing about diets to use terms like “on average” and “tend to?” Our culture has a detrimental bias of looking too much for the One True Diet that has been proven by Science to work for Everybody.
One of the reasons the low fat diet became the Medical Establishment’s choice to push a generation ago was because of studies of Asians in Hawaii who stayed lean on a low fat, high carb (rice) diet. The authorities generalized wildly from East Asians from rice culture to all Americans.
We shouldn’t keep making the same mistake of overly generalizing diet advice. A high carb diet doesn’t work for me, but I’m sure it works better than a high fat diet for some people.
You know how you can find out which diet works for you?
Try different diets.
You can get away with a lot of things, when you are young.
The Chipotle near me is filled with a much younger, hipper, more upscale crowd than the local Burker King attract.
It’s odd that upper-middle class America has decided that burritos are the key to fitness.
Maybe eating the food of Mexico, the only country on the planet with a higher obesity rate than America, isn’t the best idea.
When sushi was the fad that at least made sense. The Japanese live longer and healthier than us. Copying them seems reasonable. It’s probably mainly their genes, but maybe part is their diet.
Copying the way Mexicans eat is borderline retarded.
My suspicion is the official diets are more about self-denial than health. There’s little in the way of real science behind any of it. The low-carb people at least have some anthropology to point to, along with evolutionary biology.
I’ve been a low carb guy for a long time and it works for me. My sense is it is just harder to over eat when your primary foods are meats and green vegetables. I can eat a bag of chips in no time, but eating the same calories of spinach is never happening.
There is a deep rooted political opposition to admitting biological differences in IQ and job skills, but not health. The popular blood type diet is based on biological diversity, there is no political opposition, but there is no major evidence that blood type is terribly useful in determining a better diet.
Evidence for low-carb vs low-fat diets is interesting. It’s not gutsy or very controversial, but it’s nice to know.
“Try different diets and do what works best” is really lazy advice. This is one of Sailer’s weaker posts.
The whatever works for you advice works because it is obvious we are all cut different. Great advice and true.
I lose weight when I restrict calories and increase exercise, duh. That said it is easier to reduce calories by eschewing beer, soda-pop, fruit juice, pasta, bread, and potatoes than cutting back on meat, fish, or cheese.
Somewhat OT, the “Asians eat a lot of rice” truism reminded me of this iSteve-tropy article I saw a while ago:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/supermarket-spies-big-retail-has-you-in-its-sights-20130915-2trko.html
One can connect the dots here. Certainly rice is the marker for Asians, and spirit drinking is probably a marker for alcoholics or binge drinkers. The others are interesting, I wonder what they signify. Eating lots of red meat may be a marker for being European and at least middle class.
Another friend replied that the same was true in Britain.
This is pretty odd, given that Aussie "Asian" implies Oriental, and British "Asian" implies Subcontinental.
I also lost 25 pounds by cutting down on the carbs. Mostly by not drinking juice or soda. I have kept the weight off for 12 years.
I also increased my consumption of saturated fat, by adding coconut oil to my coffee, which made it easier to stop snacking between meals. The coconut oil made it much easier to avoid the carb snacks.
I’ve been on a low carb diet and it works for me. Yes individuals and ethnic groups are different but, all the same, nutritional science has been junk science for most of the 20th century. I started a low carb diet (without calorie counting) before medical science clued into it because there was plenty of anecdotal information circulating indicating that it worked. Some of the wrong things nutritionists have recommended in the past are
1) Low fat diet
2) Eating margarine (which contains trans fats)
3) Consuming fructose instead of glucose. (There is mounting evidence that fructose is relatively harmful because of the extra processing that it requires)
Soon enough, the NY Times will start saying things like “this paper never endorsed a low-fat diet” and “we never said vegan/vegetarian/high carb gurus/diets/fads were good for you!” Just like some of their writers are starting to say “of course race exists and racial differences are significant, we never said otherwise.”
We have always been at war with East Asia, comrade! Seig Heil, Mein Obama!
High fat and high carbs together are very bad. High carbs and little fat are better. Low carbs and high fat along with moderate protein is best. Lebron James is doing the latter. Not sure how that will go off athletically at his level. Novak Djokovic has done the same LCHFMP diet for years too. His results haven’t been too shabby.
You can get away with a lot of things, when you are young.
A lot of the most beautiful women in the world eat a crappy carb-filled diet because their genes and youth let them get away with it. Proof there’s no karma I guess.
It’s nice to see the NIH finally take a more rigorous approach to dietary science but they’ve already shredded their credibility with decades of promoting low-fat.
Fatties should sue the government and nutrition industries like smokers sued the tobacco companies.
PS. the very same people say we should trust the ‘experts’ on global warming or ‘climate change’ or whatever.
I don’t disbelieve in man-made changes to the climate, but the ‘experts’ have been wrong so many times that I don’t want the ‘expert’ class talking to us like we’re chillun.
At its best, carbs = fruits and vegetables. By this article, it would appear to be suggesting that we eliminate as many veggies and fruits from our daily recommended allowance.
Do they really want to go there? Throwing out the baby of vital nutrients, minerals, etc. just because of a few carbs?
Not all carbs are created equal and not all carbs are evil.
The collapse of the low-fat dogma over the past couple years has been pretty astounding when you think about it. Those making millions off the multi-billion dollar statin market should be quaking in their boots. They are assuredly next.
Maybe this is too much slippery slope-ism, but I can’t help but wonder if low-fat goes down, and statins go down, are vaccines next?
I like it that George McGovern was able to rain more havoc on us as a loser in ’72 than if he had won (see Taubes, good calories bad calories).
“One of the reasons the low fat diet became the Medical Establishment’s choice to push a generation ago was because of studies of Asians in Hawaii who stayed lean on a low fat, high carb (rice) diet. The authorities generalized wildly from East Asians from rice culture to all Americans.”
I find this odd. Didn’t anyone notice the size of native Hawaiians who were pigging out on too much carb?
Look at Konishiki. Or Akebono.
Well, I’m working on a reference page of all this stuff, but in the big picture, a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of low-carb (and low fat) diets find that, contra to the hype, they don’t work out that well in the long run on average.
Indeed, the meta-analysis in question (total N = 712) finds that after 1-2 years, the total average weight lost was a spectacular 8 pounds!
There is NO effective long term reliable weight loss stratgey. This comes from an exhaustive review of the evidence. They all (and I mean all) trend to 0 in time.
This includes surgery as well. There isn’t much by way of randomized trials because such would be “unethical.” :\
As you know personally, their are always individuals who will have exceptional results, but when it comes to the masses, the matter is a rather hard and futile ones.
Researchers will frequently define low carb as <40% calories from carbohydrate (i.e. not a huge difference). Low carb proponents cry 'apples-to-oranges' as they advocate something to the tune of "up to 5-10% calories from carb."Part of the problem with studying these truly low carb diets, is that researchers have trouble finding participants... and even when they do, absent an expensive metabolic ward, they face adherence issues.
