6 of some calories, half a dozen of the other calories
August 4, 2017 7:29 AM Subscribe
Researchers at the NIH have completed a controlled study of Gary Taubes’ theory that efficient body fat loss requires carbohydrate restrictions, with some interesting findings. In an in-patient setting with obese volunteers eating 1900 calories/day, a carb-restricted diet (140 g carbs/day) led to sustained increase in fat oxidation, decreased insulin secretion, and loss of body fat compared to subjects’ baseline diets. However, restricting dietary fat to 17g/day instead caused subjects to lose significantly more body fat (500g/day) than on the carbohydrate-restricted diet (53g/day), with no change in metabolic fuel selection.
All 19 subjects tried both diets for six days in a metabolic ward, with a 2-4 week washout period in between. The research team then used the results from in-house metabolic monitoring of all subjects to mathematically model what it might look like if patients adhered perfectly to either diet for six months, and predicted patients on a low fat diet would lose a few kilograms more fat mass over the long haul. Interestingly, the simulations also suggested that very low carbohydrate diets would be more effective than low fat diets, and many combinations of reduced-calorie diets with more balanced mixes of fat or carbohydrate restrictions would have only minimal effects on body fat loss or metabolism.
All 19 subjects tried both diets for six days in a metabolic ward, with a 2-4 week washout period in between. The research team then used the results from in-house metabolic monitoring of all subjects to mathematically model what it might look like if patients adhered perfectly to either diet for six months, and predicted patients on a low fat diet would lose a few kilograms more fat mass over the long haul. Interestingly, the simulations also suggested that very low carbohydrate diets would be more effective than low fat diets, and many combinations of reduced-calorie diets with more balanced mixes of fat or carbohydrate restrictions would have only minimal effects on body fat loss or metabolism.
leotrotsky, was just writing the same thing :) The word "ketosis" doesn't appear in the paper at all.
posted by clicking the 'Post Comment' button at 7:42 AM on August 4, 2017
posted by clicking the 'Post Comment' button at 7:42 AM on August 4, 2017
This study design can't test for < 50 g carbs
while the RC diet qualifies as a low-carbohydrate diet, it was clearly not a very low-carbohydrate diet, which typically requires carbohydrates to be less than 50 g/day (Westman et al., 2007). Given the composition of the baseline diet, it was not possible to design an isocaloric very low-carbohydrate diet without also adding fat or protein. We decided against such an approach due to the difficulty in attributing any observed effects of the diet to the reduction in carbohydrate as opposed to the addition of fat or protein.posted by Gyan at 7:43 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Also, I don't think anyone disputes that low fat diets can cause weight loss in the short term. The issue is that it's unsustainable over the long term. That's why you never see The Biggest Loser do reunion shows.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:43 AM on August 4, 2017 [22 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 7:43 AM on August 4, 2017 [22 favorites]
Also, I don't think anyone disputes that low fat diets can cause weight loss in the short term. The issue is that it's unsustainable over the long term.
So, as I am sure we have all heard, "diets don't work". From personal experience, I know how hard it is to maintain weight loss. How much of that is simply because people cannot stick to very artifical and/or constrained food palettes for the long-term?
posted by thelonius at 7:47 AM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
So, as I am sure we have all heard, "diets don't work". From personal experience, I know how hard it is to maintain weight loss. How much of that is simply because people cannot stick to very artifical and/or constrained food palettes for the long-term?
posted by thelonius at 7:47 AM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
If someone is eating a high carbohydrate diet that is low in daily physical exertion, it is imperative that they restrict carbs as much as possible to really drop the weight and keep it off.
Cut the sugar and refined carbs and the weight will fall off.
posted by tgrundke at 7:49 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Cut the sugar and refined carbs and the weight will fall off.
posted by tgrundke at 7:49 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Wow, I asked that before I looked at the Biggest Loser link. (Which reports that the metabolism and calorie-burning at rest of the shock dieters dramatically slowed, and remained slow). That's amazing.
The entire subject is a case study in how poorly "common sense" tracks reality.
posted by thelonius at 7:53 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
The entire subject is a case study in how poorly "common sense" tracks reality.
posted by thelonius at 7:53 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
In my experiences, it's horses for courses. People who are big proponents of low fat diets do well on low fat diets. People who are proponents of low carb, high fat or low carb high protein diets do well on those kinds of diets.
People have latched on to Taubes' mechanistic narrative for why low carb diets work. His insulin hypothesis is not a fact; nor is it supported by the majority of nutrition/metabolic scientists. It is a nice story that's easy to memorize though.
Quite simply, people can lose weight on high carb diets and thrive on them. Many people seem to do well on low carb diets as well. It seems obvious to me that neither is a reflection of some magic combination of macro nutrients. Either different phenotypes do well on different diets, which is possible, or this could be a behavioral thing.
I've observed that people find it easier to cut their calories on low carb diets even if they don't realize it's about calories. It's not that carbohydrate is some obesogenic bogeyman, it's just that a lot of cheap, shitty, hyperpalatable junk food happens to include carbs.
If cutting carbs means that you stop eating ice cream, potato chips, doughnuts and cakes maybe you lose weight because of some insulin razzamatazz. Maybe you're losing weight because you're not snarfing ice cream, potato chips doughnuts and cakes and all the calories that come with them.
Obesogenic foods tend to be the delicious ones that encourage you to overeat. I guarantee you that nobody got fat by overeating boiled, plain potatoes. On the other hand, deep fried, salted potatoes are highly correlated with being overweight. At the other end of the spectrum, nobody gets fat from eating just unseasoned beef cooked over a campfire. Cover that in cheese and salt and some kind of dipping sauce and see how quickly you down 3,000 calories.
posted by Telf at 8:03 AM on August 4, 2017 [47 favorites]
People have latched on to Taubes' mechanistic narrative for why low carb diets work. His insulin hypothesis is not a fact; nor is it supported by the majority of nutrition/metabolic scientists. It is a nice story that's easy to memorize though.
Quite simply, people can lose weight on high carb diets and thrive on them. Many people seem to do well on low carb diets as well. It seems obvious to me that neither is a reflection of some magic combination of macro nutrients. Either different phenotypes do well on different diets, which is possible, or this could be a behavioral thing.
I've observed that people find it easier to cut their calories on low carb diets even if they don't realize it's about calories. It's not that carbohydrate is some obesogenic bogeyman, it's just that a lot of cheap, shitty, hyperpalatable junk food happens to include carbs.
If cutting carbs means that you stop eating ice cream, potato chips, doughnuts and cakes maybe you lose weight because of some insulin razzamatazz. Maybe you're losing weight because you're not snarfing ice cream, potato chips doughnuts and cakes and all the calories that come with them.
Obesogenic foods tend to be the delicious ones that encourage you to overeat. I guarantee you that nobody got fat by overeating boiled, plain potatoes. On the other hand, deep fried, salted potatoes are highly correlated with being overweight. At the other end of the spectrum, nobody gets fat from eating just unseasoned beef cooked over a campfire. Cover that in cheese and salt and some kind of dipping sauce and see how quickly you down 3,000 calories.
posted by Telf at 8:03 AM on August 4, 2017 [47 favorites]
If someone is eating a high carbohydrate diet that is low in daily physical exertion, it is imperative that they restrict carbs as much as possible to really drop the weight and keep it off.
Cut the sugar and refined carbs and the weight will fall off.
I know that there are a lot of people who still think a calorie is a calorie, and that the above statement difficult to believe. LISTEN TO ME. As someone who personally experienced it, ketogenic diets work almost like magic.
It's not just that you get full quickly on less calories while eating food that is tasty and satisfying. It's that when you get hungry, the hunger is of an entirely different caliber. It's not hunger pangs, it's not "I have to eat or I'm going to die." It's, "gee, I should probably think about eating something in the medium term." You don't even need to exercise much willpower! It's like magic.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:10 AM on August 4, 2017 [24 favorites]
Cut the sugar and refined carbs and the weight will fall off.
I know that there are a lot of people who still think a calorie is a calorie, and that the above statement difficult to believe. LISTEN TO ME. As someone who personally experienced it, ketogenic diets work almost like magic.
It's not just that you get full quickly on less calories while eating food that is tasty and satisfying. It's that when you get hungry, the hunger is of an entirely different caliber. It's not hunger pangs, it's not "I have to eat or I'm going to die." It's, "gee, I should probably think about eating something in the medium term." You don't even need to exercise much willpower! It's like magic.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:10 AM on August 4, 2017 [24 favorites]
The diet that works for an individual is the diet that works for that individual, long-term, in the real actual world we all live in. It really does not help anyone to be told that a certain food they love will never again in this life be able to cross their lips in any quantity.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:11 AM on August 4, 2017 [22 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:11 AM on August 4, 2017 [22 favorites]
Ethanol reads as a fat inside the body.
Added fat is the easiest food to forego in a weight loss situation. 17 gm fat is 3.4 or so pats of butter, or a tablespoon, plus a little of olive oil. But dairy and meat have a lot of fat in them. So you cannot have high fat meats, cheeses, oils, nuts, ice cream, pie crust, salad dressing.
The game in weight loss is paying attention to what you eat. Most people gain weight because they don't pay attention, to what they eat, and they do not feel the "full" signal, they don't want to feel the full signal, because they are eating as much as they can as fast as they can, because this is how we live in our world, (if you get to live and have as much food as you like.)
If people ate each meal as if they were madly in love, and sitting at the table with their beloved for the first time, then food would be of little consequence and put in its rightful place, that being the necessary fuel, in the exact amount, to enable function for the important things.
posted by Oyéah at 8:12 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Added fat is the easiest food to forego in a weight loss situation. 17 gm fat is 3.4 or so pats of butter, or a tablespoon, plus a little of olive oil. But dairy and meat have a lot of fat in them. So you cannot have high fat meats, cheeses, oils, nuts, ice cream, pie crust, salad dressing.
The game in weight loss is paying attention to what you eat. Most people gain weight because they don't pay attention, to what they eat, and they do not feel the "full" signal, they don't want to feel the full signal, because they are eating as much as they can as fast as they can, because this is how we live in our world, (if you get to live and have as much food as you like.)
If people ate each meal as if they were madly in love, and sitting at the table with their beloved for the first time, then food would be of little consequence and put in its rightful place, that being the necessary fuel, in the exact amount, to enable function for the important things.
posted by Oyéah at 8:12 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
It really does not help anyone to be told that a certain food they love will never again in this life be able to cross their lips in any quantity.
Even if the alternative is metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and premature death?
posted by leotrotsky at 8:16 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
Even if the alternative is metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and premature death?
posted by leotrotsky at 8:16 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
soren_lorensen,
Agreed. If you can't imagine yourself eating the same way in 6 months or 6 years from now, that diet may not be reasonable.
leotrotsky,
It's not that people still believe a calorie is a calorie, it's that a lot of people studied this over the last few years and it still appears that calories are mostly still calories. I think Taubes' hypothesis intrigued a lot of people, but the science doesn't seem to point in his theories' direction.
If ketogenic diets really work for you, then they really work for you. That is true. On the other hand their are many people who really don't do well on ketogenic diets. It could be a genetic thing, or a behavioral thing thing or something else. Maybe socially eating ketogenic isn't possible. for some reason, in real world settings, it's just not a good match.
Some people really just love low fat diets. They work for them and some people thrive on them.
posted by Telf at 8:17 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
Agreed. If you can't imagine yourself eating the same way in 6 months or 6 years from now, that diet may not be reasonable.
leotrotsky,
It's not that people still believe a calorie is a calorie, it's that a lot of people studied this over the last few years and it still appears that calories are mostly still calories. I think Taubes' hypothesis intrigued a lot of people, but the science doesn't seem to point in his theories' direction.
If ketogenic diets really work for you, then they really work for you. That is true. On the other hand their are many people who really don't do well on ketogenic diets. It could be a genetic thing, or a behavioral thing thing or something else. Maybe socially eating ketogenic isn't possible. for some reason, in real world settings, it's just not a good match.
