Gary Taubes article; Dean Ornish response

[Melinda]

I find eating concentrated protein, like beans or tofu keeps me full faster. I thought I read years ago that people lost their appetite on Atkins because it was so meat heavy and they tired of the lack of variety.

[colonyofcells]

It is probably a reductionist error to talk about fat and protein. Starch Solution is an unrefined starch based vegan diet (low fat). I believe starch based vegan diets which are higher in fat are also healthy as seen in the 1950s crete diet. It is probably healthier to talk about healthy lifestyles like those in the blue zones which probably require a whole book to describe adequately instead of talking about fat and protein, vegan vs non vegan, etc. There are also lots of books describing how indigenous groups are able to live happy, healthy and sustainable lives.

[BlueHeron]

I find eating concentrated protein, like beans or tofu keeps me full faster. I thought I read years ago that people lost their appetite on Atkins because it was so meat heavy and they tired of the lack of variety.

There have been many diets over the years that limit people to just a few foods. People lose weight on them because they get tired of the food and don't eat as much. I don't think that's quite the same as a loss of appetite. A lot of people who struggle with weight eat for reasons other than hunger. If you've made your food choices boring, eating will be less likely to meet your psychological needs.

People do lose weight on Atkins - sometimes huge amounts. They gain it back when they go off the diet - which would also be true of McDougallers who change back to SAD. Weight loss, however, does not equal health, which is why I wish we'd quit focusing on it so much. Another reason is that people who feel they aren't losing enough weight then get discouraged and want to quit. If weight loss is the goal, there are many, many things that will work. The goal should be health, with weight loss as a side effect of that.

[colonyofcells]

I have to agree that our goal is health and an active long life (not long life being sick). When I first started eating healthy and doing more exercise, i only checked my weight after 1 year bec of the annual check up and was surprised I lost about 30 lbs. I really hope I can be a productive member of society till I die. I probably don't need to live long if all I am going to do every day is watch videos, cartoons and movies. It has become hard for me to buy pants. The smallest pant size at costco is 30x29. My waistline is closer to 28 than 30 so I just use a belt to tighten my pants.

[dteresa]

I will speculate that fat and meat keep one feeling full longer because they sit in the stomach longer. True carnivores gorge themselves on a kill and it might be several days before they have to hunt again. Their stomachs also produce acid with a much lower pH (meaning much more acidic) than the human stomach in order to digest all that meat and fat. So if you eat a carnivore's meal without a carnivore's stronger acid, naturally it will take longer to digest.

I also noticed when trying the zone diet that Sears is correct. Blood sugars don't rise as high after a meal. With his thirty thirty forty diet, the fat slows down digestion and the sugar takes longer to leave the stomach. But as the fat and meat is digested, the sugar is released and at a time when those on a starch diet experience low or normal blood sugars before the next meal, the sugars of those whose digestion was slowed by fat (or animal protein) rise----just when you don't want it to, before the next meal.

So filling your stomach with slowly digesting food naturally would make you feel full longer. Because your stomach is literally full, longer.

The perfect example is comparing a breast fed baby to a bottle fed baby. Nursing babies get hungry every couple of hours or less because mother's milk contains different proteins suited to babies and is most easily digested. For those who have never seen the stool of a breast fed baby, it is a soft liquidy yellow but a bottle fed baby's stool is a whitish more solid lump. A bottle fed baby with cows milk formula has a big lump of casein in his stomach which sits there, takes longer to digest and thus the baby feels full longer and can go longer between feedings.

didi

[dailycarbs]

I also noticed when trying the zone diet that Sears is correct. Blood sugars don't rise as high after a meal. With his thirty thirty forty diet, the fat slows down digestion and the sugar takes longer to leave the stomach. But as the fat and meat is digested, the sugar is released and at a time when those on a starch diet experience low or normal blood sugars before the next meal, the sugars of those whose digestion was slowed by fat (or animal protein) rise----just when you don't want it to, before the next meal.

Perhaps you could enlighten the bewildered Jimmy Moore. This little tidbit has escaped him.

When I tested my blood one hour after this meal, I was in for a BIG SHOCK! Hold on to your hats with this people, but it literally stunned me–my blood sugar levels DROPPED 26 points down to 81 AFTER my meal. What the? How did? Is it possible? HUH?!?! Now, wait a minute. I thought your blood sugar was supposed to go UP after eating a meal? I ate all these carbs, so wouldn’t my blood sugar go up under normal circumstances? Strange, huh?

Oh, but it gets even better. Three hours after eating, I decided to check my blood sugars again (man, my fingers REALLY hurt with all this testing!) and it had risen back up to 94 again, but still well below my fasting blood glucose of 107. Although it was on the rise again, my blood sugar was still kinda low and made me hesitant about eating something else lest it drops again. I know it sounds funny to say that, but what else am I to think about this bewildering blood sugar predicament?