The study you cite asks the wrong question. The relevant thing is not weight change between the start and end of the diet. It's the difference between weight at the end of the diet and what the weight would have been at the same time if the dieter had continued his prior diet.
Eat less, exercise more. The end. No one likes it but it works.
Thank you JayMan. I’ve been saying this for 20 years and everything I’ve seen confirms it. There is NO perfect diet. Exercise will make you fit, but not thin. The only real and permanent way to lose weight is to eat less than you think you need.
Of course avoiding lots of sugar is wise, why would anyone think otherwise? Guess what else is fattening? Lots of booze, even red wine (the “healthy” way to get drunk) will add up and make you want to scarf cheese and crackers before bed.
Still the best nutritional advice is probably the old 4 food groups we learned about as kids. Eat a bit from every group for each meal and don’t pig out. But as Steve says, effort and will power are not so popular.
[…] Source: Steve Sailer […]
Check out Doug McGuff’s videos on nutrition on Youtube.
Make sure your are seated.
The Law of the Universe says 20% or less of nutrition info gives 80% of the benefit.
No one is saying there is a perfect diet. Science of late, including the above mentioned study, seems to indicate there is a best diet amongst those that are popular and mostly consumed by the masses. The needle of late has been moving much closer to a low carb, high fat and moderate protein diet as the best of the lot. It’s not perfect, but better than all the rest for MOST people. At the very least refined carbs and sugar should be consumed in very limited quantities for optimal nutrition.
This is a good article, but I always thought focusing the debate on the specific macronutrient ratio missed the point.
Carbs from nature aren’t bad– such as fruits and vegetables. It just so happens that most of the horrible processed food out there–soda, booze, anything you see at a gas station– is very high in carbs. There are also processed fats and processed proteins that contain all kinds of toxic garbage.
I don’t think anyone who seriously has looked into this can deny that processed industrial foods, which were consumed far less before the obesity epidemic, are to blame for the disgusting condition of most Americans.
Whenever you see a morbidly obese person, it’s obvious they drink a lot of soda and eat a lot of fast food.
Calorie restriction is the ultimate diet. Everything else is just details.
It’s not that carbohydrate itself is evil…it’s just that most of the really offensive foods out are high in carbohydrate.
I know a lot of people who share Steve’s anecdotal story.
I think the high-carb nadir was about 15 years ago during the Great Bagel Mania. It started with bran muffins and wound up in worthless poofs of flour. Then the food factories started grinding out tons of frozen prepared meals crammed with who knows what, filling three aisles at WalMart.
What I can’t believe are the incredible high carb feasts advertised by the likes of IHOP, Perkins, Applebee’s..do people really eat like that on a regular basis?
Cite some evidence for the validity of the four food groups diet please, aside from it being dogma when you were young.
…
I’ve always suspected that the real goal of the low fat advocates was vegetarianism.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/rich-people-exercise-poor-people-take-diet-pills/378852/
Leptin and satiety. Can overcome weak will anytime!
I don’t know about weight loss — cancer is the best weight loss treatment
— but from personal experience I can say a high fat diet doesn’t translate into higher cholesterol necessarily nor, probably, higher heart attack risk. I take all dietary theories with a grain of salt, including the low salt one. Eat what tastes good. That’s my philosophy.
Has anyone here ever read material by Dean Ornish, Michael Greger or John McDougall?
Yes, but you have better taste than I do, Luke. For me, a fourth bowl of Cheerios tasted pretty good.
Indeed, the meta-analysis in question (total N = 712) finds that after 1-2 years, the total average weight lost was a spectacular 8 pounds!
There is NO effective long term reliable weight loss stratgey. This comes from an exhaustive review of the evidence. They all (and I mean all) trend to 0 in time.
This includes surgery as well. There isn't much by way of randomized trials because such would be "unethical." :\
As you know personally, their are always individuals who will have exceptional results, but when it comes to the masses, the matter is a rather hard and futile ones.
One issue low carb advocates will bring up: much of the research is based on ‘imposter low carb’ results. Researchers define low carb in a manner of their own choosing.
The US Dept. Health & Human Services recommends carbs constitute 45-65% of calories.
Researchers will frequently define low carb as <40% calories from carbohydrate (i.e. not a huge difference).
Low carb proponents cry 'apples-to-oranges' as they advocate something to the tune of “up to 5-10% calories from carb.”
Part of the problem with studying these truly low carb diets, is that researchers have trouble finding participants… and even when they do, absent an expensive metabolic ward, they face adherence issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo
2. I lost 50 pounds
3. I could eat as much as I want and would still reliably lose weight. I was not counting calories.
Indeed, the meta-analysis in question (total N = 712) finds that after 1-2 years, the total average weight lost was a spectacular 8 pounds!
There is NO effective long term reliable weight loss stratgey. This comes from an exhaustive review of the evidence. They all (and I mean all) trend to 0 in time.
This includes surgery as well. There isn't much by way of randomized trials because such would be "unethical." :\
As you know personally, their are always individuals who will have exceptional results, but when it comes to the masses, the matter is a rather hard and futile ones.
-8lbs after 2 yrs isn’t bad. Compared to +10lbs/decade, which I think is the US adult average (if not 12lbs these days), -8 is looking really good.
https://www.drmcdougall.com/index.php
http://nutritionfacts.org/
Here are a couple of informative sites in favor of the view that a high carbohydrate, very low fat diet is the best for everyone. Just thought I would throw that out there.
According to proponents of ultra-low fat dieting, only the markers for heart disease (such as LDL, HDL, triglycerides, etc) improve on low-carb diets, while actual arterial plaques keep on building up. Only diets with radically low levels of fat intake can halt or partially reverse atherosclerosis.
Has anyone here ever read material by Dean Ornish, Michael Greger or John McDougall?
I lost 80 pounds on Adkins. It was easy but I gained it all back and the second time around it was hard.
Now I’m thinking the answer is anti-gravity.
How about some follow-the-money analysis?
The food industry wants people to eat cheap carbs at high markups because those are the foods that are most profitable for them. The corollary to this is that fats and proteins have been discouraged because they cost more to produce.
The money printers want you to each cheap carbs because they are always afraid of food price inflation. They have a lot of influence over everything in this country. Everybody in Washington wants to do what the money printers say in order to keep that fresh fiat rolling in. I believe the money printers are also bankrolling the green propaganda machine that says you should eat cheap carbs to save the planet.
Cheap carbs make you obese and give you diabetes. None of these bastards care about that. Also the bastards in the medical profession do nothing to warn you about cheap carbs. They know the damage caused by cheap carbs, but diabetes and other related diseases are cash cows for them, so they keep quiet.
Actually, even that fails, eventually, according to trials.
Researchers will frequently define low carb as <40% calories from carbohydrate (i.e. not a huge difference). Low carb proponents cry 'apples-to-oranges' as they advocate something to the tune of "up to 5-10% calories from carb."Part of the problem with studying these truly low carb diets, is that researchers have trouble finding participants... and even when they do, absent an expensive metabolic ward, they face adherence issues.