Some people really just love low fat diets. They work for them and some people thrive on them.
posted by Telf at 8:17 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
> Even if the alternative is metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and premature death?
Yes. Have you met people? The vast majority of people do not operate this way in the world. See: delicious foods, cigarettes, alcohol, other drugs, people who treat them horribly in their relationships and yet they stay.
posted by rtha at 8:19 AM on August 4, 2017 [49 favorites]
Yes. Have you met people? The vast majority of people do not operate this way in the world. See: delicious foods, cigarettes, alcohol, other drugs, people who treat them horribly in their relationships and yet they stay.
posted by rtha at 8:19 AM on August 4, 2017 [49 favorites]
Also, many people experience really bad lipid profile reactions to ketogenic diets. Some people experience insulin sensitivity issues and biomarkers that move in the wrong direction across the board. What I'm saying is that ketogenic diets might be great for some people, but they might be terrible for others. Unfortunately, one size doesn't fit all.
posted by Telf at 8:19 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Telf at 8:19 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
I guarantee you that nobody got fat by...
Alas, you were doing so well at summarizing actual scientific findings that different diets work for different people and we don't know why.
But it's so hard to resist latching onto anecdotes and "common sense" when the scientific data runs out...
posted by straight at 8:23 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
Alas, you were doing so well at summarizing actual scientific findings that different diets work for different people and we don't know why.
But it's so hard to resist latching onto anecdotes and "common sense" when the scientific data runs out...
posted by straight at 8:23 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
Also, many people experience really bad lipid profile reactions to ketogenic diets. Some people experience insulin sensitivity issues and biomarkers that move in the wrong direction across the board. What I'm saying is that ketogenic diets might be great for some people, but they might be terrible for others. Unfortunately, one size doesn't fit all.
....and this is why - for recommending society-wide decisions..... we need better science - controlled studies which drill down to find sub-populations who benefit from different diets.
Not anecdotes.
posted by lalochezia at 8:24 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
....and this is why - for recommending society-wide decisions..... we need better science - controlled studies which drill down to find sub-populations who benefit from different diets.
Not anecdotes.
posted by lalochezia at 8:24 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
I once worked as a dietary technician, 17 years worth. On one day I was working the coronary care unit of a large hospital. 75% of the people in with heart attacks on that day, were on the Adkins Diet. The cardiologist said so it's a bad diet, I was thinking heck, it is a LETHAL diet. But what did I know? That pattern continued. I covered that beat for quite a while.
posted by Oyéah at 8:25 AM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 8:25 AM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
Even if the alternative is metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and premature death?
You do not have to be on a ketogenic diet to not be diabetic, obese, heart diseased and dead (though on that last one? I have some bad news for you, mortal). There is no food that is not considered to be an actual poison that you can tell a currently healthy person "you must never eat this again ever as long as you live in any quantity or you will for sure become diabetic and obese."
And also what rtha said. Hello, we are humans.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:27 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
You do not have to be on a ketogenic diet to not be diabetic, obese, heart diseased and dead (though on that last one? I have some bad news for you, mortal). There is no food that is not considered to be an actual poison that you can tell a currently healthy person "you must never eat this again ever as long as you live in any quantity or you will for sure become diabetic and obese."
And also what rtha said. Hello, we are humans.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:27 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
I think Taubes' hypothesis intrigued a lot of people, but the science doesn't seem to point in his theories' direction.
As is so often the case, my read is the actual scientific evidence is more complicated than that. I mean, just this study is more complicated than that. It shows a low carb diet moving the needle more on metabolic changes but a low fat diet having greater impact on body fat percentage, in as controlled a setting as you can get.
"Weight loss/weight gain: how does that work?" is one of those topics that people are very beholden to their default beliefs on, so I found this study particularly interesting because once you dig into the details, there are arguments to be made for either intervention, and even more considerations to take into account once you start talking about real people choosing their own food intakes outside of a laboratory setting.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:29 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
As is so often the case, my read is the actual scientific evidence is more complicated than that. I mean, just this study is more complicated than that. It shows a low carb diet moving the needle more on metabolic changes but a low fat diet having greater impact on body fat percentage, in as controlled a setting as you can get.
"Weight loss/weight gain: how does that work?" is one of those topics that people are very beholden to their default beliefs on, so I found this study particularly interesting because once you dig into the details, there are arguments to be made for either intervention, and even more considerations to take into account once you start talking about real people choosing their own food intakes outside of a laboratory setting.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:29 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
The study relies on a "prediction" that is hopeful at best.
Why do we keep looking for a magic food or a magic diet when we know so little about nutrition to begin with?
posted by Peach at 8:30 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Why do we keep looking for a magic food or a magic diet when we know so little about nutrition to begin with?
posted by Peach at 8:30 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
No one disputes that calories are units of energy. The issue is that bodies are not bomb calorimeters and different fuels are handled different ways in the body.
Science has understand metabolism, in the sense of how all the atoms get moved around, for decades. But each and every one of those steps is mediated by enzymes and regulated by other proteins, all of which are subject to individual genetic variation. Science is just now starting to understand how those impacts play out.
I'm a PhD biochemist and a fat lady who has lost 60 lbs in the past year by adhering to a keto diet of less than 20 g net carbs per day. My bet is that eventually science will develop precision nutrition in the same way drug companies are developing precision medicines.
This TED talk Is by the author of a fascinating paper describing the massive individual variations in blood glucose response to the same foods. There is no such thing as "one size fits all" nutritional advice.
posted by Sublimity at 8:32 AM on August 4, 2017 [22 favorites]
Science has understand metabolism, in the sense of how all the atoms get moved around, for decades. But each and every one of those steps is mediated by enzymes and regulated by other proteins, all of which are subject to individual genetic variation. Science is just now starting to understand how those impacts play out.
I'm a PhD biochemist and a fat lady who has lost 60 lbs in the past year by adhering to a keto diet of less than 20 g net carbs per day. My bet is that eventually science will develop precision nutrition in the same way drug companies are developing precision medicines.
This TED talk Is by the author of a fascinating paper describing the massive individual variations in blood glucose response to the same foods. There is no such thing as "one size fits all" nutritional advice.
posted by Sublimity at 8:32 AM on August 4, 2017 [22 favorites]
Really excited to see all the old classic “this worked for me in my current body and therefore it is good and right and surely universal (and should possibly be mandatory)” chestnuts rolled out, very encouraging.
Given the cottage industry of performative keto labor (“here is my blog where I prepare food and take pictures of it”), I would actually be interested in any discussion of what would be required for our current food industry to make a lower-carb diet possible in any formulation that doesn’t require an enormous time investment and inability to eat out in most settings.
If I could go live at NIH and have people feed me carefully measured food for the rest of my life (with costs covered by a federal grant), then great! But, barring that, it usually seems to boil down to a choice between huge investment of time/money vs. being fatter but things are easier.
Can a population-wide high protein diet co-exist with even semi-ethical animal production? If I tried to eat the amount of protein keto proponents suggest while purchasing lower-cruelty products (I’m not sure cruelty-free is a standard we can really meet), I wouldn’t be able to pay rent.
What would it take to change that? Is it even feasible on a population level?
posted by a fiendish thingy at 8:33 AM on August 4, 2017 [46 favorites]
Given the cottage industry of performative keto labor (“here is my blog where I prepare food and take pictures of it”), I would actually be interested in any discussion of what would be required for our current food industry to make a lower-carb diet possible in any formulation that doesn’t require an enormous time investment and inability to eat out in most settings.
If I could go live at NIH and have people feed me carefully measured food for the rest of my life (with costs covered by a federal grant), then great! But, barring that, it usually seems to boil down to a choice between huge investment of time/money vs. being fatter but things are easier.
Can a population-wide high protein diet co-exist with even semi-ethical animal production? If I tried to eat the amount of protein keto proponents suggest while purchasing lower-cruelty products (I’m not sure cruelty-free is a standard we can really meet), I wouldn’t be able to pay rent.
What would it take to change that? Is it even feasible on a population level?
posted by a fiendish thingy at 8:33 AM on August 4, 2017 [46 favorites]
I've lost weight on high carb diets and low carb diets. The low carb diet was trivially easy; the high carb diet required all my willpower which pitted my intense appetite versus my intense desire to no longer be overweight. I've been low-ish carb for about 4 years now, and I'll go into ketosis when my weight creeps up and it's time to burn off 5 or 10 lbs.
Maybe socially eating ketogenic isn't possible
Socially, culturally, and and what you find in the grocery store. There's a lot of cultural resistance to keto - 80s food recommendations (low fat is considered correct until proven otherwise by science), the assumption that eating fat will increase cholesterol, eating that much fat is seen as "gross" by a lot of people, the word fat (eating fat will make you fat) itself is problematic.
posted by MillMan at 8:34 AM on August 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
Maybe socially eating ketogenic isn't possible
Socially, culturally, and and what you find in the grocery store. There's a lot of cultural resistance to keto - 80s food recommendations (low fat is considered correct until proven otherwise by science), the assumption that eating fat will increase cholesterol, eating that much fat is seen as "gross" by a lot of people, the word fat (eating fat will make you fat) itself is problematic.
posted by MillMan at 8:34 AM on August 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
Really excited to see all the old classic “this worked for me in my current body and therefore it is good and right and surely universal (and should possibly be mandatory)” chestnuts rolled out, very encouraging.
Honestly, a lot of it seems to be managing cognitive dissonance more than anything else. It's probably easier to never eat [delicious food x] ever again if you decide that it's poison for everyone.
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:38 AM on August 4, 2017 [16 favorites]
Honestly, a lot of it seems to be managing cognitive dissonance more than anything else. It's probably easier to never eat [delicious food x] ever again if you decide that it's poison for everyone.
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:38 AM on August 4, 2017 [16 favorites]
we know so little about nutrition to begin with We know a lot about nutrition, a lot, but there are other factors that in the box thinkers miss.
Food additives, dyes, preservatives the liver perceives as toxic, so it does not process fat until they are gone, this includes Laffy Taffy, other brightly dyed candies, even artificial sweeteners.
Pesticides, herbicides, coatings on cooking utensils, oils that are new to human consumption.
Gut bacteria, and how they influence everything, including hunger, satiety, digestion. A recent article discussed mood, inherited from fecal transplants, in that people who got a transplant from one source inherited depression too. Then the article went on the say they would screen for thin people who were also happy, and well adjusted in their search for quality material to transplant.
There are lot of factors, but we know a lot about nutrition.
posted by Oyéah at 8:39 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
Food additives, dyes, preservatives the liver perceives as toxic, so it does not process fat until they are gone, this includes Laffy Taffy, other brightly dyed candies, even artificial sweeteners.
Pesticides, herbicides, coatings on cooking utensils, oils that are new to human consumption.
Gut bacteria, and how they influence everything, including hunger, satiety, digestion. A recent article discussed mood, inherited from fecal transplants, in that people who got a transplant from one source inherited depression too. Then the article went on the say they would screen for thin people who were also happy, and well adjusted in their search for quality material to transplant.
There are lot of factors, but we know a lot about nutrition.
posted by Oyéah at 8:39 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
Straight,
You're right, I was switching gears from summarizing how little we really about metabolism to a vague description hedonic/hyperpalatable/reward/non-homeostatic models of eating.
Obviously, one could get fat from eating plain, boiled potatoes, but I think that's unlikely. I guess a more accurate phrasing would be:
There is an inverse correlation between palatability and perceived satiety afforded by certain foods. For example, french fries are extremely palatable and are therefore easy to overeat. Contrast this with a plain, boiled potato, which has a low reward factor and therefore is better suited for homeostatic eating, and less likely to promote overeating. That being said, it is possible that someone might decide to create an extreme caloric surplus on plain potatoes and gain weight on them.
Something more like that would have been more accurate.
posted by Telf at 8:41 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
You're right, I was switching gears from summarizing how little we really about metabolism to a vague description hedonic/hyperpalatable/reward/non-homeostatic models of eating.