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/what ... evels/2377

[dteresa]

If Jimmy doesn't wake up and smell the coffee after being on his low carb diet and regaining the weight back---twice--- nothing will enlighten him. And the second time around he actually fasted some of the time. He also considers eggs, cheese, ranch dressing, meat protein and pizza a high carb meal. The real reason his sugars seemed so low was that his "high carb" meal was really a high fat meal. If he had tested three or four hours later he might have been really really surprised if he had really eaten a high carb meal. I guess he missed the fact that some animal protein can raise insulin more than popcorn or pasta. But no one regularly measures insulin. Hundreds if not thousands follow him, he gets invited to speak at low carb conferences and cruises and he does not know that his so called high carb meal is a high fat meal.

He is not unique in this. I have seen many documentaries where pizza, donuts, french fries etc are called high carb when they are also swimming in fat.

didi

[dailycarbs]

I agree with everything you wrote except this

If Jimmy doesn't wake up and smell the coffee

I'd change that to

If Jimmy doesn't wake up and smell the bulletproof coffee!

[dteresa]

yummers.

didi

[dteresa]

http://www.news-medical.net/news/201507 ... ldren.aspx

Above is an announcement of a study to learn about fatty liver disease in children by the well funded Taubes/Attia NuSi foundation whose goal is, if I may put it into the vernacular, to show everybody what's what when it comes to fat vs sugar. And to show,bye the way, that fat doesn't make you fat or sick.

And this describes the experimental design. Forty kids over eight weeks. Intensive. It does not look like they will have one group eating fat and another group eating no fat but lots of sugar. But I could be mistaken.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/201507 ... ldren.aspx

didi
PS Apparently people are so anxious to hear good news about their bad habits that they are willing to dig deep into their pockets to provide the funding. I wonder when the meat, dairy and egg industry will jump on the bandwagon? Are they in trouble with big sugar which has already threatened the world health organization?

[snapple]

Fat slows digestion and holds food in the stomach for longer.

[BlueHeron]

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150716/NuSI-launches-groundbreaking-clinical-study-to-halt-nonalcoholic-fatty-liver-disease-in-children.aspx

Above is an announcement of a study to learn about fatty liver disease in children by the well funded Taubes/Attia NuSi foundation whose goal is, if I may put it into the vernacular, to show everybody what's what when it comes to fat vs sugar. And to show,bye the way, that fat doesn't make you fat or sick.

And this describes the experimental design. Forty kids over eight weeks. Intensive. It does not look like they will have one group eating fat and another group eating no fat but lots of sugar. But I could be mistaken.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/201507 ... ldren.aspx

didi
PS Apparently people are so anxious to hear good news about their bad habits that they are willing to dig deep into their pockets to provide the funding. I wonder when the meat, dairy and egg industry will jump on the bandwagon? Are they in trouble with big sugar which has already threatened the world health organization?

I have no problem with this study at all. Why not determine whether removing sugar affects fatty liver disease in children? Yes, the group has an agenda, but their doing studies to find out whether they're right is the same as Dr. McDougall doing an MS study. As long as the study is done well, I have no objection.

This is much better than organizations like Weston Price, which does no research and simply spreads misinformation.

[dteresa]

There is one intervention group and one group on what seems to be their regular diet. It does not look like both groups eating a similar diet but one without sugars and the other without fats. Which is hard to do in the first place unless you put them on a non animal food diet. Hard to do with children.

I can't help thinking of that Mediterranean diet study in which low fat wasn't really low fat.

I am also frequently puzzled by the emphasis on sugar. Is there anyone who thinks that sugar is a health food? On the other hand you will always hear about healthy fats, how you need fat, how you must have animal protein because it is complete.

didi

[petero]

No one seems to want and tackle his most powerful argument: why do people who eat low carb eat fewer calories naturally without feeling deprived?

It seems to me that the answer is in something that Doug Lisle said in one of his videos: meat is an unprocessed natural food that isn't able to fool human's satiety mechanisms. So the person on the infamous Snackwells and soda diet is going to eat more calories than the low carb dieter, and Gary Taubes will trumpet the "fact" that this is because of the macronutrient ratios and not because one is a heavily processed food that fools satiety mechanisms.

[BlueHeron]

I don't see anything at all about a "low fat" group - just a low sugar group and a control group. Is there something I'm missing? From the article:

"Forty children with NAFLD will be assigned to either an intervention group or a habitual diet control group. The study team will visit the families' homes in order to learn about their current ways of eating. In the intervention group, the study team will provide the families with a similar version of their current diet, with the exception of assuring that it is low in free sugars."

It's true that nobody thinks sugar is a health food, but a large number of people are saying that sugar is the primary problem with the American diet. The goal seems to be to determine how big a problem sugar really is. It seems like a perfectly valid subject for a study to me.