There was a study where subjects were given a diet to follow and tried as best as possible to get them to follow it. No one could follow their diet completely to the letter, but the low-carb diet did win out.
(a) 8 lbs, statistically, is rather significant, and
(b) using population averages papers over the difference b/w those who can handle carbs vs. those who can't (actually carb sensitivity is probably a bimodal continuous distribution, but am speaking in extremes for simplicity's sake). This basically gets back to Steve's major point: do whatever it is that works for your particular physiology.
“Eat what tastes good.”
Yes, but you have better taste than I do, Luke. For me, a fourth bowl of Cheerios tasted pretty good.
Researchers will frequently define low carb as <40% calories from carbohydrate (i.e. not a huge difference). Low carb proponents cry 'apples-to-oranges' as they advocate something to the tune of "up to 5-10% calories from carb."Part of the problem with studying these truly low carb diets, is that researchers have trouble finding participants... and even when they do, absent an expensive metabolic ward, they face adherence issues.
There was a study where subjects were given a diet to follow and tried as best as possible to get them to follow it. No one could follow their diet completely to the letter, but the low-carb diet did win out.
Usually advocates of low carb are actually advocates of low starch/low sugar. But it’s very difficult to get the recommended intake of carbohydrates according to the US Government by simply eating vegetables.
For about six months I committed myself to a diet that forbade most starchy foods [wheat, potatoes, etc.] and foods with high levels of sugar.
1. I noticed that food tasted better
2. I lost 50 pounds
3. I could eat as much as I want and would still reliably lose weight.
I was not counting calories.
Both low fat and low carb diets have low long term compliance. It’s appears to be easier to eat more like a Frenchman by basically fasting during the day with an occasional low carb (low glycemic index) snack and then eat what you want for dinner. It also helps to pretend that gasoline costs what it does in France and do some walking (or other aerobic exercise) before dinner. This routine won’t result in dramatic weight loss but it can stop the progressive weight gain experienced by most Americans as they age and improve one’s blood lipid profile (no science here – anecdotal only).
Other health fallacies:
(1) Excessive avoidance of salt;
(2) Excessive avoidance of sunlight;
(3) Low intensity exercise, including jogging, as efficient ways to exercise;
(4) Stretching, including yoga, as useful types of exercise.
(5) The gluten scam.
From the Ace of Spades — ace.mu.nu — blog:
September 02, 2014
National Institute of Health Study: Yes, a Low-Carb Diet Is More Effective At Weight Control, And Also Results in Fewer Cardiac Risks
One day there will be a book written about this all — how a “Consensus of Experts” decided, against all previous wisdom and with virtually no evidence whatsoever, that Fat Makes You Fat and you can Eat All the Carbohydrates You Like Because Carbohydrates Are Healthy.
This never made a lick of sense to me, even before I heard of the Atkins diet.
Sugar is a carbohydrate. Indeed, it’s the carbohydrate, the one that makes up the others (such as starches, which are just long lines of sugar molecules arranged into sheets and folded over each other).
How the hell could it possibly be that Fat was Forbidden but SUGAR was Sacred?
It made no sense. A long time ago I tried to get a nutritionist to explain this to me. “Eat more fruit,” the nutritionist said.
“Fruit,” I answered, “is sugar in a ball.”
But the nutritionist had an answer. “That is fruit sugar,” the she told me.
“Fruit sugar,” I responded, “is yet sugar.”
“But it’s not cane sugar.”
“I don’t think the body really cares much about which particular plant the sugar comes from.”
“Sugar from a fruit,” the nutritionist now gambited, “is more natural than processed sugar.”
“They’re both natural, you know. We don’t synthesize sucrose in a lab. There are no beakers involved.”
“Well, you burn fruit sugar up quicker, so it actually gives you energy, instead of turning into fat!”
“Both sugars are converted into glycogen in the body. There can be no difference in how they produce ‘energy’ in the body because both wind up as glycogen. I have no idea where you’re getting any of this. It sounds like you’re making it all up as you go.”
“This is Science,” the nutritionist closed the argument.
Eh. It’s all nonsense. Even cane sugar contains, yes, fructose, or fruit sugar, and fruits contain sucrose, or cane sugar.
It’s just that fruits contain something like 60% fructose to 40% sucrose, and cane sugar contains them in the opposite proportions. (I’m just sorta guestimating here, guys.)
Again, I don’t see how sugar is rendered Magically Healthy simply because it comes from an orange rather than a cane.
The Science Was Settled on this point, however. A Consensus of Experts agreed.
The Government pushed this Consensus of Experts on the country, and food makers eagerly began taking fat out of their products, because Fat is Bad, and replaced that Fat (you have to replace it with something) with Healthy, Muscle-Building, Figure-Keeping Sugar.
And then we all got really, really fat.
It also helps to pretend that gasoline costs what it does in France and do some walking (or other aerobic exercise) before dinner.
Why not do some intensive weight training before dinner? Or run some wind sprints, following a Tabata regimen?
Oh yes, French peepul are so sophisticated and smart.
French people have relatively low BMIs.
It's odd that upper-middle class America has decided that burritos are the key to fitness.
Maybe eating the food of Mexico, the only country on the planet with a higher obesity rate than America, isn't the best idea.
When sushi was the fad that at least made sense. The Japanese live longer and healthier than us. Copying them seems reasonable. It's probably mainly their genes, but maybe part is their diet.
Copying the way Mexicans eat is borderline retarded.
If you low carb Chipotle is one of the better options out there. Get a bowl, add beans (depending on how low carb you are) a couple kinds of meat, grilled vegetables, several salsas, guacamole, sour cream, cheese and lettuce and you’ll get two low carb meals for about $12.
Why not do some intensive weight training before dinner? Or run some wind sprints, following a Tabata regimen?
Oh yes, French peepul are so sophisticated and smart.
In two words: low compliance.
Of course, some French people are sophisticated and smart but in general
French people have relatively low BMIs.
Carb cycling has worked extraordinarily well for me (middle aged white guy who was 80 lbs overweight). I dropped 60 lbs in about 6 months. You eat a low glycemic diet 6 days per week, and then you have a “cheat day” where you eat all the carbs you want. Most of the Paleo Diet advice follows this plan. Of course, if you eat processed crap you will pay the consequences for it, so eat whole foods. That should go without saying. And obviously, you have to burn more calories than you consume if you want to lose weight.
Once you reach your desired weight, you have to shift into maintenance mode if you want to stay there. Maintenance is a lot easier than weight loss, but it requires some discipline. I guess most people have NO PLAN for maintenance. Once they lose weight, they just return to the old habits that got them fat in the first place. You have to think long term if you want to be lean long term.
