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Medicine Science

Doubling Saturated Fat In Diet Does Not Increase It In Blood 252

Posted by Soulskill from the reasons-to-eat-a-stick-of-butter dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A new study by researchers at Ohio State University found that dramatically increasing the amount of saturated fat in a person's diet did not increase the amount of saturated fat found in their blood. Professor Jeff Volek, the study's senior author, said it "challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn't correlate with disease."

The study also showed that increasing carbohydrates in the diet led to an increase in a particular fatty acid previous studies have linked to heart disease. Volek continued, "People believe 'you are what you eat,' but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat. The point is you don't necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carb intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carb restriction than fat restriction."
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Doubling Saturated Fat In Diet Does Not Increase It In Blood More

Doubling Saturated Fat In Diet Does Not Increase It In Blood

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  • ... that the Firesign Theater was right.

    Everything you know is wrong.

    • ... that the Firesign Theater was right.

      Everything you know is wrong.

      Hell, I learned that in P-Chem, but I suppose I am some sort of bozo.

    • ... that the Firesign Theater was right.

      Everything you know is wrong.

      I learned that (TFA) in college biology, and it always seemed strange to me that doctors were advising the opposite of how the mechanisms actually worked.

      But I'm sure that there will be another study next week that links saturated fat with erectile dysfunction, toe cancer and bleeding from the eyebrows. And around we go.

      • But I'm sure that there will be another study next week that links saturated fat with erectile dysfunction, toe cancer and bleeding from the eyebrows. And around we go.

        What I hate the most about those "studies" is that a link doesn't tell you much about what is actually happening, and in many cases leads to very bad conclusions. All they really do is indicate a correlation, and diet fanatics go around spouting how what everybody else does is somehow bad. This leads to fad diets and other nonsense, up to and including the craziness that is the anti-GMO movement.

    • This reminds me of the scene [imdb.com] from Sleeper, where Woody Allen wakes up after 200 years. When he asks for granola, they are surprised that in the past, that was considered healthy.

      Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
      Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
      Dr. Melik: Incredible.

      The funny thing is, all this has actually happened, and we now know that the steak and deep fat is better for you than carboh

  • When asked for advice you'll get the best recommendation scientists have at the time it's given. Hopefully it isn't actually completely wrong, backwards, missing a key piece of the puzzle, or just plain lethal. It will always be subject to revision, and in 50 years you might get the exact opposite advice. And that is before we get to misunderstandings by the public, or the results of dumbing down the recommendations to make them more easily understood but not completely correct any more.

    Eggs? Coffee? But

    • Re:Thats science for you .... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @08:03PM (#48441771)

      When asked for advice you'll get the best recommendation scientists have at the time it's given.

      You make the mistake of thinking that the whole nutrition business is based on what scientists think.

      Every time there is a "nutritional discovery", marketing forces take over, and soon we are consuming vast amounts of oatmeal, completely overdosing on carbohydrates, eliminating eggs, eliminating fat, and consuming so many phytoestrogens than men are growing boobs. Which is just a small portion of the food fad industry, and the people who are convinced that if they only eat the right foods - or better put - eliminate the right foods, they'll live happy, healthy, lives in to their mid 100's.

      • Actually, what scientists say is well known since 30 or more years (I'm 47 and know most of that stuff since minimum 30 years!).

        Actually most misinformation comes from the US like the climate change denying ...

        Bottom line it is super easy to love healthy ... just google for it and get a damn education! (to tired to repeat all the posts I made on this topic already and getting flamed)

      • "... consuming so many phytoestrogens than men are growing boobs."

        From the National Institutes of Health, a free PDF: The pros and cons of phytoestrogens [nih.gov]. The author considered 308 scientific sources and came to the conclusion that not enough is known to indicate that phytoestrogens are good or bad for humans.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Alas, if you DON'T ask, you'll still get the recommendations and even scolding if you ignore the unwanted advice.

      Further, 'they' will continue dispensing that advice even as the evidence piles up against it. They won't stop giving that advice until they find an excuse to tell people they must not eat something else that most people enjoy.

      To add to the fun, the 'science' behind all of these food and drug fads just isn't there.

    • When asked for advice you'll get the best recommendation scientists have at the time it's given.