Obviously, one could get fat from eating plain, boiled potatoes, but I think that's unlikely. I guess a more accurate phrasing would be:
There is an inverse correlation between palatability and perceived satiety afforded by certain foods. For example, french fries are extremely palatable and are therefore easy to overeat. Contrast this with a plain, boiled potato, which has a low reward factor and therefore is better suited for homeostatic eating, and less likely to promote overeating. That being said, it is possible that someone might decide to create an extreme caloric surplus on plain potatoes and gain weight on them.
Something more like that would have been more accurate.
posted by Telf at 8:41 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Telf--you dispute Taubes' argument, but his arguments are meticulously supported (Good Calories, Bad Calories is a technical tour de force.) I haven't seen an equally weighty refutation and would appreciate a cite if you have one. Also, for folks who are interested in additional technical investigation, Robert Lustig is another proponent of very low carb diets who has supportive experimental evidence for the insulin hypothesis.
posted by Sublimity at 8:42 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Sublimity at 8:42 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
I've had trouble with low carb, because it seems to raise my cholesterol - I lost about twenty pounds over three months fairly easily, went back in for tests and while a lot of things were really good, my cholesterol, which had been sorta mediocre for a while, had zoomed up. (And I wasn't eating, like, bacon and eggs every day - it was pretty much all fish and chicken breasts.) The doctor suggested going back to being vegetarian, and that's not impossible but it's tough. People say "just eat beans" but the carb/protein ratio for beans isn't in fact that great, and because I struggle with cholesterol, the standard advice is to eat eggs, but not too many.
So anyway, now I'm having trouble losing more weight, even it's clear that several health issues will improve significantly if I can just drop another twenty pounds.
The hilarious thing about all this "your metabolism will slow and stay slow" thing is that I've suspected that for years. I lost 45 pounds in high school on a really pretty extreme diet (about 800 calories a day) while exercising about two hours a day. Since then, I've become a relatively active person - I'm no athlete, but I get at least forty minutes of exercise every day, usually more. I kept the weight off for about seven years by dint of a combination of being really, really active and obsessively watching what I ate, and then I went through some stuff, ate too much for a long time and regained it all. But what I've always noticed since the diet was that I had to be much, much stricter than my peers with food and exercise - even people who were much more sedentary than I was could eat more and not gain weight.
There was a year where I lived in Shanghai in a largely unheated apartment - and it got down into the forties a lot. I used to go for a ten mile bike ride every night to get really warm before going to bed, and I had a very active workday, plus I did all kinds of long rides around the city. My co-workers were dramatically less active than I was - no extra bike rides to speak of, little exploring of the city. We ate together most of the time, so I could see that we were eating similarly. We all lost weight - but they lost about twice what I did, despite the fact that I was getting hours and hours more exercise than they did every week.
posted by Frowner at 8:49 AM on August 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
So anyway, now I'm having trouble losing more weight, even it's clear that several health issues will improve significantly if I can just drop another twenty pounds.
The hilarious thing about all this "your metabolism will slow and stay slow" thing is that I've suspected that for years. I lost 45 pounds in high school on a really pretty extreme diet (about 800 calories a day) while exercising about two hours a day. Since then, I've become a relatively active person - I'm no athlete, but I get at least forty minutes of exercise every day, usually more. I kept the weight off for about seven years by dint of a combination of being really, really active and obsessively watching what I ate, and then I went through some stuff, ate too much for a long time and regained it all. But what I've always noticed since the diet was that I had to be much, much stricter than my peers with food and exercise - even people who were much more sedentary than I was could eat more and not gain weight.
There was a year where I lived in Shanghai in a largely unheated apartment - and it got down into the forties a lot. I used to go for a ten mile bike ride every night to get really warm before going to bed, and I had a very active workday, plus I did all kinds of long rides around the city. My co-workers were dramatically less active than I was - no extra bike rides to speak of, little exploring of the city. We ate together most of the time, so I could see that we were eating similarly. We all lost weight - but they lost about twice what I did, despite the fact that I was getting hours and hours more exercise than they did every week.
posted by Frowner at 8:49 AM on August 4, 2017 [8 favorites]
I'm going to turn the tables on you and put the burden of evidence on Taubes. Could you provide a few peer reviewed or RCT experiments that actually support his theory in terms of hard results?
His books have a lot of one-sided history and anecdotal claims, but I'm not sure if he references any studies that actually clearly promote his pet theories. I know his books feel right. He weaves a good story. I don't think either book is a technical tour de force. I think his writing is a good example of cherry picking and misrepresenting studies.
His basic premise is that nutritionists/dieticians and public health scientists are either really dumb or basically evil. There are a lot of smart people working in these fields trying to use the best science to solve modern health crises. I don't know anyone actively working in the research community who is a big proponent of his theories. I know a few fringe MDs who have made a name for themselves demonizing one macro nutrient or another, but I don't see the preponderance of evidence moving in Taubes' direction.
posted by Telf at 8:50 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
His books have a lot of one-sided history and anecdotal claims, but I'm not sure if he references any studies that actually clearly promote his pet theories. I know his books feel right. He weaves a good story. I don't think either book is a technical tour de force. I think his writing is a good example of cherry picking and misrepresenting studies.
His basic premise is that nutritionists/dieticians and public health scientists are either really dumb or basically evil. There are a lot of smart people working in these fields trying to use the best science to solve modern health crises. I don't know anyone actively working in the research community who is a big proponent of his theories. I know a few fringe MDs who have made a name for themselves demonizing one macro nutrient or another, but I don't see the preponderance of evidence moving in Taubes' direction.
posted by Telf at 8:50 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
So, that's a no, then?
posted by Sublimity at 8:53 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Sublimity at 8:53 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
The thing is, there's got to be some reason why people started getting so much fatter, right? Until someone can definitively answer this question a la "cigarettes cause cancer", it's all just a bunch of confusing noise that normal people should probably ignore.
posted by Automocar at 9:01 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Automocar at 9:01 AM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
I've got two papers due this week. If you're still interested next week I'll jump back in and will share a few studies that seem to clearly refute Taubes' insulin hypothesis of obesity.
The issue is that the burden of proof is not on the side of established nutritional science. The burden of proof is on Taubes and his extraordinary claims. Check out the Kevin Hall study Taubes commissioned.
Look at any of the metabolic ward studies testing iso-caloric diets of varying carbs/fats. Best hypothesis as far as I know is that the mechanism might be that higher protein diets are good and low carb diets naturally tend to be higher in protein. But no, this idea that you create more adipose tissue because you ate some sugar and that forced you to store more calories as fat over the course of a week? I don't think there is anything that proves that.
I seems to boil down to the fact that it's fun to eat bacon and steak if you like eating bacon and steak. If you want to eat bacon and steak, go for it. If it works for you, go for it. This does not mean that eating carbohydrate makes you fat. There are plenty of high carb cultures who do fine.
posted by Telf at 9:03 AM on August 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
The issue is that the burden of proof is not on the side of established nutritional science. The burden of proof is on Taubes and his extraordinary claims. Check out the Kevin Hall study Taubes commissioned.
Look at any of the metabolic ward studies testing iso-caloric diets of varying carbs/fats. Best hypothesis as far as I know is that the mechanism might be that higher protein diets are good and low carb diets naturally tend to be higher in protein. But no, this idea that you create more adipose tissue because you ate some sugar and that forced you to store more calories as fat over the course of a week? I don't think there is anything that proves that.
I seems to boil down to the fact that it's fun to eat bacon and steak if you like eating bacon and steak. If you want to eat bacon and steak, go for it. If it works for you, go for it. This does not mean that eating carbohydrate makes you fat. There are plenty of high carb cultures who do fine.
posted by Telf at 9:03 AM on August 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
People in industrialized western nations have access to a tremendous quantity of cheap food, and much of that food is extremely calorie-dense. (I can walk out my office door right now and pay $8 to eat a meal that is easily twice my daily recommended caloric intake, and that joint is always rocking because that shit is delicious.)
I'm no nutritionist, but that seems like a pretty significant and new phenomenon.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:05 AM on August 4, 2017 [17 favorites]
I'm no nutritionist, but that seems like a pretty significant and new phenomenon.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:05 AM on August 4, 2017 [17 favorites]
GCBC goes over the universally understood evidence that high insulin promotes fat storage, in extensive detail. This is not in dispute. Nor is there any dispute that, in people of normal metabolism, insulin response is most strong immediately after eating carbohydrates, and is modest but still marked a few hours after eating protein, and is pretty much nil after eating fat. These observations are not controversial at all.
Taubes got his start by noting that nutritional advice was completely at odds with understanding of metabolism on a mechanistic and cellular level. That's still the case, though changing as a result of this controversy.
The paper cited in the OP doesn't actually test his hypothesis. The human body uses about 20 g of carbs or day, and has no need to acquire those carbs through diet--there is no such thing as a nutritionally essential carbohydrate and human metabolism can easily produce the carbs it needs from protein or fat-derived metabolites.. 140 g/day in the "low carb" arm of the study is far in excess of that.
posted by Sublimity at 9:17 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Taubes got his start by noting that nutritional advice was completely at odds with understanding of metabolism on a mechanistic and cellular level. That's still the case, though changing as a result of this controversy.
The paper cited in the OP doesn't actually test his hypothesis. The human body uses about 20 g of carbs or day, and has no need to acquire those carbs through diet--there is no such thing as a nutritionally essential carbohydrate and human metabolism can easily produce the carbs it needs from protein or fat-derived metabolites.. 140 g/day in the "low carb" arm of the study is far in excess of that.
posted by Sublimity at 9:17 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
At the other end of the spectrum, nobody gets fat from eating just unseasoned beef cooked over a campfire. Cover that in cheese and salt and some kind of dipping sauce and see how quickly you down 3,000 calories.
I'm intrigued by your salted cheesebeef dippers, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:44 AM on August 4, 2017 [57 favorites]
I'm intrigued by your salted cheesebeef dippers, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:44 AM on August 4, 2017 [57 favorites]
I think this study, which measures very short-term fat loss and only studies moderate (i.e. non-ketogenic) carbohydrate-reduced diets, can't be used to draw general conclusions on long-term fat reduction or the merits of ketogenic diets at all. It's mildly interesting and may point the way to better studies, but it neither proves nor disproves anything.
posted by rocket88 at 9:45 AM on August 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by rocket88 at 9:45 AM on August 4, 2017 [7 favorites]
On one day I was working the coronary care unit of a large hospital. 75% of the people in with heart attacks on that day, were on the Adkins Diet.
Was the diet the cause of death, though? It would make sense that someone might be on Atkins because of other deadly diseases they were trying to combat.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:49 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
Was the diet the cause of death, though? It would make sense that someone might be on Atkins because of other deadly diseases they were trying to combat.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:49 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
The annual "here's the new surefire way to lose weight forever!" reports always make me laugh. A diet that ignores real human behavior is going to fail, just like all the others have.
The only method that will ever work for (almost) everyone -- other than the coming famine, of course -- probably will be some combination of daily pills to dissolve fat, dull your taste buds, eliminate your appetite, and make you feel happy and energetic.
And it will probably stop your heart as you skip daintily through the park. A robot will carry your corpse away.
posted by pracowity at 9:50 AM on August 4, 2017 [14 favorites]
The only method that will ever work for (almost) everyone -- other than the coming famine, of course -- probably will be some combination of daily pills to dissolve fat, dull your taste buds, eliminate your appetite, and make you feel happy and energetic.
And it will probably stop your heart as you skip daintily through the park. A robot will carry your corpse away.
posted by pracowity at 9:50 AM on August 4, 2017 [14 favorites]
I don't get the low vs. high carb thing. Aren't a lot of vegetables and fruits high in carbs? Isn't fiber a carbohydrate?
posted by FJT at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by FJT at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
"And it will probably stop your heart as you skip daintily through the park. A robot will carry your corpse away."