September 02, 2014
National Institute of Health Study: Yes, a Low-Carb Diet Is More Effective At Weight Control, And Also Results in Fewer Cardiac Risks
One day there will be a book written about this all -- how a "Consensus of Experts" decided, against all previous wisdom and with virtually no evidence whatsoever, that Fat Makes You Fat and you can Eat All the Carbohydrates You Like Because Carbohydrates Are Healthy.
This never made a lick of sense to me, even before I heard of the Atkins diet.
Sugar is a carbohydrate. Indeed, it's the carbohydrate, the one that makes up the others (such as starches, which are just long lines of sugar molecules arranged into sheets and folded over each other).
How the hell could it possibly be that Fat was Forbidden but SUGAR was Sacred?
It made no sense. A long time ago I tried to get a nutritionist to explain this to me. "Eat more fruit," the nutritionist said.
"Fruit," I answered, "is sugar in a ball."
But the nutritionist had an answer. "That is fruit sugar," the she told me.
"Fruit sugar," I responded, "is yet sugar."
"But it's not cane sugar."
"I don't think the body really cares much about which particular plant the sugar comes from."
"Sugar from a fruit," the nutritionist now gambited, "is more natural than processed sugar."
"They're both natural, you know. We don't synthesize sucrose in a lab. There are no beakers involved."
"Well, you burn fruit sugar up quicker, so it actually gives you energy, instead of turning into fat!"
"Both sugars are converted into glycogen in the body. There can be no difference in how they produce 'energy' in the body because both wind up as glycogen. I have no idea where you're getting any of this. It sounds like you're making it all up as you go."
"This is Science," the nutritionist closed the argument.
Eh. It's all nonsense. Even cane sugar contains, yes, fructose, or fruit sugar, and fruits contain sucrose, or cane sugar.
It's just that fruits contain something like 60% fructose to 40% sucrose, and cane sugar contains them in the opposite proportions. (I'm just sorta guestimating here, guys.)
Again, I don't see how sugar is rendered Magically Healthy simply because it comes from an orange rather than a cane.
The Science Was Settled on this point, however. A Consensus of Experts agreed.
The Government pushed this Consensus of Experts on the country, and food makers eagerly began taking fat out of their products, because Fat is Bad, and replaced that Fat (you have to replace it with something) with Healthy, Muscle-Building, Figure-Keeping Sugar.
And then we all got really, really fat.
This is also my position, and I wish that I’d said this in my earlier post. Also a large proportion of the sugar in fruit is fructose, which can cause insulin resistance and liver disease, so fruit is doubly bad for you. (Its full of sugar and much of the sugar is fructose). Most people (myself included) are now of the opinion that the the high quantity of sugar in pop is pretty bad for you, and substituting high fuctose corn syrup for cane sugar doesn’t fix things because the glucose-fructose ratio of cane sugar is roughly the same (about 50/50). Its a mystery to me why there’s no effort to manufacture and mass-market a healthier pop beverage sweetened exclusively with glucose (dextrose). Anyway its not just pop that’s bad for you. Most fruit juice is too. Sugar is sugar and fructose is fructose. Just because something originates naturally on a tree won’t make it healthy.
Right, you can low carbize both Chipotle and Burger King by not eating the wrappers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo
Thanks, I’m familiar with the video. Good stuff.
I eat low carb myself. I reread my comment and it really drives home the point of how much I suck at written communication. It’s such a chore; I was trying for a neutral tone.
Other points I didn’t make (but are made by Gardner in that video):
(a) 8 lbs, statistically, is rather significant, and
(b) using population averages papers over the difference b/w those who can handle carbs vs. those who can’t (actually carb sensitivity is probably a bimodal continuous distribution, but am speaking in extremes for simplicity’s sake). This basically gets back to Steve’s major point: do whatever it is that works for your particular physiology.
“Eating less carbs has certainly worked better for me than my 1990s diet of eating less fat. But, would it not be wise when writing about diets to use terms like “on average” and “tend to?” Our culture has a detrimental bias of looking too much for the One True Diet that has been proven by Science to work for Everybody.
One of the reasons the low fat diet became the Medical Establishment’s choice to push a generation ago was because of studies of Asians in Hawaii who stayed lean on a low fat, high carb (rice) diet. The authorities generalized wildly from East Asians from rice culture to all Americans.
We shouldn’t keep making the same mistake of overly generalizing diet advice. A high carb diet doesn’t work for me, but I’m sure it works better than a high fat diet for some people”
This is the biggest dumb shit I have read in my life. If everyone were different metabolically and physiologically as you proclaim, then medical science could not exist as a viable discipline.
Here is a hint for you: the fact that drugs that are designed for human use are tested first on animals, and that the results obtained on animals can be extrapolated for humans, tells us something. It tells us that we are actually physiologically very similar.
Differences between humans when it comes to diet are more apparent at the level of digestion and assimilation rather than at the level of how it affects us biochemically. The reason for this is that is that all foods contain the same three categories of molecules: carbohydrates, lipis and proteins. There isn’t much variation between humans when it comes to the bottom line of how food is biochemically utilized because there isn’t many variations in the kinds of molecules that living organisms use to build their tissues and as fuels. Here are some fun facts for you:
– Glucose is ALWAYS the prefered fuel for metabolic processes. All fats and proteins that you consume, when directed to be used as fuel, get partially in the case of fat and completely in the case of protein turned into glucose by gluconeogenesis in the liver.
– Fat is ALWAYS more fattening per volume than carbohydrates since it contains over twice as many calories per gram.
– Saturated fatty acids, especially palmitic acid, ALWAYS increase plasma low density lipoproteins by increasing the activity of cholesteryl ester transfer protein. Race doesen’t matter. Or gender, Or anything else.
– A high fat diet ALWAYS puts stresss on the kidneys by increasing body acidity via keto acidosis. Fats are composed of fatty ACIDS. Hence, acidosis. An acidic body state is implicated in many degenerative diseases such as arthritis, gout and ostheoporosis.
– The bad carbohydrate is fructose, a saccharide present in sweet fruits, sodas and things like that. It increases LDL cholesterol because fructose cannot be directly utilized as fuel unlike glucose, so the liver converts it into triglycerides, which in the case of human like that of any animal is of compised mostly of saturated fatty acids, hence increasing LDS cholesterol. It also induces hyperglycemia and thus diabetes by increasing insulin resistence. Race does not matter. A white man, an Asian and a Mexican will get these same effects.
When people talk about an “ideal” diet, they are actually asking the following:
“What foods are less distressing for my gastro-intestinal tract to assimilate, and that do not contain allergens to my particular immune system?”
Most of the differences between humans when it comes to diet is in assimilation and immune response and NOT in how individual molecules that are used as fuel and for biosynthesis are utilized.
For instance, the carbohydrate contained in grains, starch, is a lot healthier than the fructose contained in fruits like bananas. And yet, a lot of people get sick when they eat grain. This is NOT because the carbs in grains are bad for you, but because grains, like other member of the Graminea family, contain proteins that over-activate human immune response. People who live on grains and can tolerate them are usually a lot healthier than people who live on table sugar which is 50% fructose.