      No, you won't — at least not from the FDA or USDA. That's because the "food pyramid" was designed on a specious basis, the idea that eating fat makes you fat. But humans have known for centuries that eating carbs make you fat. And on the basis of one NIH study which showed that taking drugs to reduce your cholesterol levels also reduced your risk of heart disease, we were told that eating cholesterol raised cholesterol levels though there was no evidence for that, and that eating carbs was the way for

      • Re:Thats science for you .... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gordo3000 ( 785698 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @08:29AM (#48443355)

        it is amazing to me how SURE everyone is that carbs are bad for you.

        carbs are, traditionally, the bedrock of human consumption. Hell, we look at the start of society by farming of a carbohydrate source. And frankly, some of the longest living countries have diets where carbs form the backbone of caloric intake. There may be a huge issue with constantly spiking your blood sugar with sweets (i.e. the american way), but just a little thought would show you how ridiculous it is to claim that carbs are the grim reaper.

        Example, Japan. Diets here (I live there so will speak where I have direct experience) are extremely carb heavy. In fact, rice forms the backbone of your ENTIRE DAY. Literally every meal has rice as a central part of your caloric intake. Meats, on the other hand, even fish, are not as common. And very few foods outside of restaurants are high fat. Other places, like Italy, have a high carb, high fat diet.

        What do most of the long lived countries have in common? their total calorie intake is low! The one thing that has never had any question mark: caloric restriction is the best indicator for long life. Not carbs, not fats, not saturated fats, not any of those. Just eat less. And it will lower all you blood markers simultaneously. Or, if you want, work out a hell of a lot (not this 3 hour a week BS, I am talking 10-15 hours a week of intense exercise). Then you can basically eat anything and your markers will be amazing.

        else, you have to find the diet that works for your genetics. For some, that will be low carb. or some, that will be low fat.

    • "When asked for advice you'll get the best recommendation scientists have at the time it's given".

      That's a comforting thought, but I have never understood how it can possibly be true. As long as scientists hold conflicting opinions, how can anyone tell what is "the best" recommendation? (I also wonder how governments get "the best" scientific advice, although they always say they do).

      It's a hackneyed example, but consider the situation in Vienna about the time of the American Civil War. Which was "the best"

  • ...is such shit advice because it assumes all calories are equal when more and more evidence is coming out that they're not, especially calories from carbohydrates.

    • Re:Calories in, calories out... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by martas ( 1439879 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @08:42PM (#48441927)
      "Calories in, calories out" is given as a good first order approximation of reality for the purposes of weight loss (at least whenever I've seen it). This article isn't about weight loss, it's about health. It's obvious that being conducive to weight loss and being healthy are not synonymous. I could lose weight by eating nothing but cyanide.

      Now, it's true that even for weight loss "calories in, calories out" is only an approximation, but based on the admittedly small amount of information I have it is basically the most practically useful one, and using more complex models is counterproductive. Ultimately for most people trying to lose weight the most limiting factor is psychology. If you have some really nice theory about how different nutrients (or even exercise) affect weight differently, chances are you will be tempted to slack off on the by far much more important "calories in, calories out" equation, because you have a limited amount of mental energy. All the physiological tricks mean jack shit if you're inputting too much energy into yourself. Now of course what you eat still matters a lot, but mainly because it affects your psychology differently -- for instance, I've heard many anecdotal reports that 1200 calories from carbs leaves people feeling much less satisfied than the same amount from fat and protein, which of course is going to make it harder for a person not to eat any more. In other words, a corollary to "calories in, calories out" is "find whichever source of calories makes it easiest for you to maintain the equation", but even then physiology matters only in the way that it affects psychology, and not directly because some sources of calories are metabolized differently than others.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ndogg ( 158021 )

        > Now of course what you eat still matters a lot, but mainly because it affects your psychology differently

        And that's exactly the point. Carbs tend to cause blood sugar spikes, and the body then overproduces insulin, causing a sugar/carb crash, and thus demotivating people from physical activity, but those carbs still end up being converted to fat.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by martas ( 1439879 )
          Yes, which is bad because it leads you to eat more, thus making the "calories in" part bigger. That was my point. What matters most is physiology -> psychology -> fat, not physiology -> fat, so you should optimize a diet for psychology subject to a fixed amount of calories. If you use information about physiology in order to do so then great, but you don't need to, and in fact it may at some point be counterproductive because the more mental energy you use thinking about physiology, the less you ha

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by itzly ( 3699663 )
      On the other hand, according to the study:

      Participants, on average, lost almost 22 pounds by the end of the trial.