Where can I order?
posted by sutt at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Where can I order?
posted by sutt at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Was the diet the cause of death, though? It would make sense that someone might be on Atkins because of other deadly diseases they were trying to combat.
Also I think 75% of Americans were on the Atkins diet in like, 2002 or whatever.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:01 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
Also I think 75% of Americans were on the Atkins diet in like, 2002 or whatever.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:01 AM on August 4, 2017 [10 favorites]
I respect that many smart scientists are involved in teasing apart the complex factors that affect nutrition and weight control. At the same time, I can't help but think that the takeaways from all this science (and mind you, I love the science) are mostly useless to real people.
People are fatter today than in the past because food is cheaper than ever and we are wired to eat as much as we can get. That's the whole equation, right there. It is very powerful and explains all the problems people have with weight. Tweaking diets, discipline, exercise, none of these levers are powerful enough - on an aggregate population level - to combat this equation. Occasionally some individuals will beat the house, so to speak, but we have compelling data to show this is (depressingly) rare.
So what do we do about it? Give up, stuff our faces (wait, we're already doing that), and drop dead? Well, no.
In the context of an individual, do the best you realistically can for yourself. We know that exercise is a major factor in improved health regardless of its effect or lack thereof on scale weight. So, work out - not to be thin, but to be strong and healthy. Enjoy foods you like and limit eating foods that just happen to be sitting there. This approach probably won't transform you into a supermodel but such is life. Acceptance is not the same thing as forfeiting.
In terms of the population at large, this problem is only going to get worse as industrialization and Westernization of food sweeps across more of the globe. I don't see how we can fairly raise food prices to where it becomes uneconomical to overeat. Maybe this is where science plays a role. Someday we may be able to intervene with how bodies process food. We may not be able to change our intake but we could potentially change metabolism. But probably not anytime soon.
On that note, time for a mid morning snack!
posted by thebordella at 10:03 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
People are fatter today than in the past because food is cheaper than ever and we are wired to eat as much as we can get. That's the whole equation, right there. It is very powerful and explains all the problems people have with weight. Tweaking diets, discipline, exercise, none of these levers are powerful enough - on an aggregate population level - to combat this equation. Occasionally some individuals will beat the house, so to speak, but we have compelling data to show this is (depressingly) rare.
So what do we do about it? Give up, stuff our faces (wait, we're already doing that), and drop dead? Well, no.
In the context of an individual, do the best you realistically can for yourself. We know that exercise is a major factor in improved health regardless of its effect or lack thereof on scale weight. So, work out - not to be thin, but to be strong and healthy. Enjoy foods you like and limit eating foods that just happen to be sitting there. This approach probably won't transform you into a supermodel but such is life. Acceptance is not the same thing as forfeiting.
In terms of the population at large, this problem is only going to get worse as industrialization and Westernization of food sweeps across more of the globe. I don't see how we can fairly raise food prices to where it becomes uneconomical to overeat. Maybe this is where science plays a role. Someday we may be able to intervene with how bodies process food. We may not be able to change our intake but we could potentially change metabolism. But probably not anytime soon.
On that note, time for a mid morning snack!
posted by thebordella at 10:03 AM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
Had I read somewhere that antibiotics might play a role in our weight gain? Was that debunked?
posted by sutt at 10:04 AM on August 4, 2017
posted by sutt at 10:04 AM on August 4, 2017
Don't think it's been debunked per se, but I think it's still in the very early and mostly preclinical stages of being researched. (That's Martin Blaser's stuff, right?)
posted by en forme de poire at 10:14 AM on August 4, 2017
posted by en forme de poire at 10:14 AM on August 4, 2017
> I don't get the low vs. high carb thing. Aren't a lot of vegetables and fruits high in carbs? Isn't fiber a carbohydrate?
Fruits are high in carbs, and it's recommended that you stay away from most of them if you're eating low-carb (berries like raspberries and blueberries tend to have lower carb counts). With vegetables, it depends on the type of vegetable. Grains and grain-related vegetables (corn and rice especially) should be avoided, and so should starches such as potatoes. Green vegetables (green beans, broccoli, asparagus, etc) are what you generally want to stick to.
Fiber is a carbohydrate but it isn't processed by the body. Any carbs that are listed as fiber can essentially be ignored - if something is 20g of carbs, but 15g of fiber, that's actually 5g of carbs as far as a low-carb diet is concerned.
posted by markslack at 10:21 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Fruits are high in carbs, and it's recommended that you stay away from most of them if you're eating low-carb (berries like raspberries and blueberries tend to have lower carb counts). With vegetables, it depends on the type of vegetable. Grains and grain-related vegetables (corn and rice especially) should be avoided, and so should starches such as potatoes. Green vegetables (green beans, broccoli, asparagus, etc) are what you generally want to stick to.
Fiber is a carbohydrate but it isn't processed by the body. Any carbs that are listed as fiber can essentially be ignored - if something is 20g of carbs, but 15g of fiber, that's actually 5g of carbs as far as a low-carb diet is concerned.
posted by markslack at 10:21 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
People are fatter today than in the past because food is cheaper than ever and we are wired to eat as much as we can get.
Yeah, I mean, this makes intuitive sense, but is it right? We just don't know.
Average caloric intake for an American has increased substantially since 1970, but (and I am not a scientist) wouldn't you need to design a study whereby a large group of people would need to eat a 1970 diet in 2017 caloric numbers to see if if it's just the calories affecting weight gain?
posted by Automocar at 10:25 AM on August 4, 2017
Yeah, I mean, this makes intuitive sense, but is it right? We just don't know.
Average caloric intake for an American has increased substantially since 1970, but (and I am not a scientist) wouldn't you need to design a study whereby a large group of people would need to eat a 1970 diet in 2017 caloric numbers to see if if it's just the calories affecting weight gain?
posted by Automocar at 10:25 AM on August 4, 2017
The Huffington Post notes that the Japanese eat a lot of carbs, but only have a 3.5% obesity rate
They attribute this to eating more seafood with Omega-3 oils and eating whole foods in general.
Disclaimer:I'm a big fan of Taubes, and the little known The Perfect Health Diet (a sort of early paleo-anti-inflammatory diet book chock full of studies that nobody ever read and was supplanted by more consumer-friendly books like The Whole 30).
posted by craniac at 10:25 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
They attribute this to eating more seafood with Omega-3 oils and eating whole foods in general.
Disclaimer:I'm a big fan of Taubes, and the little known The Perfect Health Diet (a sort of early paleo-anti-inflammatory diet book chock full of studies that nobody ever read and was supplanted by more consumer-friendly books like The Whole 30).
posted by craniac at 10:25 AM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
The assumption that low carb is difficult or historically unusual is frustrating. It's the default diet for humans before industrial-scale grain farming. Half the adults in the US are diabetic or pre-diabetic. That's a lot of lifespans needlessly shortened by low/no-fiber carbohydrates. It's interesting that a few people people have fat intolerances, diet on potatoes, etc., but doesn't it make sense for standard health advice to recommend filling up with readily available fats, proteins and vegetables so we can make progress against this popular disease?
posted by michaelh at 10:27 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by michaelh at 10:27 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
FJT, you're right, fruits and vegetables do have carbs, some of which is in the form of fiber which is indigestible. In very low carb/keto diets, the focus is on grams of "net carbs", which is total carbs minus fiber.
Re: wired to eat as much a we can: one of the most striking and commonly reported effects of adopting a very low carb/keto diet is drastically changed experience of hunger and satiation once a person is fat-adapted. Hunger is less urgent and miserable (and often just absent) and satiation is more clear it and abrupt. If anyone cares to have a look at the anecdata, /r/keto over on Reddit is full of testimony to this effect.
The takeaway messsage is that carbs make you (or, pardon my generalizing: some of us) hungrier. Also, you don't get fat because you eat too much; you eat too much because you're getting fat.
The explanation a la Taubes is: when insulin rises, it switches your fat cells to storage mode. When your cells are packing away extra fuel while you're eating, you are less likely to trip the circuits that signal satiation. So, you might stop eating because there is no more room in your stomach, rather than because you have eaten enough to satisfy your current need for fuel.
This film clip is super goofy, but lays out the case quickly and in an entertaining way: Why You Got Fat.
posted by Sublimity at 10:31 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Re: wired to eat as much a we can: one of the most striking and commonly reported effects of adopting a very low carb/keto diet is drastically changed experience of hunger and satiation once a person is fat-adapted. Hunger is less urgent and miserable (and often just absent) and satiation is more clear it and abrupt. If anyone cares to have a look at the anecdata, /r/keto over on Reddit is full of testimony to this effect.
The takeaway messsage is that carbs make you (or, pardon my generalizing: some of us) hungrier. Also, you don't get fat because you eat too much; you eat too much because you're getting fat.
The explanation a la Taubes is: when insulin rises, it switches your fat cells to storage mode. When your cells are packing away extra fuel while you're eating, you are less likely to trip the circuits that signal satiation. So, you might stop eating because there is no more room in your stomach, rather than because you have eaten enough to satisfy your current need for fuel.
This film clip is super goofy, but lays out the case quickly and in an entertaining way: Why You Got Fat.
posted by Sublimity at 10:31 AM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
The explanation a la Taubes is: when insulin rises, it switches your fat cells to storage mode.
The other side of this that I've read is - unless your body has to convert fat to energy on a regular basis, it actually forgets how to do it. Historically this would've occurred more regularly in humans as food availability (particularly carbohydrate dense food) was not as plentiful as it once was and energy usage was much higher.
It's why anecdotally people who are able to get into keto typically get better results over time - it takes less and less time for your body to decide to produce ketones and therefore you can spend a lot more time in ketosis.
posted by notorious medium at 10:38 AM on August 4, 2017
The other side of this that I've read is - unless your body has to convert fat to energy on a regular basis, it actually forgets how to do it. Historically this would've occurred more regularly in humans as food availability (particularly carbohydrate dense food) was not as plentiful as it once was and energy usage was much higher.
It's why anecdotally people who are able to get into keto typically get better results over time - it takes less and less time for your body to decide to produce ketones and therefore you can spend a lot more time in ketosis.
posted by notorious medium at 10:38 AM on August 4, 2017
As a biochemist I would say it's not so much that your body forgets how to do it. More like: if your body mostly needs the enzymes and systems to use carbs as fuel, that's what will be up-regulated and the alternative pathways not so much. If your fuel shifts over to mostly fat, it will take a little time/energy to up-regulate that machinery and don-regulate the carb machinery.
posted by Sublimity at 10:43 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Sublimity at 10:43 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Calories > Macros > Micros > Exercise > Supplements
YMMV
posted by blue_beetle at 11:27 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
YMMV
posted by blue_beetle at 11:27 AM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't get the low vs. high carb thing. Aren't a lot of vegetables and fruits high in carbs? Isn't fiber a carbohydrate?
how do they poop, it must be agony.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:39 AM on August 4, 2017 [9 favorites]
how do they poop, it must be agony.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:39 AM on August 4, 2017 [9 favorites]
I recently went on an all-berry diet and I've never flown higher or built better nests
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:46 AM on August 4, 2017 [35 favorites]
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:46 AM on August 4, 2017 [35 favorites]
So leaving out anything to do with cholesterol, because that is a whole other kettle of hilariously bad studies that dictate the rules for everyone, what have we learned from this little experiment?
We have learned that if you are going to do a 2 week crash diet that cuts roughly 800 kcal/day, you'll probably burn more fat and maybe lose weight on a low fat crash diet compared to a somewhat restricted but not even close to low carb crash diet. Because if you only eat 17 grams of fat per day, of course your body is going to use fat stores to make up the difference.
This is a terrible study and should not be used to draw any conclusions about how people should eat.
posted by monopas at 11:56 AM on August 4, 2017 [9 favorites]
We have learned that if you are going to do a 2 week crash diet that cuts roughly 800 kcal/day, you'll probably burn more fat and maybe lose weight on a low fat crash diet compared to a somewhat restricted but not even close to low carb crash diet. Because if you only eat 17 grams of fat per day, of course your body is going to use fat stores to make up the difference.