Likewise, people who feel better on animal lard rather than corn, soy and sunflower seeds is not because the animal fat is better for them than the vegetable fat. As far as METABOLISM is concerned, the vegetable fat is ALWAYS healthier for the cardiovascular system and controlling inflammation than the animal fat. The reason why the people who live on animal fat feel better is because they cannot tolerate the allergenic proteins present in most oily vegetables. It has NOTHING to do with metabolism, but rather an immune system gone insane over a food constituent that it perceives as a pathogen rather than nourishment.
Another example is milk. Milk is far from a healthy food, but a lot of people “feel” better on hydrogenated fats and sugar than on milk because they can’t digest lactose. This saccharide present in milk requires a specific enzyme system for metabolization, and the lack of it causes extreme assimilation distress to the body, with flatulence, diarrhea and skin rashes as a result.
So, yes, Sailer, there IS a single diet that will yield superb health for everyone from the point of metabolic markers such as body inflammation, blood lipid profile, blood plasma glucose and markers of boy acidity/alkalinity. Such a diet has the following characteristics:
– Low in saturated animal fat.
– Low in fructose(mostly found in table sugar)
– Rich in vegetables for body alkalinity.
– Low in protein – since protein is not effective as a fuel due to it’s need to be conveted into glucose and the fact that protein, being composed of amino ACIDS, increase body acidity.
– Bulk of calories from glucose, with the remainder from unsaturated fatty acids.
When you apply an elimination process using this criteria to food, the ideal diet is one where the basis of calories comes from grains and/or monounsaturated fats like those in olive oil, with small anounts of lean meats and lots of raw vegetables. This diet will ALWAYS result in superior health. The evidence is simply incontrovertible.
The exception to this are people who cannot tolerate grains due to immune system incompatibility. For those, a diet where the bulk of calories comes from MCT oil or coconut fat is ideal. Even though the fatty acids in coconut are saturated, they are different from other saturated fats in that they raise high density lipoproteins while decreasing low density lipoproteins.
You are completely wrong, Sailer. Why should anyone take nutritional advice from you? I mean, you already had cancer and yet you advocate eating burgers, even though the heterocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons present in burger meat are PROVEN carcinogens.
What angers me is that, for reasons of ideology, you HAVE to make everything about diffrences in racial genetics. “Dur, dur…it is the genes of different races…dur, dur!” Well, it is not.
Sailer is 100% spot on that biological diversity is suppressed in other areas of life, but not with health and diet. Mainstream science still hasn't resolved the long term carb vs fat diet issues. There is a lot of confusion that has nothing to do with politics or HBD suppression and it is ridiculous to see Sailer play that card in this area.
I come from a family of ridiculously healthy Celtic peasant people, and weight plagues me. I’ve lost lots of weight and kept it off for years at at a time (and I mean 4-5 years), eventually weight catches up with me because I am avoidant.
So the last time I lost weight, I vowed to not be avoidant, step on the scale, and cut back when I needed to. That has now worked for 4 years, in that I haven’t ballooned to a ridiculous size, but am instead stocky like a good peasant should be. I’ve put on weight, but given that the last loss was 50 pounds and I’ve never been less than 30 pounds away, I feel I’m doing well.
I’m with those who say calories are the deal; however, since I love potatoes, rice, bread, and pasta, I have pretty much wiped the last one out of my diet completely (unless it’s rice noodles in Asian food, and then sparingly). Bread is a rare treat. For dinner most nights, I decide on meat or a carbohydrate (with vegetarian protein or cheese), but not both. That is effective. If I keep my calories ruthlessly to 1800/day, I’ll maintain. Lose weight, I need to drop to 1500.
By the way: the burrito may be Mexican (its origin is uncertain) but the Chipotle burrito is the San Francisco Mission burrito. I myself think burritos are probably Californian.
Even if this diet you describe is ideal in terms of overall anti-disease profile, I find it impossible to stay on such a diet. I think you have to take that into consideration when recommending a diet. Fat plays an important role in satiety. I tried to go low fat, and like most people who try it, I failed to stick with it, and regained all the weight I lost and felt worse than when I started. If that diet were truly the ideal, it would have revolutionized dieting. But, it didn’t. What’s the reason? If this is THE BEST diet known to man, in fact, then why did it not become the standard?
High fat. Studies. Low fat. High carbs. Studies Low carbs, High protein. Low protein. Studies. Calories. Body mass index. Studies. Fructose. Glucose. Sucrose. Studies. Atkins diet. Thigh-Master. Olive oil. Pilates. Saturated fat. Studies.
None of this crap matters because very soon when the pressure of Invade The World costs and massive Import the Third World immigration-welfare-statism triggers the national-global civilizational Collapse-O-Tastrophe we will all, as Tyler Cowen has bravely predicted, subsist monotonously on a diet of beans.
And then our Dear Rulers will dictate that our choice in automobiles will be restricted to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0_tJjWHZOo
Life is short. Eat what you like!
While you can still get it.
It's odd that upper-middle class America has decided that burritos are the key to fitness.
Maybe eating the food of Mexico, the only country on the planet with a higher obesity rate than America, isn't the best idea.
When sushi was the fad that at least made sense. The Japanese live longer and healthier than us. Copying them seems reasonable. It's probably mainly their genes, but maybe part is their diet.
Copying the way Mexicans eat is borderline retarded.
Interesting fact
Mexicans in Mexico don’t eat burritos much and certainly not the kind that Chipoltle serves which is the San Francisco Mission District burrito
Burritos are about as Mexican a deep dish pizza is Italian
Also, in my opinion Mexican food from Mexico is excellent
You are completely wrong, Sailer. Why should anyone take nutritional advice from you? I mean, you already had cancer and yet you advocate eating burgers, even though the heterocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons present in burger meat are PROVEN carcinogens.
LOL!
Comrade Lysenko, is that really you?
Jayman, stop trying to argue weight loss is impossible or even particularly hard. Your weight is clearly not genetic and no number of studies can prove it is.
Any studies which purport to prove it are showing that people, nowadays, tend to be bad at weight loss. Specifically, the type of people who sign up for studies and are actually being studied are bad. There could be myriad reasons for this.
In the recent past far fewer people were fat but genes were the same. So we have one study with a huge sample size…human society…that absolutely proves the current ridiculous levels of obesity ain’t genetic. End of.
The first low carb diet was the best:
“The Drinking Man’s Diet
“Did you ever hear of a diet which was fun to follow? A diet which would let you have two martinis before lunch, and a thick steak generously spread with Sauce Béarnaise, so that you could make your sale in a relaxed atmosphere and go back to the office without worrying about having gained so much as an ounce? A diet which allows you to take out your favorite girl for a dinner of squab and broccoli with hollandaise sauce and Chateau Lafitte, to be followed by an evening of rapture and champagne?’