      So, apparently, more calories went out than in. Which also makes this a poor study. We know that weight loss improves health and risk markers in the blood. Therefore, a study that was designed to measure the effects of macro nutrient distribution now is distorted by the weight loss. What they should have done is pay more attention to keep the total calorie intake the same as the output, so that the overall weight of the test group stays stable.

  • You want to lose weight? Stop stuffing your pie hole.

    Both of these diet fads, low-carb and low-fat, fail at providing balanced food intake. An unhealthy diet can make you lose weight fast, but that's not a good idea.

    • All of this has been studied in great detail in the area of sports nutrition. All those athletes whose physiques we all admire eat a lot of food, and they do also eat a lot of carbs. The key to weight loss is two fold:

      1. Maintain a _moderate_ caloric deficit given your level of physical activity. Moderate means no more than 300-500 calories deficit per day. You go over that (or go on a diet for too long) and your metabolism adapts to the new calorie intake. Life starts to suck, you have no energy, you get s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )
        It is physically impossible to sustain a permanent caloric deficit without dying.

      • You can't really compare what is good for an athlete to what is good for the rest of us couch potatoes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by martas ( 1439879 )
      Being 100lbs overweight is an even worse idea. Obesity is so bad for health in so many ways, that I think losing weight by any means necessary, as long as it works, is overall better for you, even if in the short term it means eating a less than ideal diet.

    • It should be, "You want to reduce the amount of fat on your body?" The answer is not how much you eat or what you eat. It is the relationship between how much work your body does for a given action and how affective it is at utilizing calories from the food you eat.

      If you eat a lot of food and burn a lot of calories and your body is not very good at turning the food you eat into energy, you will be thin. If the first are the same and your body is good at utilizing the food you eat, you will be muscular.

      M

    • show me a single nutrient (other than vitamin C) that you can't get from meat/dairy/eggs. If you're paranoid, sure toss in some green veggies -- but the idea that you can only get 'balanced' nutrition from vegetables doesn't compute.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @08:17PM (#48441831)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • So beans and rice is bad?

        Maybe. Sometimes. It depends.

        Your question is like asking "So, is water bad?"
        The worst thing in dietary advice is trying to shove individual types of food into some ill-conceived set of two boxes labeled 'bad' and 'good'. It really destroys the discussion.

        I think the whole obesity and diabetes epidemic stems from a sedentary lifestyle

        1. Depends on what you mean with sedentary life style. IIRC, 30 minutes of daily mild exercise (walking) is enough to let almost all the increased risk of being (reasonably) overweight disappear (it is enough to move the caches of visceral fat to the more

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pnutjam ( 523990 )
        I totes agree, blaming people is so much easier then doing science.

    • Re:Control the carbs and you control blood lipids (Score:5, Insightful)

      by turbidostato ( 878842 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @09:32PM (#48442103)

      "The low-fat diet and food pyramid is probably the worst thing ever foisted on the American people. With 30 years of run-away obesity and diabetes, maybe it's time to admit failure with those recommendations."

      As a foreigner I can easily see where USA's obesity epidemy comes from and it is not from any given food pyramid: have you paid attention lately to the ridiculously big rations you ingest? The ridiculously high levels of processed food? The ridiculously high comsumption of snacks and soda drinks?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by stoploss ( 2842505 )

        "The low-fat diet and food pyramid is probably the worst thing ever foisted on the American people. With 30 years of run-away obesity and diabetes, maybe it's time to admit failure with those recommendations."

        As a foreigner I can easily see where USA's obesity epidemy comes from and it is not from any given food pyramid: have you paid attention lately to the ridiculously big rations you ingest? The ridiculously high levels of processed food? The ridiculously high comsumption of snacks and soda drinks?

        No, it really doesn't matter how much you consume on a low carb, high fat diet as long as you remain in nutritional ketosis.

        Here, one guy used himself as a guinea pig:
        5,800 kcal/day low carb high fat diet [dietdoctor.com], then he repeated the experiment with a 5,000 kcal/day diet with high carb intake [smashthefat.com].

        These results make sense because the biochemical pathway signals are overloaded: the same hormones/substrates are used to signal more than one condition. That is to say, while your body is burning fat in nutritional ketosis i

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by adolf ( 21054 )

          Your numbers are off by a factor of one thousand.