This is a terrible study and should not be used to draw any conclusions about how people should eat.
posted by monopas at 11:56 AM on August 4, 2017 [9 favorites]
how do they poop, it must be agony.
posted by poffin boffin
Net carbs means that you can eat more carbs if they are filled with fiber.
Chelated magnesium, recommended by my doctor, has me pooping like an Olympic champion pooper, every morning. I should be on a Wheaties box.
posted by craniac at 12:01 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin
Net carbs means that you can eat more carbs if they are filled with fiber.
Chelated magnesium, recommended by my doctor, has me pooping like an Olympic champion pooper, every morning. I should be on a Wheaties box.
posted by craniac at 12:01 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
The summary has a pretty big typo. Fat loss ia not higher by 10x at a stunning 500g a day but by 1.6x at 89g a day.
I think it's interesting. But conclusions are only from 19 people mostly mid 30s so pretty tentative even if it were otherwise a perfect model of nutrition.
posted by mark k at 12:14 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
I think it's interesting. But conclusions are only from 19 people mostly mid 30s so pretty tentative even if it were otherwise a perfect model of nutrition.
posted by mark k at 12:14 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
When we ponder the question of why more people are overweight than they were a century ago we should also keep in mind that our jobs tend to be more sedentary, and even housework is less of a physical challenge than it was for our great-great-grandparents. People whose physical limitations make exercise difficult are living longer and participating more fully in society. Your average pre-WWII schmo didn't need to make time to go to the gym because they built their arm muscles up by spending a whole day out of every week running all their laundry through a hand-cranked wringer.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:44 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:44 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Note also that ketogenic diets have also been studied in metabolic wards.
posted by The Notorious B.F.G. at 12:51 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by The Notorious B.F.G. at 12:51 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
"built their arm muscles up by spending a whole day out of every week running all their laundry through a hand-cranked wringer."
And also got some pretty horrible injuries as a result. Just ask my grandma, who caught her finger in the wringer!
posted by sutt at 1:10 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
And also got some pretty horrible injuries as a result. Just ask my grandma, who caught her finger in the wringer!
posted by sutt at 1:10 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
It's why anecdotally people who are able to get into keto typically get better results over time - it takes less and less time for your body to decide to produce ketones and therefore you can spend a lot more time in ketosis.
The first time I did keto it was awful for about 3 weeks - my mental health was in the pits (gut bacteria signaling? an interesting area of research) and my energy levels were alarmingly low. In the several times I have deliberately gone back since those same symptoms were absent. Some part of the problem the first time was not being knowledgeable on electrolytes intake when in ketosis. You need way more than you do on a high carb diet, and jacking up salt intake is its own problem with regards to received wisdom on nutrition.
posted by MillMan at 1:38 PM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
The first time I did keto it was awful for about 3 weeks - my mental health was in the pits (gut bacteria signaling? an interesting area of research) and my energy levels were alarmingly low. In the several times I have deliberately gone back since those same symptoms were absent. Some part of the problem the first time was not being knowledgeable on electrolytes intake when in ketosis. You need way more than you do on a high carb diet, and jacking up salt intake is its own problem with regards to received wisdom on nutrition.
posted by MillMan at 1:38 PM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
More people in my practice do better stopping carbs, which usually translates to high-glycemic comfort food that has become an ingrained stable at the dinner table, chiefly pasta, potatoes, rice and/or bread. Nutritionally void, yet likely to induce persisting cycles of hunger due to insulin release. Stop those triggers and it isn't so much a calorie deficit as it is a switching off of hunger. Not that it fits everyone but anytime someone overweight drops more than 5-10% of their adipose weight that's typically the driver. It seems like we're wired for carbohydrate addiction somehow.
posted by docpops at 2:02 PM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by docpops at 2:02 PM on August 4, 2017 [6 favorites]
mark k: The summary has a pretty big typo. Fat loss is not higher by 10x at a stunning 500g a day but by 1.6x at 89g a day.
Shit, you're totally right. I was looking back and forth at the numbers in kcals and grams this morning. Huge units fail there. Thank you for catching it.
monopas: We have learned that if you are going to do a 2 week crash diet that cuts roughly 800 kcal/day, you'll probably burn more fat and maybe lose weight on a low fat crash diet compared to a somewhat restricted but not even close to low carb crash diet. Because if you only eat 17 grams of fat per day, of course your body is going to use fat stores to make up the difference.
Have we though? The most interesting thing to me about this study is that at moderate levels of carb cutting over a short timeframe, obese humans appear to shift their metabolism to oxidize (that is: burn) more fat, but that doesn't translate into any kind of concomitant loss of body fat in week one even in a calorie deficit. Just thinking about the biology of the system, that's a fascinating and unexpected result for someone to follow up on. I don't think it's a terrible study at all or that it argues strongly for low carb over low fat, it's just not a study of a ketogenic diet (which is clearly the study that MeFi wants to fund, and which would also be super interesting).
As for the short timeframe, human studies have the same kind of tradeoffs as that old saw about cheap/fast/good (pick 2). It's expensive and unfeasible to get this level of dietary compliance and monitoring in metabolic chambers over a six month timeframe with people. On the other hand, you find something interesting in a study like this and you'd damn well better follow it up both a) longer and b) in a more real life setting. But you can't build a model - even a crappy model - of human metabolism out of something more longitudinal like the Nurses' Health Study, and there are separate issues trying to extrapolate from another system like a mouse. So I totally get that it's appealing to poke holes in studies like this, but I do think we learn something from them, in an iterative way.
posted by deludingmyself at 2:56 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Shit, you're totally right. I was looking back and forth at the numbers in kcals and grams this morning. Huge units fail there. Thank you for catching it.
monopas: We have learned that if you are going to do a 2 week crash diet that cuts roughly 800 kcal/day, you'll probably burn more fat and maybe lose weight on a low fat crash diet compared to a somewhat restricted but not even close to low carb crash diet. Because if you only eat 17 grams of fat per day, of course your body is going to use fat stores to make up the difference.
Have we though? The most interesting thing to me about this study is that at moderate levels of carb cutting over a short timeframe, obese humans appear to shift their metabolism to oxidize (that is: burn) more fat, but that doesn't translate into any kind of concomitant loss of body fat in week one even in a calorie deficit. Just thinking about the biology of the system, that's a fascinating and unexpected result for someone to follow up on. I don't think it's a terrible study at all or that it argues strongly for low carb over low fat, it's just not a study of a ketogenic diet (which is clearly the study that MeFi wants to fund, and which would also be super interesting).
As for the short timeframe, human studies have the same kind of tradeoffs as that old saw about cheap/fast/good (pick 2). It's expensive and unfeasible to get this level of dietary compliance and monitoring in metabolic chambers over a six month timeframe with people. On the other hand, you find something interesting in a study like this and you'd damn well better follow it up both a) longer and b) in a more real life setting. But you can't build a model - even a crappy model - of human metabolism out of something more longitudinal like the Nurses' Health Study, and there are separate issues trying to extrapolate from another system like a mouse. So I totally get that it's appealing to poke holes in studies like this, but I do think we learn something from them, in an iterative way.
posted by deludingmyself at 2:56 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm curious if the whole obesity epidemic might be because of the low nutrient content of our food - the food we eat now is mostly grown in soil that has been exhausted of nutrients decades ago. There is some effort in some cases to apply manure, but the soil is primarily kept fertile with chemical fertilizers. It is certainly not subjected to years in use as pasture before being brought back into use for growing grain or vegetable crops.
Feeding soil on chemical fertilizer is like feeding yourself on vitamin enriched energy drinks - sugar, caffeine and water and vitamins -absolutely everything you need to stay in top notch health, right? Sure you are going to be functional, but nowhere near the same as if the soil is fed with compost, humus, manure, ash from burning, animal carcasses, and all the other things that naturally create soil.
Back when I was reading history, I remember reading about a crop yield crisis in Nouvelle France before the English conquered it and it became Lower Canada, before the American Revolution and before it became Quebec, because the soil had become exhausted from producing successive crops of grain. The habitant who had cleared forest land and begun farming had not practice crop rotation as they did back in Europe because the newly cleared land seemed both fertile enough, and infinite enough it didn't need it. But now there wasn't enough land that could be cleared, nor were the crops available that they could use to establish crop rotation, and every year the grain was sparser and sparser....
And I remember reading about how in the mid 1800's soil fertility in the US was in crisis, so that an abrupt trade sprang up in importing guano - seabird droppings, from islands that were completely covered in it. They imported tons and tons of it. -
Well, we are still using the same soil and the same fields as we were when we had those crop yield crisis in the past, and the soil hasn't gotten any thicker, and we haven't been adding any huge amounts of bio-matter to it. We've been adding ammonium nitrate which is a by-product of the fossil fuel industry. Would you like to be nourished on ammonium nitrate?
What we've been doing is creating varieties of produce and grain that can grow and look good using chemical fertilizer and don't decay quickly while being shipped and stored for weeks. I live almost on the opposite side of the continent from California. And in my grocery store they sell these strawberries and raspberries from California, year round. They look absolutely beautiful. They are perfect, unblemished, red. I can buy them and put them in my fridge and eat them two weeks later and they look and taste exactly the same as the day I bought them. So they might have been picked six weeks earlier... They don't exactly taste like strawberries or raspberries of course. They just taste like very tart fruit pulp. They have a generic fruit taste. And I have to think, if they don't go bad, is it possible that part of the reason they don't go bad is that there's not actually very much in them to go bad, not much in them to even nourish a mold spore?
That's what I wonder, if the obesity epidemic is possible caused by people being so desperately, desperately hungry because they need food, and what they are eating is inert calories. Maybe people can't tell when they have had enough to eat because their bodies know that they are sick from deficiency diseases, not dying of scurvy, but immune systems running way under par, and sperm count flagging - so many people feeling totally run down instead of vital and healthy?
posted by Jane the Brown at 2:59 PM on August 4, 2017 [13 favorites]
Feeding soil on chemical fertilizer is like feeding yourself on vitamin enriched energy drinks - sugar, caffeine and water and vitamins -absolutely everything you need to stay in top notch health, right? Sure you are going to be functional, but nowhere near the same as if the soil is fed with compost, humus, manure, ash from burning, animal carcasses, and all the other things that naturally create soil.
Back when I was reading history, I remember reading about a crop yield crisis in Nouvelle France before the English conquered it and it became Lower Canada, before the American Revolution and before it became Quebec, because the soil had become exhausted from producing successive crops of grain. The habitant who had cleared forest land and begun farming had not practice crop rotation as they did back in Europe because the newly cleared land seemed both fertile enough, and infinite enough it didn't need it. But now there wasn't enough land that could be cleared, nor were the crops available that they could use to establish crop rotation, and every year the grain was sparser and sparser....
And I remember reading about how in the mid 1800's soil fertility in the US was in crisis, so that an abrupt trade sprang up in importing guano - seabird droppings, from islands that were completely covered in it. They imported tons and tons of it. -
Well, we are still using the same soil and the same fields as we were when we had those crop yield crisis in the past, and the soil hasn't gotten any thicker, and we haven't been adding any huge amounts of bio-matter to it. We've been adding ammonium nitrate which is a by-product of the fossil fuel industry. Would you like to be nourished on ammonium nitrate?
What we've been doing is creating varieties of produce and grain that can grow and look good using chemical fertilizer and don't decay quickly while being shipped and stored for weeks. I live almost on the opposite side of the continent from California. And in my grocery store they sell these strawberries and raspberries from California, year round. They look absolutely beautiful. They are perfect, unblemished, red. I can buy them and put them in my fridge and eat them two weeks later and they look and taste exactly the same as the day I bought them. So they might have been picked six weeks earlier... They don't exactly taste like strawberries or raspberries of course. They just taste like very tart fruit pulp. They have a generic fruit taste. And I have to think, if they don't go bad, is it possible that part of the reason they don't go bad is that there's not actually very much in them to go bad, not much in them to even nourish a mold spore?