Breakfast
1/4 cantaloupe or 4 ounces of tomato juice (5) Ham or bacon, 2 slices (0) Egg, fried, boiled or poached (trace) Coffee or tea (0)
Lunch
Dry martini or whiskey and soda, if desired (trace) Broiled fish or steak or roast chicken (0) 2 glasses dry wine, if you wish (trace) Green beans or asparagus (1) Lettuce and tomato salad with French or Roquefort dressing (4) Coffee or tea (0)
Dinner
Martinis or highballs, if you desire (trace) Hors d’oeuvres of 2 stalks of celery stuffed with pâté (5) Shrimp cocktail (4) Beef, pork, lamb, veal chicken or turkey (0) Green beans, 1 cup, brussels sprouts, 1/2 cup, or cauliflower, 1 cup (6) 2 glasses dry wine (trace) 1/2 avocado with French dressing (8) Cheese: Roquefort, Camembert, Swiss or cheddar (trace) Coffee or tea (0) Brandy (trace)
Total grams of carbohydrate: 33
Alternate Breakfast: Denny’s Grand Slam, hold the toast and pancakes.
http://www.forbes.com/2004/04/21/cz_af_0421feat.html
@Paul Mendez
“LOL!
Comrade Lysenko, is that really you?”
Your sarcasm is lost on me, probably because it is so nonsensical.
“If this is THE BEST diet known to man, in fact, then why did it not become the standard?”
Because what is best for you healthwise in terms of nutrition is not the same as what you are innately predisposed to enjoy. Calories in Nature are scarce, so we are born with an innate desire to eat calorically dense foods, especially fatty and sugary foods. Back in the Paleolithic Era, humans could only rarely get such fatty and sugary treats, so they remained healthy because circumstances forced them to eat a healthy diet. Animals being born with an innate predisposition to love calorically dense foods was not a problem health-wise because these caloric treats were few and far between. If calorically dense foods were abundant, we would not have been genetically selected to love them as it wouldn’t be necessary and the survival rate of creatures predisposed to gorge on so many calories would be low since they would all die of diabetes and artherosclrosis.
Nowadays, calorically dense foods are abundant and cheap, which has proven to be disastrous. We were simply not designed to ingest 1,500 calories in a single sitting of sugar every day, or eat a pound of animal lard a day, every day. We never evolved metabolic defenses against the inflammation, hyperglycemia and oxidative stress that results from eating so many easy calories.
I hope I have addressed your query.
The research on the Mediterranean diet is shoddy, not least because Ancel Keys collected a good chunk of his data during Orthodox Lent, when the subjects deviated from their normal diet. If you haven't, you should read The Big Fat Surprise.
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/supermarket-spies-big-retail-has-you-in-its-sights-20130915-2trko.htmlOne can connect the dots here. Certainly rice is the marker for Asians, and spirit drinking is probably a marker for alcoholics or binge drinkers. The others are interesting, I wonder what they signify. Eating lots of red meat may be a marker for being European and at least middle class.
A friend said that in Queensland the Asian drivers can be recognised at a distance by the particular style of incompetence that they espouse.
Another friend replied that the same was true in Britain.
This is pretty odd, given that Aussie “Asian” implies Oriental, and British “Asian” implies Subcontinental.
And who can forget Vilhjalmur Stefansson?
PS: Is renaming yourself Vilhjalmur Stefansson from William Stephenson an early example of Sailer’s Flight from White?
Except that the so called diseases of civilization (heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer) are nonexistent among groups like the Inuit and Masai eating a traditional, almost meat exclusive diet. And not only did they eat meat (and full day dairy among the Masai), they privileged the fattiest cuts of the animal.
The research on the Mediterranean diet is shoddy, not least because Ancel Keys collected a good chunk of his data during Orthodox Lent, when the subjects deviated from their normal diet. If you haven’t, you should read The Big Fat Surprise.
For a long time my diet has been low fat vegan and extremely high in carbs (potatoes and whole grains), I eat as much as I want and in fact actively try to maximize my caloric intake, and I’m super thin and super healthy, have always been.
Even before I was vegan I have always eaten high carb, always eaten like a pig, always been thin.
I tried once higher fat lower carbs out of curiosity, a disaster.
The Paleolithic era lasted 2.6M years. And, as Cochran/Harpending have pointed out we didn’t stop evolving 10K years ago – the opposite. For these reasons I am leery of the Paleo diet. In any case, no food that we eat now is chemically or biochemically similar to Paleo foods.
Howsumever, people weren’t eating massive amounts of sugar until recently. I think that the empty calories from sugar are the culprit, both in terms of excess energy & metabolic effects.
“There is NO effective long term reliable weight loss stratgey.”
Absolute balderdash. Not even wrong.
“I should lose another 20 pounds, but that would require effort and will power and sacrifice, and, to be honest, I’m not into that.”
I’m in the same boat, only smaller. I should lost about 10 pounds (6 of which would be flab, the rest, water).
I think it’s possible for anyone who isn’t metabolically flucked to keep a reasonably normal weight even in our obesogenic environment. Being “sensationally skinny” (in the words of some low carb propagandist) – another thing entirely.
I think most of us are as skinny as we are paid to be. If I were getting paid $10M a picture, I’d clean out my fridge and start starving PRONTO.
So, the diet is perfect but man is not (because of what he is predisposed to enjoy) or society is not (because calorie dense foods are cheap and available)?
That seems like an impractical view of diet. I think the flaw is that this view takes ENJOYMENT of food out of the equation. As though enjoyment has nothing to do with health and well-being. The reality is that enjoying food and eating as a social ritual is an indispensable part of being human (this is something that the French do understand). This is why this supposedly ideal diet is fatally flawed. Of course it can work for certain people, commited vegetarian couples for example. I have known a few of them. But, it’s not practical for most.
By the way, even though I would not ask Steve Sailer for nutrition advice, I would be more likely to have success losing weight over the long term by following his simple idea than by trying to adhere to your panacea of diet. Even if Steve doesn’t exactly know what he’s talking about, his heart is in the right place. He sees problems from a practical standpoint with solutions that normal people can apply…as opposed to idealist fantasies of perfection that few people can use.
Over the last 10000 years we have evolved to eat grains. Eat them whole and get rid of your carbo-phobia. I eat brown rice. And whole wheat bread same as my ancestors in Europe did. Rye too.
Refined carbs are another matter. Some can handle them some cannot. I have no use for white rice and white bread but plenty have of Japanese and Okinawan and have lived long lives on a rice-centric diet.
I understand the paleo-diet—- But there is a paleo way of eating whole organic grains
Has anyone mentioned Weston Price yet?
Japan has one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. The reasons are probably both good genetics and good lifestyles (less sedentary/more fish and vegetables/lower caloric intake than Western countries).
Of all the areas of Japan, Okinawa at one time had the highest life expectancy. Then Okinawa received the first McDonald's in Japan (even earlier than in Tokyo). Now, the female life expectancy in Okinawa is still the highest in Japan, but the male life expectancy in Okinawa is the lowest. Interesting, eh?