          • Feel free to elaborate upon the error you perceive.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by suutar ( 1860506 )

              perhaps he's referring to your use of "kcal" when the article uses "Calorie", not realizing that capital-C "Calorie" means 1000 little-c "calories", as does "kilocalorie" or "kcal". (since those are the only numbers I see at all in your post :)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by itzly ( 3699663 )

          No, it really doesn't matter how much you consume on a low carb, high fat diet as long as you remain in nutritional ketosis.

          Except that the "ridiculously high levels of processed food" as the parent mentions are not low carb. Processed food contains a well-engineered mix of fat, sugar, salt and flavor purposely designed to make you want to eat more of it. Combined with ubiquitous advertising (50% of the TV commercials in the USA is about food), and easy access (for instance the insane portion sizes), this is the main cause of the obesity epidemic. The reason that low-carb/high fat works is because people don't feel like eating

          • The reason that low-carb/high fat works is because people don't feel like eating too much of that. There's only so much steak you can eat, but there's always room for dessert.

            Did you read the links?

            The guy didn't gain weight even on a massive surplus of caloric input while in ketosis (an excess of thousands of kcal/day), whereas he gained the expected amount of fat for his caloric surplus while on a carb diet. The fat deposition pathways are effectively disabled while in ketosis; this isn't really news.

            In other words, the well-known anorectic effect of nutritional ketosis is notwithstanding. It just doesn't matter how much a person eats while in nutritional ketosis, they simply

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by itzly ( 3699663 )
              The links are just an anecdote of one person, set out to prove his own opinion. Not convincing.

      • As a foreigner I can easily see where USA's obesity epidemy comes from and it is not from any given food pyramid:

        Wow. What a complete logic failure. First off, obviously there can be more than one cause to anything. There could be a number of trends that relate to obesity problems, and dietary advice with the old "food pyramid" could in fact be one of them. In fact, it might even relate to other apparent issues.

        To wit:

        have you paid attention lately to the ridiculously big rations you ingest?

        The food pyramid recommended lots of carbs, while downplaying things like fat. Many, many studies have shown that carbs tend to lead to less of a feeling of satiety than fats or proteins (because

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by itzly ( 3699663 )

          You know where a lot of processed foods came into vogue? -- all the "low-fat" food crazy beginning in the 1980s

          There are still plenty of high fat processed foods that are very popular. Candy bars, pizza, cookies, and ice cream to name a few.

          Uh, once again -- look at most snack foods. Derived from grains

          Plain old grains are too boring. People are unlikely to overeat on them. In snack foods, the grains are usually combined with extra sugar, (usually) some fat, salt, and aromas. These things combined make the snack food very hard to resist. In itself, grains aren't bad, as long as you eat them in moderation.

    • I'm not sure medical science understands (well enough) the relationship between carbs/blood sugar/cholesterol and cardiovascular disease

      Sadly, medical science has, for decades, had a better understanding than you seem to think. The problems arise from advisory organs (from the individual dietitian to the WHO) having to justify their existence by coming up with some kind of advice.

      "In general, we're not really sure about a lot of things, but it is pretty obvious that nutrition raises your blood sugar levels, with the speed of the increase related to the glycemic index of the food and that both very high and very low blood sugar levels have n

    • Same results here as I'm drinking a coffee with heavy cream. I now get about 50% of calories from fat (mostly saturated).

      Everything improved with the exception of LDL which is still high 160. HDL went from 40's to 60's. Triglycerides in the 70-80's, glucose in the 60's and I'm down from 210 lb to 170 lb.

    • I'm not sure medical science understands (well enough) the relationship between carbs/blood sugar/cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.

      Well enough for what purpose?

      The low-fat diet and food pyramid is probably the worst thing ever foisted on the American people. With 30 years of run-away obesity and diabetes, maybe it's time to admit failure with those recommendations.

      The reality is that the people pushing those recommendations knew they were bullshit 30 years ago [nytimes.com]. How can you say they were a failure? They accomplished their given goal of pushing money towards Big Pharma and the processed foods industry at the expense of the health of the American public. We don't need a smoking gun to understand that there could have been no benevolent goal because the science did not support the recommendations. Since we live under capitalism, we simply fol

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @08:21PM (#48441849)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Interesting though not to be overinterpreted (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @08:50PM (#48441969)

    Before everyone jumps on the low-carb bandwagon there are a few caveats to note:

    1) All the participants had metabolic syndrome so the results might not be generally applicable.