That's what I wonder, if the obesity epidemic is possible caused by people being so desperately, desperately hungry because they need food, and what they are eating is inert calories. Maybe people can't tell when they have had enough to eat because their bodies know that they are sick from deficiency diseases, not dying of scurvy, but immune systems running way under par, and sperm count flagging - so many people feeling totally run down instead of vital and healthy?
posted by Jane the Brown at 2:59 PM on August 4, 2017 [13 favorites]
"The only method that will ever work for (almost) everyone -- other than the coming famine, of course -- probably will be some combination of daily pills to dissolve fat, dull your taste buds, eliminate your appetite, and make you feel happy and energetic."
Last time we tried something like that, it was speed, tho.
posted by Selena777 at 5:08 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Last time we tried something like that, it was speed, tho.
posted by Selena777 at 5:08 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
I was on a ketogenic diet and the weight just ~melted~ off. It was easy, fun, and satisfying, and I occasionally had cravings for carbs but I dealt with them in various ways. Then a bunch of my routine changed and it was no longer possible to eat in the same fairly strict, inflexible way, and within a couple of months all of that weight just ~reverse melted~ right back on. It was amazing how my body brought itself back to the original status quo as if it was desperately trying to save itself from a fate worse than death.
So, if keto / very low carb works for you, then great. It's probably a good idea to really ask yourself whether it's something you are prepared to sustain for the rest of your life. Because I think that's what's required, more or less.
I'm currently experiencing some success with 100% natural, healthy home cooking, ditching my car and biking/walking to work and everywhere else, drinking way less beer/alcohol, and getting away from diet sodas and the like, as permanent lifestyle changes. I don't think there's any magic bullet for anything, but I think getting out of a lifetime of not-great modern western habits is worth considering, whether it has an impact on weight or not.
posted by naju at 5:45 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
So, if keto / very low carb works for you, then great. It's probably a good idea to really ask yourself whether it's something you are prepared to sustain for the rest of your life. Because I think that's what's required, more or less.
I'm currently experiencing some success with 100% natural, healthy home cooking, ditching my car and biking/walking to work and everywhere else, drinking way less beer/alcohol, and getting away from diet sodas and the like, as permanent lifestyle changes. I don't think there's any magic bullet for anything, but I think getting out of a lifetime of not-great modern western habits is worth considering, whether it has an impact on weight or not.
posted by naju at 5:45 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Selena777: I was prescribed speed (Vyvanse) for ADD. I've lost 90 pounds so far. Honestly, I'm not sure if a controlled does of a stimulant is that much more likely to blow my heart up than carrying what was when I started, 150 pounds of excess fat. And quality of life wise? Even if taking this for the rest of my life is going to shorten it by exactly as much as being 350+ pounds would have, it's still a pretty good deal.
Honestly, at this point I'm seriously wondering if giving everyone with more than 100+ pounds of body fat a package of free speed every month would actually result in a net improvement of public health outcomes. Because the situation is pretty grim right now.
posted by Grimgrin at 6:01 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Honestly, at this point I'm seriously wondering if giving everyone with more than 100+ pounds of body fat a package of free speed every month would actually result in a net improvement of public health outcomes. Because the situation is pretty grim right now.
posted by Grimgrin at 6:01 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
The assumption that low carb is difficult or historically unusual is frustrating. It's the default diet for humans before industrial-scale grain farming.
With a disclaimer that I haven't read the book yet, I heard a great interview of the author of Built on Bones, which is about what bioarchaeology tells us about prehistoric human lifestyles.
The interviewer brought up what humans "evolved" to eat and she said we evolved not to starve. Her response to a question about what was found in ancient guts was "carbs, lots of carbs," along with with anything they could get their hands on (such as porcupine.)
I'm not going all in on this until I read the book--maybe it was all high fiber stuff and so wouldn't 'count' in a diet conversation--but this is the comment from someone doing research.
Shit, you're totally right. I was looking back and forth at the numbers in kcals and grams this morning. Huge units fail there. Thank you for catching it.
I was really depressed about my dieting skills for a bit when I first read it, and was wondering what I needed to change to lose a pound of a fat a day while eating 1900 calories a day. Really. Now I'm sad it was a typo.
posted by mark k at 7:17 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
With a disclaimer that I haven't read the book yet, I heard a great interview of the author of Built on Bones, which is about what bioarchaeology tells us about prehistoric human lifestyles.
The interviewer brought up what humans "evolved" to eat and she said we evolved not to starve. Her response to a question about what was found in ancient guts was "carbs, lots of carbs," along with with anything they could get their hands on (such as porcupine.)
I'm not going all in on this until I read the book--maybe it was all high fiber stuff and so wouldn't 'count' in a diet conversation--but this is the comment from someone doing research.
Shit, you're totally right. I was looking back and forth at the numbers in kcals and grams this morning. Huge units fail there. Thank you for catching it.
I was really depressed about my dieting skills for a bit when I first read it, and was wondering what I needed to change to lose a pound of a fat a day while eating 1900 calories a day. Really. Now I'm sad it was a typo.
posted by mark k at 7:17 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
The advent of agriculture and grain-farming also was pretty key in the growth of human population beyond bands. The internet tells me that without agriculture the planet can support about 10 million hunting, gathering humans. The whole reason we as a species got down with this whole farming grain business is that it enables humans to not starve and be able to reproduce and make more humans who then do not starve and eventually, you get a city!. So... who is volunteering to poof into nonexistence so the rest of us can sup on wild boar?
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:38 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:38 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Just ask my grandma, who caught her finger in the wringer!
So did my mother, as a kid. She also put Grandpa's canvas fishing bag through without realizing there was still a fish in it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:35 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
So did my mother, as a kid. She also put Grandpa's canvas fishing bag through without realizing there was still a fish in it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:35 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
Sublimity,
Ok, taking a break from writing and will respond to your question I think it’s best to clarify some points in case we're accidentally arguing past each other.
I should point out that I was a big proponent of the low carb diet in the late 2000s/early 2010s. You can find comments on metafilter supporting that. (1, 2, 3)
The problem is that as the science mounted against this theory, I realized that it was incomplete and some other model, with better predictive value was called for. You understand this as well, or better than I do. Science works by disproving hypotheses and forcing humanity to come up with better ideas. Trying to pigeon hole the evidence so it fits your own biases is not science and I was forced to admit that the insulin model had serious flaws. There were too many contradictions and too many studies that seemed to disconfirm it. I'm just getting this out of the way so you don't assume I'm a fatphobic Snackwells zealot.
• Are there any books that support traditional models of obesity as authoritatively as Taubes did in his books?
o Yes. Every modern undergraduate and graduate-level text book in nutrition refutes Taubes’ models. I learned from Gibney's Introduction to Human Nutrition. To my knowledge, no standard nutrition textbook has adopted Taubes' model.
• In evidence based practice we have the concept of the hierarchy of evidence. Meta-analyses at the top, then RCTs then down at the bottom we have opinions of experts. Taubes’ ideas fit firmly at the bottom. That doesn’t mean he’s definitely wrong, but if you’re trying to sell me on something like geocentrism, you better bring some strong evidence.
• Taubes is a storyteller, a persuader. Like Trump. He tells stories that feel good. The experts are wrong! There’s a big cover up! Drain the swamp! His entire narrative hinges on the majority of our best and brightest being wrong or evil. (See links to criticisms below.)
• I think LCD can be a good match for many people, but not for the reasons Taubes purports. If you want to have a hormone-based theory of obesity, then surely Leptin would be the culprit. Taubes seems to ignore hormones like Leptin and Ghrelin in his model.
• More fat oxidation does not equal more fat loss. Danny Lennon always does a good job explaining this. This is an especially succinct explanation. Taubes pretends that our metabolisms are small, transactional systems, like your grandmother counting coins out of her purse. Instead imagine a system as complex as the global financial market. There are thousands of chemical reactions happening every second, you really think that just focusing on insulin is the key? You're a biochemist, so you'd know more about this than I would.
• At the end of the day your body is going to burn about the same number of calories, regardless of your macro nutrient breakdown. Yes, insulin might suppress fat burning acutely, but it will all even out by the end of the day. Again, your body isn’t stupid, stop trying to “hack it”. Both of these links reference the famous Kevin Hall-led study. Despite what online gurus might spin, it was well-done and respected within the research community. Here's another helpful link from James Krieger on the subject.
• People do lose weight on LCD diets, keep in mind that most of the initial weight loss is going to be muscle glycogen.
• We need to distinguish between diets/models that change people behaviors and get people to eat fewer calories vs Taubes’ assertion that there is a metabolic advantage to LCD. IE, can I eat 5,000 surplus calories a day and still lose weight if it’s high fat low carb? Inversely, can I create a 600 calorie deficit and still not lose weight if it’s high carb? What I'm asking is, does the magic of low carb lead to weight loss, or is it that I can eat fewer calories on a low carb diet?
• Another knock against the Insulin theory is that Insulin fluctuations don’t appear to be associated with increased appetite or cravings. If you feel like they do, fine, they do for you. Blind studies don’t support it though.
• Again, I’m not saying that LCD don’t work; they are a very good fit for some people. The question is why? We’ve seen that there doesn’t appear to be a metabolic advantage. Your body isn’t burning more calories on LCD. The simplest answer is that you’re eating fewer calories but staying fuller longer. This could be due to the higher protein levels, or fat levels. It’s most likely because you’re being more mindful about your food choices. Any dietary restriction can cause fat loss. The most important thing is that you restrict something. This changes your eating patterns and forces to think about your food.
• I’m a big proponent of circa 2009 paleo diets because they were so damn inconvenient. You weren’t going to eat anything convenient/junky because nothing paleo friendly came ready to eat in 2009. You had to make everything from scratch. You had to cook everything. I’d say making eating less convenient, less subject to whims and more premeditated is one of the keys to eating.
When ever a new study comes out that seems to falsify Taubes' ideas, the internet blows up with people saying things like:
"That wasn't low carb enough!" or "They didn't give it enough time!" or "They didn't take the quality of food into account!" or "The study population was carb adapted!" or whatever. The point is that in metabolic ward studies, low carb diets don't seem to provide a metabolic advantage.
Instead of me plagiarizing points, I’m going to point you to Stephan Guyenet’s piece: The Carbohydrate Hypothesis of Obesity: a Critical Examination.
It’s an excellent point by point take down of Taubes’ hypothesis. He cites 40 different studies an clearly explains why each one contradicts a certain facet of Taubes’ claims.
As I think you’d be well served by reading Guyenet’s work, I’ll share another excerpt from his site:
This study confirms that insulin simply doesn't work how Taubes, Ludwig, and other insulin-obesity advocates think it does. As the investigators put it, "it is clear that regulation of adipose tissue fat storage is multifaceted and that insulin does not always play a predominant role". Despite insulin's well-recognized role in regulating dynamic fatty acid flux in response to meals, circulating insulin levels are not a dominant controller of fat mass. Instead, this study suggests to me that fat tissue plays a more passive role in energy balance: it releases net calories as the body needs them, regardless of what insulin is doing**. Insulin is not the conductor of the fat mass train.
From another piece:
If elevated insulin leads to increased fat storage and increased food intake, then experimentally elevating insulin in animals should replicate this (since insulin acts on fat cells in the same manner in humans and non-human mammals). However, this is not observed. Insulin injections at a dose that does not cause frank hypoglycemia do not increase food intake, and in some cases they even reduce it (48). Chronically increasing circulating insulin without causing hypoglycemia reduces food intake and body weight in non-diabetic animals, without causing illness, contrary to what this idea would predict (49, 50). If anything, insulin constrains food intake and body fatness, and research indicates that this action occurs via the brain. Insulin infused into the brains of baboons causes a suppression of appetite and fat loss, which is consistent with the fact that insulin and leptin have overlapping functions in the brain (10, 11). Knocking out insulin receptors in the brain leads to increased fat mass in rodents, suggesting that its normal function involves constraining fat mass (12). Insulin is also co-secreted with amylin, which suppresses food intake and body weight (13). This is why insulin is viewed by some obesity researchers as an anti-obesity hormone.