Koreans and Japanese are now considerably taller than their parents and grandparents were 30 years ago. The Korean average height in particular is beginning to approach the American average (which in turn is in decline due to the influx of shorter immigrants). At least some of that must be due to increased protein intake. On the other hand, the rates of obesity, heart disease, and cancer have increased dramatically in these countries.
On a more personal note, I have been an athlete all my life and have maintained my high school weight +/- 5 pounds for decades (of course I am now considerably less muscular than in my youth; it's very hard to maintain muscle mass into the old age without testosterone replacement and I also have to avoid injury more carefully when I exercise and train). There is no magic trick or diet to this. I just eat moderately and exercise. It just takes willpower and moderation, and really is as simple as that.
I agree with Nick Diaz, I posted a similar comment earlier. All humans, even of different ethnicities, have four chambered hearts, hemoglobin, vascular muscle tissue, we breath air with lungs, we have livers.
Sailer is 100% spot on that biological diversity is suppressed in other areas of life, but not with health and diet. Mainstream science still hasn’t resolved the long term carb vs fat diet issues. There is a lot of confusion that has nothing to do with politics or HBD suppression and it is ridiculous to see Sailer play that card in this area.
Indeed, the meta-analysis in question (total N = 712) finds that after 1-2 years, the total average weight lost was a spectacular 8 pounds!
There is NO effective long term reliable weight loss stratgey. This comes from an exhaustive review of the evidence. They all (and I mean all) trend to 0 in time.
This includes surgery as well. There isn't much by way of randomized trials because such would be "unethical." :\
As you know personally, their are always individuals who will have exceptional results, but when it comes to the masses, the matter is a rather hard and futile ones.
Jayman,
The study you cite asks the wrong question. The relevant thing is not weight change between the start and end of the diet. It’s the difference between weight at the end of the diet and what the weight would have been at the same time if the dieter had continued his prior diet.
Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system‘
Try not eating anything for 24 hours.
Can we please not encourage fat people to eat more meat? It’s too expensive as it is.
“What angers me is that, for reasons of ideology, you HAVE to make everything about diff[e]rences in racial genetics. “Dur, dur…it is the genes of different races…dur, dur!” Well, it is not.”
Jeezus, dude, dial it down. You’re gonna give yourself a hernia. Sailer says nothing in this post about race, genetics, racial genetics, &c. All he says is that different people are different, and they should go with whatever works for them.
At which point you fly into a rage.
Seriously – I’m worried about your health (both mental & physical). You’re probably the best troll we’ve got here, and we don’t want to lose you.
Chill – OK?
Evidence for low-carb vs low-fat diets is interesting. It's not gutsy or very controversial, but it's nice to know.
"Try different diets and do what works best" is really lazy advice. This is one of Sailer's weaker posts.
I think it’s great advice and 100% true. I went on a low carb diet and lost a lot of weight but have known people that just ate less of the same foods because there are carbs they do not want to give up.
The whatever works for you advice works because it is obvious we are all cut different. Great advice and true.
Any studies which purport to prove it are showing that people, nowadays, tend to be bad at weight loss. Specifically, the type of people who sign up for studies and are actually being studied are bad. There could be myriad reasons for this.
In the recent past far fewer people were fat but genes were the same. So we have one study with a huge sample size...human society...that absolutely proves the current ridiculous levels of obesity ain't genetic. End of.
Amen! Preach it brother, preach it!
Just like the Flynn effect proves IQ is “not genetic.” I guess height can’t be either………..
I swear I engage in at least 30-40% of my discussions for entertainment value alone.
The study you cite asks the wrong question. The relevant thing is not weight change between the start and end of the diet. It's the difference between weight at the end of the diet and what the weight would have been at the same time if the dieter had continued his prior diet.
I agree. Placebo controls come in handy there. Such (very large) studies have been done. Bupkis.
A lot of people like the wonderfully named Valter Longo say it’s protein which needs to be reduced.
Controlling protein intake may be key to longevity, studies show
Refined carbs are another matter. Some can handle them some cannot. I have no use for white rice and white bread but plenty have of Japanese and Okinawan and have lived long lives on a rice-centric diet.
I understand the paleo-diet---- But there is a paleo way of eating whole organic grains
Has anyone mentioned Weston Price yet?
As I have said countless times, genetics are very important, but environment/nurture matters too.
Japan has one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. The reasons are probably both good genetics and good lifestyles (less sedentary/more fish and vegetables/lower caloric intake than Western countries).
Of all the areas of Japan, Okinawa at one time had the highest life expectancy. Then Okinawa received the first McDonald’s in Japan (even earlier than in Tokyo). Now, the female life expectancy in Okinawa is still the highest in Japan, but the male life expectancy in Okinawa is the lowest. Interesting, eh?
Koreans and Japanese are now considerably taller than their parents and grandparents were 30 years ago. The Korean average height in particular is beginning to approach the American average (which in turn is in decline due to the influx of shorter immigrants). At least some of that must be due to increased protein intake. On the other hand, the rates of obesity, heart disease, and cancer have increased dramatically in these countries.
On a more personal note, I have been an athlete all my life and have maintained my high school weight +/- 5 pounds for decades (of course I am now considerably less muscular than in my youth; it’s very hard to maintain muscle mass into the old age without testosterone replacement and I also have to avoid injury more carefully when I exercise and train). There is no magic trick or diet to this. I just eat moderately and exercise. It just takes willpower and moderation, and really is as simple as that.
Japan has one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. The reasons are probably both good genetics and good lifestyles (less sedentary/more fish and vegetables/lower caloric intake than Western countries).
Of all the areas of Japan, Okinawa at one time had the highest life expectancy. Then Okinawa received the first McDonald's in Japan (even earlier than in Tokyo). Now, the female life expectancy in Okinawa is still the highest in Japan, but the male life expectancy in Okinawa is the lowest. Interesting, eh?
Koreans and Japanese are now considerably taller than their parents and grandparents were 30 years ago. The Korean average height in particular is beginning to approach the American average (which in turn is in decline due to the influx of shorter immigrants). At least some of that must be due to increased protein intake. On the other hand, the rates of obesity, heart disease, and cancer have increased dramatically in these countries.
On a more personal note, I have been an athlete all my life and have maintained my high school weight +/- 5 pounds for decades (of course I am now considerably less muscular than in my youth; it's very hard to maintain muscle mass into the old age without testosterone replacement and I also have to avoid injury more carefully when I exercise and train). There is no magic trick or diet to this. I just eat moderately and exercise. It just takes willpower and moderation, and really is as simple as that.
Don’t be so sure. Why isn’t “good” genetics sufficient?
Death by Chocolate | West Hunter
Rates of death from (“common”) infectious disease goes down, rates of death from everything else goes up…..