    2) The meals were fixed portions, so we don't know how it affected appetite or how it compared to previous eating habits.

    3) We don't know what would happen long term. For instance all the participants followed the same pattern of steadily increasing carbs and decreasing fat, so it could be the body reacting to the delta.

    I just mention because most people are really interested in the question "if I want to lose weight and/or reduce my risk of heart disease should I eat more/less fat and more/less carbs". But that question is incredibly specific to one person and very poorly defined beyond that. This study says in these very specific circumstances the answer is more fat and less carbs, but that's not necessarily true in general. To think it does give the general answer only sets one up for a future accusation that science is always wrong when a future study with slightly different parameters seems to reach a different conclusion.

    • Indeed. It's more important to get high quality nutrients than to try to demonize one or the other.

    • Re:Interesting though not to be overinterpreted (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AthanasiusKircher ( 1333179 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @10:30PM (#48442297)

      Before everyone jumps on the low-carb bandwagon there are a few caveats to note:

      Thanks for this list -- yes, it's important to note the limitations of this study.

      However, one broader issue that this study should point out is the continued stupidity of the medical profession in assuming that because the quantity of X in diet is increased, it will necessarily increase the quantity of X in one's blood or other chemical markers.

      We've seen this for many years with cholesterol studies -- the body manufactures most cholesterol, so dietary consumption has little relation to blood cholesterol levels. But that hasn't stopped decades of doctors demonizing any food with cholesterol (e.g., eggs) with no actual basis. I know doctors who still give out this crap advice to focus on a "low cholesterol diet" to lower cholesterol. It just doesn't work that way for many (most?) people, and there's no reason it should.

      Now we have a study showing clearly that dietary saturated fat intake does not necessarily relate to the levels that ultimately end up in the bloodstream. Once again, this is common sense -- given that the body PRODUCES fat to store energy. If you're throwing fat into a system that is capable of producing fat, you have to actually consider what causes the system to produce fat... rather than just assuming it's only about how much fat is taken into the system.

      Anyhow, more studies like this will hopefully cause clueless doctors to realize this. Once again, when a system produces the vast majority of X, dietary intake of X is probably not the most important variable -- you need to figure out what regulates the production of X.

      Again, this seems like an intuitively obvious element for isolating what's going on in a system with such characteristics. But it seems beyond the comprehension of medical science -- hence all of the crappy dietary advice with no proven basis.

    • 1) All the participants had metabolic syndrome so the results might not be generally applicable.

      ...Except that the Eskimos have been eating zero-carb for 5000+ years. (search "zero carb diet" on wiki) Conversely, vegetarian diets have been a fad for thousands of years, but there has never been an established vegetarian or vegan culture for any sustained period. The only times ancient people didn't eat lots of animals was when there wasn't any animals to eat.

      2) The meals were fixed portions, so we don't kno

      • Right on the money with #2. During the work week when I'm not moving much I have 2-3 coffees with cream from 5am to 5pm with no discomfort. At 5pm I eat a big meal and I'm good until the next day.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )

        ...Except that the Eskimos have been eating zero-carb for 5000+ years

        The study may be correct in its conclusions, but it's still poorly designed to have the test subjects combine weight loss with dietary changes. It would have been better if the weight was kept stable throughout the study, and just vary the diet. And, even better if the test was done on both slim, healthy people, and overweight people with metabolic syndrome.

      • Eskimos were selectively bred for that kind of a diet. There is some foodstuff that these zero-carb-eating indigenous tribes eat (rotten meat for example), that would be deadly poison to any other human.

    • Those are valid questions, but the results seem to fit the generally emerging consensus that fat doesn't make you fat or do you harm. Until someone gets a counter result, that seems to be the reality.

  • 16 people? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cmdr_tofu ( 826352 ) on Saturday November 22, 2014 @08:51PM (#48441973) Homepage

    It seems awfully unscientific to come to any kind of conclusion based on a study of 16 people over a 3 week period with engineered diets.

    There is a saturated fat plateau. When you consume enough saturate fats, you cannot absorb them, but that doesn't mean it's a healthy amount to eat.

    Add this to the list of misleading studies: http://nutritionfacts.org/vide... [nutritionfacts.org]

    • Ooops sorry wrong link. This one talks about risk plateau: http://nutritionfacts.org/vide... [nutritionfacts.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LF11 ( 18760 )
      It may be unscientific to come to that kind of conclusion based on an n=16 study.