Taubes' books aren't really scientific. Again, he's telling you a compelling story. He talks about cover ups, and shady scientists and interesting case studies but none of it actually confirms his main hypothesis. Here's a good criticism of his latest book.
Stephan Guyent has another refutation of Taubes' new book.
I decided not to just list a a bunch of studies without context. I think the above links do a very good job of showing that the insulin model of obesity is very flawed. If you want just a list of studies, I can provide that, but I decided context was more helpful.
posted by Telf at 1:19 AM on August 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
Ok, taking a break from writing and will respond to your question I think it’s best to clarify some points in case we're accidentally arguing past each other.
I should point out that I was a big proponent of the low carb diet in the late 2000s/early 2010s. You can find comments on metafilter supporting that. (1, 2, 3)
The problem is that as the science mounted against this theory, I realized that it was incomplete and some other model, with better predictive value was called for. You understand this as well, or better than I do. Science works by disproving hypotheses and forcing humanity to come up with better ideas. Trying to pigeon hole the evidence so it fits your own biases is not science and I was forced to admit that the insulin model had serious flaws. There were too many contradictions and too many studies that seemed to disconfirm it. I'm just getting this out of the way so you don't assume I'm a fatphobic Snackwells zealot.
• Are there any books that support traditional models of obesity as authoritatively as Taubes did in his books?
o Yes. Every modern undergraduate and graduate-level text book in nutrition refutes Taubes’ models. I learned from Gibney's Introduction to Human Nutrition. To my knowledge, no standard nutrition textbook has adopted Taubes' model.
• In evidence based practice we have the concept of the hierarchy of evidence. Meta-analyses at the top, then RCTs then down at the bottom we have opinions of experts. Taubes’ ideas fit firmly at the bottom. That doesn’t mean he’s definitely wrong, but if you’re trying to sell me on something like geocentrism, you better bring some strong evidence.
• Taubes is a storyteller, a persuader. Like Trump. He tells stories that feel good. The experts are wrong! There’s a big cover up! Drain the swamp! His entire narrative hinges on the majority of our best and brightest being wrong or evil. (See links to criticisms below.)
• I think LCD can be a good match for many people, but not for the reasons Taubes purports. If you want to have a hormone-based theory of obesity, then surely Leptin would be the culprit. Taubes seems to ignore hormones like Leptin and Ghrelin in his model.
• More fat oxidation does not equal more fat loss. Danny Lennon always does a good job explaining this. This is an especially succinct explanation. Taubes pretends that our metabolisms are small, transactional systems, like your grandmother counting coins out of her purse. Instead imagine a system as complex as the global financial market. There are thousands of chemical reactions happening every second, you really think that just focusing on insulin is the key? You're a biochemist, so you'd know more about this than I would.
• At the end of the day your body is going to burn about the same number of calories, regardless of your macro nutrient breakdown. Yes, insulin might suppress fat burning acutely, but it will all even out by the end of the day. Again, your body isn’t stupid, stop trying to “hack it”. Both of these links reference the famous Kevin Hall-led study. Despite what online gurus might spin, it was well-done and respected within the research community. Here's another helpful link from James Krieger on the subject.
• People do lose weight on LCD diets, keep in mind that most of the initial weight loss is going to be muscle glycogen.
• We need to distinguish between diets/models that change people behaviors and get people to eat fewer calories vs Taubes’ assertion that there is a metabolic advantage to LCD. IE, can I eat 5,000 surplus calories a day and still lose weight if it’s high fat low carb? Inversely, can I create a 600 calorie deficit and still not lose weight if it’s high carb? What I'm asking is, does the magic of low carb lead to weight loss, or is it that I can eat fewer calories on a low carb diet?
• Another knock against the Insulin theory is that Insulin fluctuations don’t appear to be associated with increased appetite or cravings. If you feel like they do, fine, they do for you. Blind studies don’t support it though.
• Again, I’m not saying that LCD don’t work; they are a very good fit for some people. The question is why? We’ve seen that there doesn’t appear to be a metabolic advantage. Your body isn’t burning more calories on LCD. The simplest answer is that you’re eating fewer calories but staying fuller longer. This could be due to the higher protein levels, or fat levels. It’s most likely because you’re being more mindful about your food choices. Any dietary restriction can cause fat loss. The most important thing is that you restrict something. This changes your eating patterns and forces to think about your food.
• I’m a big proponent of circa 2009 paleo diets because they were so damn inconvenient. You weren’t going to eat anything convenient/junky because nothing paleo friendly came ready to eat in 2009. You had to make everything from scratch. You had to cook everything. I’d say making eating less convenient, less subject to whims and more premeditated is one of the keys to eating.
When ever a new study comes out that seems to falsify Taubes' ideas, the internet blows up with people saying things like:
"That wasn't low carb enough!" or "They didn't give it enough time!" or "They didn't take the quality of food into account!" or "The study population was carb adapted!" or whatever. The point is that in metabolic ward studies, low carb diets don't seem to provide a metabolic advantage.
Instead of me plagiarizing points, I’m going to point you to Stephan Guyenet’s piece: The Carbohydrate Hypothesis of Obesity: a Critical Examination.
It’s an excellent point by point take down of Taubes’ hypothesis. He cites 40 different studies an clearly explains why each one contradicts a certain facet of Taubes’ claims.
As I think you’d be well served by reading Guyenet’s work, I’ll share another excerpt from his site:
This study confirms that insulin simply doesn't work how Taubes, Ludwig, and other insulin-obesity advocates think it does. As the investigators put it, "it is clear that regulation of adipose tissue fat storage is multifaceted and that insulin does not always play a predominant role". Despite insulin's well-recognized role in regulating dynamic fatty acid flux in response to meals, circulating insulin levels are not a dominant controller of fat mass. Instead, this study suggests to me that fat tissue plays a more passive role in energy balance: it releases net calories as the body needs them, regardless of what insulin is doing**. Insulin is not the conductor of the fat mass train.
From another piece:
If elevated insulin leads to increased fat storage and increased food intake, then experimentally elevating insulin in animals should replicate this (since insulin acts on fat cells in the same manner in humans and non-human mammals). However, this is not observed. Insulin injections at a dose that does not cause frank hypoglycemia do not increase food intake, and in some cases they even reduce it (48). Chronically increasing circulating insulin without causing hypoglycemia reduces food intake and body weight in non-diabetic animals, without causing illness, contrary to what this idea would predict (49, 50). If anything, insulin constrains food intake and body fatness, and research indicates that this action occurs via the brain. Insulin infused into the brains of baboons causes a suppression of appetite and fat loss, which is consistent with the fact that insulin and leptin have overlapping functions in the brain (10, 11). Knocking out insulin receptors in the brain leads to increased fat mass in rodents, suggesting that its normal function involves constraining fat mass (12). Insulin is also co-secreted with amylin, which suppresses food intake and body weight (13). This is why insulin is viewed by some obesity researchers as an anti-obesity hormone.
Taubes' books aren't really scientific. Again, he's telling you a compelling story. He talks about cover ups, and shady scientists and interesting case studies but none of it actually confirms his main hypothesis. Here's a good criticism of his latest book.
Stephan Guyent has another refutation of Taubes' new book.
I decided not to just list a a bunch of studies without context. I think the above links do a very good job of showing that the insulin model of obesity is very flawed. If you want just a list of studies, I can provide that, but I decided context was more helpful.
posted by Telf at 1:19 AM on August 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
The advent of agriculture and grain-farming also was pretty key in the growth of human population beyond bands. The internet tells me that without agriculture the planet can support about 10 million hunting, gathering humans. The whole reason we as a species got down with this whole farming grain business is that it enables humans to not starve and be able to reproduce and make more humans who then do not starve and eventually, you get a city!. So... who is volunteering to poof into nonexistence so the rest of us can sup on wild boar?
hunter-gatherer-(farmers)
It's an idea that could transform our understanding of how humans went from small bands of gatherers to farmers and urbanites. Until recently, anthropologists believed cities and farms emerged about 9,000 years ago in the Mediterranean and Middle East. But now a team of interdisciplinary researchers has gathered evidence showing how civilization as we know it may have emerged at the equator, in tropical forests. Not only that, but people began altering their environments for food and shelter about 30,000 years earlier than we thought.
...
Annalee Newitz | Ars Technica
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:30 AM on August 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
hunter-gatherer-(farmers)
It's an idea that could transform our understanding of how humans went from small bands of gatherers to farmers and urbanites. Until recently, anthropologists believed cities and farms emerged about 9,000 years ago in the Mediterranean and Middle East. But now a team of interdisciplinary researchers has gathered evidence showing how civilization as we know it may have emerged at the equator, in tropical forests. Not only that, but people began altering their environments for food and shelter about 30,000 years earlier than we thought.
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Annalee Newitz | Ars Technica
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:30 AM on August 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
Where do people get this idea that low-carb diets are hard to adhere to? It's the easiest diet I've ever been on. In fact, I think half the reason it works is that it's so easy to stick to.
If it's an animal product, I eat it. If it's a vegetable, I eat it. If it's anything else, I don't eat it. That's it.
Even social eating is easy. I can find something to eat at any restaurant in NYC. I just order what I would normally order, but I don't eat the potatoes/rice/bread. In many places, you can request a side salad or sauteed vegetables in place of the carbs. Worst case scenario, you add on a salad or a veggie side to bulk out the meal. Yes, it's a little more expensive, but you won't walk out of there hungry.
I will say, I'm not as obsessive as some about it as some. I don't worry about how many carbs are in my salad dressing or BBQ sauce or whatever. Maybe if I were more obsessive, I'd lose weight faster. But I don't have the time or patience for that, and if I tried to do that, I'd probably sour on the diet pretty quickly and wouldn't stick with it. So far, I've taken off about 27 pounds in about 4 months, and that's not too shabby!
I think it's always going to be easier to stick with something where there's a bright-line rule. If I had to busy myself with counting calories or carbs or fat, dear god, that would be awful. I don't think I'd be able to stick with that at all. But if I just say, "I'm going to eat meat and vegetables and that's it", why that's the easiest thing in the world to do! I'm cutting out basically all forms of junk food and crap calories that don't give you any nutrition. And I'm eating a delicious diet that leaves me feeling happy and satiated. Do I care why it works? Not really!
posted by panama joe at 7:18 AM on August 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
If it's an animal product, I eat it. If it's a vegetable, I eat it. If it's anything else, I don't eat it. That's it.
Even social eating is easy. I can find something to eat at any restaurant in NYC. I just order what I would normally order, but I don't eat the potatoes/rice/bread. In many places, you can request a side salad or sauteed vegetables in place of the carbs. Worst case scenario, you add on a salad or a veggie side to bulk out the meal. Yes, it's a little more expensive, but you won't walk out of there hungry.
I will say, I'm not as obsessive as some about it as some. I don't worry about how many carbs are in my salad dressing or BBQ sauce or whatever. Maybe if I were more obsessive, I'd lose weight faster. But I don't have the time or patience for that, and if I tried to do that, I'd probably sour on the diet pretty quickly and wouldn't stick with it. So far, I've taken off about 27 pounds in about 4 months, and that's not too shabby!
I think it's always going to be easier to stick with something where there's a bright-line rule. If I had to busy myself with counting calories or carbs or fat, dear god, that would be awful. I don't think I'd be able to stick with that at all. But if I just say, "I'm going to eat meat and vegetables and that's it", why that's the easiest thing in the world to do! I'm cutting out basically all forms of junk food and crap calories that don't give you any nutrition. And I'm eating a delicious diet that leaves me feeling happy and satiated. Do I care why it works? Not really!
posted by panama joe at 7:18 AM on August 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
How much of that is simply because people cannot stick to very artifical and/or constrained food palettes for the long-term?