“Except that the so called diseases of civilization (heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer) are nonexistent among groups like the Inuit and Masai eating a traditional, almost meat exclusive diet. And not only did they eat meat (and full day dairy among the Masai), they privileged the fattiest cuts of the animal.”
You are committing a logical fallacy, by assuming that there are no other reasons that explain the health of Inuit. How about the fact that they exercise a lot more than westerners? How about the fact that traditional Inuit eat very little fructose?
Also, the Inuit have pretty short lifespans, and suffer from cancer at a rate that is not dissimilar from that of westerners.
And I wasn’t talking only about the Mediterranean diet, but all healthy diets. Mediterraneans, Georgians, and Okinawans all have diets low in saturated fat and sugar, with plenty of vegetables and unsaturated fats. The evidence of the health-promoting effects of this diet is incontrovertible.
Howsumever, people weren’t eating massive amounts of sugar until recently. I think that the empty calories from sugar are the culprit, both in terms of excess energy & metabolic effects.</i.
Recall that cane sugar as well as potatoes became available to Europeans only after colonization of the New World.
I eat as much as I want and in fact actively try to maximize my caloric intake, and I’m super thin and super healthy, have always been.
Your genes may have predestined you to be a herbivorous ectomorph. You can’t help being the way you are.
The reality is that enjoying food and eating as a social ritual is an indispensable part of being human (this is something that the French do understand)
If the Front National becomes the leading political party of Frankland, will you still admire French savoir faire?
Steve-
The “Back to Sleep” campaign was also adopted from East Asia and more or less imposed on a majority caucasian (but nevertheless heterogeneous population) to prevent SIDS. The result has been a bunch of little upper east siders running around with plagiocephaly (flat heads). Whether or not it is clearly linked to a drop in SIDS is up for the statisticians to slug out. It is worth noting that SIDS was already dropping before BTS. And a significant portion of deaths ruled to be SIDS occur with babies sleeping on their backs. What’s curious is that the only SIDS case I am personally aware of involved an Asian baby that had been stomach sleeping. At any rate, when you leave the hospital with a new baby you are given a dire warning that if you let your child stomach sleep, you are basically committing murder.
For interested parties, I’ve compiled a page with various facts relating to obesity, including all the references for such. Facts such as its heritability, the uselessness of diet and exercise for weight loss, and the overstated inherent dangers of being overweight:
Obesity Facts | JayMan’s Blog
Facts such as its heritability, the uselessness of diet and exercise for weight loss
Endomorph, mesomorph or ectomorph — genes predestine all, agree?
The evidence over the last hundred plus years says you are wrong. Read Taubes. Read Attia.
That is the least profitable advice I’ve ever heard, man!
Uh yes, there’s a scourge of fruit-caused obesity laying waste to the American populace. The amounts of fruit required to fullfill your anti-fruit nuttiness is far beyond what most Americans, who can’t even be troubled to eat an occasional apple, are even close to capable of.
Rather than listen dubious experts, who offer conflicting advice, why not examine people who have the highest longevity?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Zone
• Family – put ahead of other concerns
• Less smoking
• Semi-vegetarianism – except for the Sardinian diet, the majority of food consumed is derived from plants
• Constant moderate physical activity – an inseparable part of life
• Social engagement – people of all ages are socially active and integrated into their communities
• Legumes – commonly consumed
HBD is Life and Death | JayMan's Blog
I will say the pattern in Europe seems to roughly follow the fraction of Early European Farmer (EEF - Wave 2 of the migrations into Europe) vs. Indo-European component (I-E, Wave 3). Life expectancy is highest in SW Europe, peaking in Sardinia, where EEF ancestry predominates. It is lower in NE Europe, which appears to be purer I-E.
Why don’t you lick some leaded paint every day for a while and think about it?
Including height?
The "Back to Sleep" campaign was also adopted from East Asia and more or less imposed on a majority caucasian (but nevertheless heterogeneous population) to prevent SIDS. The result has been a bunch of little upper east siders running around with plagiocephaly (flat heads). Whether or not it is clearly linked to a drop in SIDS is up for the statisticians to slug out. It is worth noting that SIDS was already dropping before BTS. And a significant portion of deaths ruled to be SIDS occur with babies sleeping on their backs. What's curious is that the only SIDS case I am personally aware of involved an Asian baby that had been stomach sleeping. At any rate, when you leave the hospital with a new baby you are given a dire warning that if you let your child stomach sleep, you are basically committing murder.
My wife and I came home with a new baby many times. No one ever warned us about baby murder by stomach sleep.
• Less smoking
• Semi-vegetarianism – except for the Sardinian diet, the majority of food consumed is derived from plants
• Constant moderate physical activity – an inseparable part of life
• Social engagement – people of all ages are socially active and integrated into their communities
• Legumes – commonly consumed
This is why:
HBD is Life and Death | JayMan’s Blog
I will say the pattern in Europe seems to roughly follow the fraction of Early European Farmer (EEF – Wave 2 of the migrations into Europe) vs. Indo-European component (I-E, Wave 3). Life expectancy is highest in SW Europe, peaking in Sardinia, where EEF ancestry predominates. It is lower in NE Europe, which appears to be purer I-E.
This is an HDB site; it’s in the genes.
I come from a long line of endomorphs, and I’ve had a hard time keeping weight off my whole life. I’ve used my size in power and strength sports, which kept the weight to a tolerable number, but a bad marriage and an injury found me at 425 lbs. in 2000.
I started a modified low-carb diet 1/1/2001, coupled with an intensive training regimen, and dropped 180 lbs. in 11 months. It works.
The subsequent 12 years of eating a “normal” diet has seen me put 65 lbs. back on; I blame the good Belgian ales I drink! I occasionally spend a couple months going back to the low-carb routine and knock off some of the weight, but I can’t maintain a steady BMI without carb denial. Bad genes.
At the other end of the spectrum is my girlfriend. Her weight hasn’t fluctuated more than 3 pounds since she was in high school, and she’s currently 127 lbs. at 5’10″. She exercises 3 days a week, but not fanatically or intensively. Her diet is the antithesis of low-carb, and as a “skinny bitch”, she constantly gets glares from waitresses when she asks for another basket of bread to sop up her remaining sauce. We’ve been together 10 years, and I’ve yet to see her worry about a single thing she eats. Good genes.
We are who we are. Do the best you can with what you have.
[…] like saturated fat is getting to be the next big thing. You heard it here first! (Remember, animal fats seem to be […]
HBD is Life and Death | JayMan's Blog
I will say the pattern in Europe seems to roughly follow the fraction of Early European Farmer (EEF - Wave 2 of the migrations into Europe) vs. Indo-European component (I-E, Wave 3). Life expectancy is highest in SW Europe, peaking in Sardinia, where EEF ancestry predominates. It is lower in NE Europe, which appears to be purer I-E.
The oldest male European of all time was called Christian Mortensen. Born in Denmark. The second oldest (Walter Breuning) exercised every day.
The Pritikin Diet, which Ornish ripped off, in other words.