      However, what this study DOES show is that the existing paradigm of saturated fat == heart disease ought to be questioned and thoroughly re-examined. Frankly, if I had metabolic syndrome, I'd be experimenting on myself the moment I heard about this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suutar ( 1860506 )

      One conclusion that I think can be safely made is "the prevailing wisdom was not confirmed by this test". Which always leads to the most interesting questions.

  • Saturated fats have been demonized because they increase cholesterol, and cholesterol is statically linked to heart disease.

    But we now know we confused a statistic link with a causality link: drugs that lower cholesterol do not lower heart diseases (see cardiologist Michel de Lorgeril work on this for instance). It means saturated fats are not such a problem.

    The new (more legitimate) demons are trans fats, skewed omega 3/omega 6 fat ratios, and carbs excess

  • So I shouldn't feel too guilty about eating a bagel with a mountain of cream cheese on it. Woohoo!!!

  • Or just another example of how people could continuously claim to know something with certainty all while giving disastrously wrong advice ?

  • This is one study of thousands worldwide that essentially say the same thing. Reduce carbs, increase dietary fat. Over 30 years ago Dr. Atkins began that mantra and well over 30 million people have verified that it works. Atkins followers typically eat more calories than before they began the high-fat lifestyle. It's not just for fat people, diabetics or other sick people- this diet will make most people healthier and live longer. It is difficult to find any measurable health indicator that doesn't improve

    • Actually, it's pretty easy to avoid carbs. When eating in, don't buy them. When eating out, ask for broccoli or asparagus as your side.
  • You really need to read the article to understand the numbers involved here. Don't go on a saturated fat binge.

    .
    RTFA

    There are conditions around increasing the saturated fat intake.

    Inhaling pizza still is not healthy.

  • Obesity, Smoking, Exercise, Genetics, Diet

    Diet is only one small part of the problem
    Genetics - well you're stuck with them - your children are stuck with yours
    Smoking is hard to quit for some
    Exercise - well nobody like to exercise
    Obesity - on the rise - due to sugar, salt, and fat in boxed foods - who cooks from scratch?

    My rant is over

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rycamor ( 194164 )

      There have been some studies lately suggesting that genetics are not quite the set-in-stone-for-life thing that we once thought: in fact optimal diet and exercise does improve one's genetics to a small degree. WHICH, has interesting societal implications over the long haul...

  • Nutrition, like education, is fad driven. Whatever we "know" will be displaced in the future for something else.

  • How long will it be before "scientists" say exactly the opposite again?

    I've lived long enough to see everything become unhealthy and then healthy and then unhealthy again. And it's always based "on science".

    The fact is, everything will kill you. That's why I only eat bacon, chocolate ice cream and bourbon whiskey. I may start smoking again, just to be ahead of the curve.

  • I Googled Jeff Volek, the author of the study, and immediately noticed that he is all over the Nutrition Express [nutritionexpress.com] site, which sells nutritional supplements. He also features prominently at True Health Unlimited [truehealthunlimited.com], a commercial personal trining company.

    Good nutrition and personal fitness are good things...but all this commercial involvement makes me wonder just how unbiased Mr. Volek really is.

  • Are they good or bad this week? I keep losing track.

  • Been on this diet for a couple of years now. Works great. I feel awesome and I look awesome, and it doesn't take any real effort. (Though, you have to give blood to keep your iron down, take your magnesium and keep your vitamin C levels up). But if you DO a little training.., wow! Super hero muscles for nothing.

    I don't buy the, "Oh, this time next decade, they'll be telling you the exact opposite!" apathetic complaints. People last decade were fat and unhealthy and heart disease was a problem. All

  • Gary Taubes spelled much of this out (Score:3)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @07:36AM (#48443285)

    ...in "Good Calories, Bad Calories".

    Some of it is historical -- prior to the Ancel Keys bad science about diet, it was a commonly held understanding that cutting carbohydrate consumption contributed to weight loss. Taubes cites numerous sources, some dating back hundreds of years. IIRC, even the science was trending this way before WWII but a lot of it was German-led science which the war lost and competitiveness from American scientists chose to bury.

    The science behind insulin as the primary hormonal regulator of fat accumulation has been known since the 1960s.

    Most troubling from Taubes' book is the weird politics of dietary science and how senior people who control funding for studies get wed to particular theories and hang on to them even when evidence doesn't support them, even suppressing promising science that tends to discredit these ideas.

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