I have found that he needed long term change is in portion size, really. And avoiding snacking. Back in '12 I went to a 16/8 IF, based around a regular lunch at lunch, not snacking before dinner, a regular dinner at 6 or 7, and then "I'm done eating until lunchtime..."
Anything that doesn't address the behavioral aspect is a short-term-only fix.
posted by mikelieman at 8:04 AM on August 5, 2017
I have found that he needed long term change is in portion size, really. And avoiding snacking. Back in '12 I went to a 16/8 IF, based around a regular lunch at lunch, not snacking before dinner, a regular dinner at 6 or 7, and then "I'm done eating until lunchtime..."
Anything that doesn't address the behavioral aspect is a short-term-only fix.
posted by mikelieman at 8:04 AM on August 5, 2017
If it's an animal product, I eat it. If it's a vegetable, I eat it. If it's anything else, I don't eat it
I'm vegetarian, so...
I have also lost significant weight and kept it off, by counting calories. I find doing that to be much easier than eliminating entire food groups (I love food, I love all kinds of food, and a world in which I cannot eat ramen or banh mi is not a world I want to live in). I have an app, I spend about 10 minutes a day entering stuff and with the information it gives me I can make choices about portion size and snacking. But I know counting triggers disordered eating or obsessive thoughts in some people, so when people tell me they can't take that approach, I believe them. People are different.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:26 AM on August 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
I'm vegetarian, so...
I have also lost significant weight and kept it off, by counting calories. I find doing that to be much easier than eliminating entire food groups (I love food, I love all kinds of food, and a world in which I cannot eat ramen or banh mi is not a world I want to live in). I have an app, I spend about 10 minutes a day entering stuff and with the information it gives me I can make choices about portion size and snacking. But I know counting triggers disordered eating or obsessive thoughts in some people, so when people tell me they can't take that approach, I believe them. People are different.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:26 AM on August 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
No one is really addressing the above point about whether the amount of meat needed for low carb diets is at all sustainable on a population scale.
posted by mkuhnell at 11:29 AM on August 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by mkuhnell at 11:29 AM on August 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
Telf, your post made me laugh out loud. I'm familiar with many of those voices including Guyanet.
First, a point of agreement: Taubes does weave stories. It's what scientists do: how can we best explain what we're seeing given the evidence at hand. Each and every one of the writings that you link to does exactly the same thing--and, good grief, do they cherry pick just as much. And that last paragraph from whatever insulin study is quite the cherry in and of itself as it contradicts pretty much every known action of insulin, summarized in the abstract of this review article.
Also, yes: Taubes does propose an alternate hypothesis to the one conveyed in nutrition text books, hence the controversy. I disagree with your depiction of him characterizing people in the field of nutrition as wrong or evil in inflammatory ways. In GCBC, part of building his case (which draws on a diversity of lines of evidence--from cellular and physiological arguments to historical and epidemiological) relies on coming to an understanding of how the current nutritional understanding/public policy came to be. Yes, he does make the argument that industry pressure at various points skewed interpretation of data, focused research work on industry-favored topics, and influenced public policy. No one has refuted this and in fact other researchers have found additional evidence to support this narrative. And yes, he says that most people who teach and practice nutrition are passing it on as "received wisdom". This is undoubtedly true and not an insult--this is just how human beings use and propagate ideas, and there is always conflict and lag as understanding is challenged and changes.
Your evidence-based practice lecture is piquant, especially given the sources you go on to cite. It's difficult to take seriously any of those "Sigma Nutrition" pieces as they're so full of straw man that it's almost impossible to navigate. Good grief.
I'm not sure why you're stuck on the notion that somehow LCD are supposed to make someone burn more calories. As far as I know, there's no claim that it does and Taubes certainly doesn't make that case at all. The simplest answer is that LCD make it possible for your body to draw on stored fuel to supply some of your daily energy need. That's why they work to make people lose weight--and even the critics will acknowledge that low-carb diets do, in fact, cause people to lose fat. If your body is supplying some of your energy needs from the fat stored in your cells, your appetite decreases (which is also commonly reported in LCD) and calorie intake falls simply because the need for exogenous fuel is decreased.
By the way, that was the thing that I thought was most problematic about the critique of the NuSi study: if all subjects were required to eat >2700 calories a day, *of course* no one was going to lose weight in that 8 week study. For most people who are doing this in daily life, hunger and satiation cues change and caloric intake attenuates naturally.
You're just wrong about insulin not promoting hunger--that's actually got strong evidence to back it up. One of Robert Ludwig's talks goes into this at length with beautiful experimental evidence, that circulating metabolite levels actually dip after insulin response. That part starts at about 13:00 and goes on for a while--the whole thing is worth watching.
Finally, regarding other hormones including leptin and ghrelin: yes, there are many hormones that play a role in hunger and eating and that influence fat accumulation and storage, including thyroid hormones and sex hormones (androgens and estrogens cause bodies to store fat to different degrees and in different places.) But the one that wields most control over fuel partitioning is insulin, so that's the one that matters here. If a person is carrying enough spare fuel on their body to support their energy needs for a week, a month, or a year, then the factor that matters is the thing that to stop partitioning more fuel into storage and change conditions to let it come out. Simplest way to do that is to diminish the signal that tells your body to store rather than release fuel.
posted by Sublimity at 3:56 PM on August 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
First, a point of agreement: Taubes does weave stories. It's what scientists do: how can we best explain what we're seeing given the evidence at hand. Each and every one of the writings that you link to does exactly the same thing--and, good grief, do they cherry pick just as much. And that last paragraph from whatever insulin study is quite the cherry in and of itself as it contradicts pretty much every known action of insulin, summarized in the abstract of this review article.
Also, yes: Taubes does propose an alternate hypothesis to the one conveyed in nutrition text books, hence the controversy. I disagree with your depiction of him characterizing people in the field of nutrition as wrong or evil in inflammatory ways. In GCBC, part of building his case (which draws on a diversity of lines of evidence--from cellular and physiological arguments to historical and epidemiological) relies on coming to an understanding of how the current nutritional understanding/public policy came to be. Yes, he does make the argument that industry pressure at various points skewed interpretation of data, focused research work on industry-favored topics, and influenced public policy. No one has refuted this and in fact other researchers have found additional evidence to support this narrative. And yes, he says that most people who teach and practice nutrition are passing it on as "received wisdom". This is undoubtedly true and not an insult--this is just how human beings use and propagate ideas, and there is always conflict and lag as understanding is challenged and changes.
Your evidence-based practice lecture is piquant, especially given the sources you go on to cite. It's difficult to take seriously any of those "Sigma Nutrition" pieces as they're so full of straw man that it's almost impossible to navigate. Good grief.
I'm not sure why you're stuck on the notion that somehow LCD are supposed to make someone burn more calories. As far as I know, there's no claim that it does and Taubes certainly doesn't make that case at all. The simplest answer is that LCD make it possible for your body to draw on stored fuel to supply some of your daily energy need. That's why they work to make people lose weight--and even the critics will acknowledge that low-carb diets do, in fact, cause people to lose fat. If your body is supplying some of your energy needs from the fat stored in your cells, your appetite decreases (which is also commonly reported in LCD) and calorie intake falls simply because the need for exogenous fuel is decreased.
By the way, that was the thing that I thought was most problematic about the critique of the NuSi study: if all subjects were required to eat >2700 calories a day, *of course* no one was going to lose weight in that 8 week study. For most people who are doing this in daily life, hunger and satiation cues change and caloric intake attenuates naturally.
You're just wrong about insulin not promoting hunger--that's actually got strong evidence to back it up. One of Robert Ludwig's talks goes into this at length with beautiful experimental evidence, that circulating metabolite levels actually dip after insulin response. That part starts at about 13:00 and goes on for a while--the whole thing is worth watching.
Finally, regarding other hormones including leptin and ghrelin: yes, there are many hormones that play a role in hunger and eating and that influence fat accumulation and storage, including thyroid hormones and sex hormones (androgens and estrogens cause bodies to store fat to different degrees and in different places.) But the one that wields most control over fuel partitioning is insulin, so that's the one that matters here. If a person is carrying enough spare fuel on their body to support their energy needs for a week, a month, or a year, then the factor that matters is the thing that to stop partitioning more fuel into storage and change conditions to let it come out. Simplest way to do that is to diminish the signal that tells your body to store rather than release fuel.
posted by Sublimity at 3:56 PM on August 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
I've been following the Telf and Sublimity conversation with interest here because I just read Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It by bariatric surgeon Garth Davis. He himself switched from recommending the Zone diet, (30% protein/30 %fat/40%carbs) to arguing that the average American daily intake of protein (more than almost any other nation, at 130 g per day) is problematic. "You and I and everyone have been programmed to regard protein as the perfect nutrient, the more the better. We’re sold compelling narratives (Paleo especially tells a great story about returning to our noble caveman roots and becoming “real” men and women once again)."
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:31 PM on August 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:31 PM on August 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm with Frowner and others here who say that nutrition is complex and individual but I am semi-persuaded by Proteinaholic, especially that eating more meat and less fruit is not the way to address diabetes. Davis cites Japan's Ministry of Health 2010 report suggesting that the increase in meat consumption and decrease in fruits and veggies consumption is a major factor in the over 50% jump in diabetes from 1997 to 2007 in Japan.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:55 PM on August 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:55 PM on August 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
I would be willing to try this, but 1) I'm vegetarian, and eating is already hard and 2) I'm pretty sure I can't give up alcohol until 2020. It's the only thing keeping me here.
posted by greermahoney at 1:52 AM on August 6, 2017
posted by greermahoney at 1:52 AM on August 6, 2017
The statement about "protein as a perfect nutrient" seems a little overblown to me, but if it has that rep it's probably because the third and last form of fuel in the diet--fat--has been so thoroughly demonized. Keto diets draw most of their calories from fat and that doesn't necessarily have to come in the form of meat (avocados and coconut oil ftw!) For a lot of people, it's very, very difficult to get over the psychological barrier of eating a lot of fat specifically because of the low fat/high carb gospel of the last 20 years.
But as regards diabetes, hear it from a doc on the front lines: Sarah Haller is an obesity doc who treats many diabetic and insulin-resistant patients and her advice is for them to stop eating carbs and to start eating fat. Her TED talk lays it out.
posted by Sublimity at 3:04 AM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
But as regards diabetes, hear it from a doc on the front lines: Sarah Haller is an obesity doc who treats many diabetic and insulin-resistant patients and her advice is for them to stop eating carbs and to start eating fat. Her TED talk lays it out.
posted by Sublimity at 3:04 AM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
No one is really addressing the above point about whether the amount of meat needed for low carb diets is at all sustainable on a population scale.
Yes. Diet schemes tend to be very selfish. They tell you what you can eat to make yourself live longer, they assume you have the luxury (time and money) to buy and cook the miracle diet of the day, and sustainability -- especially in the "Eat all the meat!" schemes -- just does not come into play.
posted by pracowity at 4:48 AM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]
Yes. Diet schemes tend to be very selfish. They tell you what you can eat to make yourself live longer, they assume you have the luxury (time and money) to buy and cook the miracle diet of the day, and sustainability -- especially in the "Eat all the meat!" schemes -- just does not come into play.
posted by pracowity at 4:48 AM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]
I guess, if you start thinking about scaling up that much, all kinds of sustainability stuff comes into question. Environmental impact of lots of meat eating, yes. But also financial and social costs of a society where a third of the adult population is diabetic--that nightmare scenario gets a lot of attention these days. What would happen to the US economy if we stopped subsidizing corn? Lord knows what other confounding factors come into play. Above my pay grade, to be sure.
posted by Sublimity at 12:25 PM on August 6, 2017
posted by Sublimity at 12:25 PM on August 6, 2017
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posted by leotrotsky at 7:41 AM on August 4, 2017 [19 favorites]