Anybody read "Good calories, Bad Calories"? Any reactions? nt

[hedgehog]

[Lex]

1. Here's a link to a story on the book for those unfamiliar.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=3654291

I haven't read the book yet.

[supernova]

2. He is the same guy who wrote

in the NYTimes Sunday Mag a couple of years ago... "What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie?"

He basically says that low carb or even no carb seems to be the way to go for weight managment. It's the refinded sugars and carbs that cause the problems for most of us.

Just looked it up. That was published in the Mag in 2002.

You can still read it, it hasn't gone to paid archives yet.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E2D61F3EF934A35754C0A9649C8B63

[Longhorn]

3. Thanks for the link!

Very interesting and I think the views in this article have been documented even further since 2002.

[54anickel]

4. Somewhat related to the whole added sugars notion, an interview with Dr Robert Lustig

who's Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2007/1969924.htm

snip>


Robert Lustig: No, actually it's not the calories that are different it's the fact that the only organ in your body that can take up fructose is your liver. Glucose, the standard sugar, can be taken up by every organ in the body, only 20% of glucose load ends up at your liver. So let's take 120 calories of glucose, that's two slices of white bread as an example, only 24 of those 120 calories will be metabolised by the liver, the rest of it will be metabolised by your muscles, by your brain, by your kidneys, by your heart etc. directly with no interference. Now let's take 120 calories of orange juice. Same 120 calories but now 60 of those calories are going to be fructose because fructose is half of sucrose and sucrose is what's in orange juice. So it's going to be all the fructose, that's 60 calories, plus 20% of the glucose, so that's another 12 out of 60 -- so in other words 72 out of the 120 calories will hit the liver, three times the substrate as when it was just glucose alone.

That bolus of extra substrate to your liver does some very bad things to it.

Norman Swan: Dr Robert Lustig who's Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. And you're listening to a Health Report special here on ABC Radio National on how food manufacturers by adding fructose to our foods, either from corn syrup as in the United States or added sucrose as in Australia, may actually be making the obesity epidemic even worse, starting with damage to our liver cells, the hepatocytes.

Robert Lustig: The first thing it does is it increases the phosphate depletion of the hepatocyte which ultimately causes an increase in uric acid. Uric acid is an inhibitor of nitric oxide, nitric oxide is your naturally occurring blood pressure lowerer. And so fructose is famous for causing hypertension.

Norman Swan: High blood pressure. And what you're saying here is that the liver cell itself gets depleted of this phosphate and then you've got this downstream reaction.

Robert Lustig: That's right. And so when you have excess uric acid you're going to end up with increased blood pressure and we actually have data from the NHANES study in America, the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey in America which actually shows that the most obese hypertensive kids are making more uric acid and have an increased percentage of their calories coming from fructose.

Norman Swan: Are they getting gout as well?

Robert Lustig: Well not yet. They will.

Norman Swan: So what you're saying in fact is that whilst we are clearly eating too much, we're passively eating too much of the wrong thing, that the food manufacturing industry is putting stuff in which is fuelling the epidemic?

Robert Lustig: Absolutely, we're being poisoned to death, that's a very strong statement but I think we can back it up with very clear scientific evidence.

Norman Swan: There's clear scientific evidence on this fructose pathway in the liver?

Robert Lustig: There's clear scientific evidence on the fructose doing three things that are particularly bad in the liver. The first is this uric acid pathway that I just mentioned, the second is that fructose initiates what's known as de novo lipogenesis.

lots more...

[54anickel]

5. He was also interviewed in the PBS Frontline - Diet Wars

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/interviews/taubes.html

Here's a link to the show online -
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/view/

[AllieB]

6. Great book about the lack of science behind the low-fat diet dogma

I highly recommend this book to everyone who is has wondered why Americans have become so unhealthy and obese despite a concerted effort by the medical establishment to push the low fat diet. Here are links to interviews with the author:

On NPR’s Science Friday:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200711024

on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks:

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/nov17.html


Just to clarify: GCBC isn't a diet advice book. It's a book about science and the history of how the low-fat nutritional dogma came to be perpetuated, despite any evidence of its effectiveness. Today the low fat/high carb diet is being challenged by an expanding pool of evidence that it is actually harmful. This book contains a phenomenal amount of research that proves the medical establishment and the government agencies wrong once and for all for promoting the low-fat high-carbohydrate fallacy that is literally killing people everywhere.

Taubes traces the history of many of the "sacred" concepts of modern nutrition and concludes many key ones are based on bad science and ego-driven scientists, who are more interested in defending their original hypothesis than in honestly interpreting data. What really shocked me was the extent of shoddy science that has existed over the years with regard to obesity and weight gain, the influence of politics and media in misleading the public, either deliberately or due to intellectual laziness. Taubes also touches upon grants and funding from Big Pharma and Big Food, who of course are interested in perpetuating this diet. Their corporate profits depend on it, so they fund many of the unscientific studies that the media and nutritional establishment accept as fact.

Taubes documents that the same factors that make us fat are the main causes of the chronic diseases of modern civilization: cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and Alzheimer's. These diseases were relatively unknown in the third world until they adopted a more Western diet. Taubes includes the findings of Albert Schweitzer, who rarely treated these diseases in Africa, but at the end of his service was seeing a lot of them, as local diets began to include more grains, rice, refined carbohydrates and sugar.

Here's his summary list of points that are made in the book, all drawn from the book's epilogue:


1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.

2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis--the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.

3. Sugars--sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically--are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.

4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and other chronic diseases of civilization.

5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior.

6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss: it leads to hunger.

7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance--a disequilibrium--in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. Fat synthesis and storage exceed the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue and its subsequent oxidation. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this balance.

8. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated--either chronically or after a meal--we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and use it for fuel.

9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.

10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.

My sister has borrowed my copy, but I plan to read it again over Christmas break. I know that there are a lot of details that I missed. :-)

[Lex]

7. I've wondered if low-fat diets, high-carb eating have fueled the increase

of things like ADD, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's, etc. Do you know if that has been studied?

Wonder what the effect of low fat is on the brain and nervous system?

[AllieB]

8. It has been studied, but due to egos and politics, it's been put aside.

Do you know that Otto Warburg won the Nobel prize in 1931 for this research: "Cancer languishes with oxygen and thrives with sugar".
Its extremely disturbing to me personally that this information has been known for so long, yet cancer patients are still routinely fed a high carb diet.

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/04/scientific_conv.html

Scroll down to the comment by Dr. Winfield. J. Abbe. It's very enlightening.

There is research that shows Alzheimer's may be a 3rd form of diabetes, made worse by a high-carb diet:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070926113835.htm

They know that children with autism do better on a wheat-free, gluten-free, sugar-free diet. Jenny McCarthy just wrote a book about her son who is autistic, and how he improved after eliminated sugar, wheat and other gluten foods from his diet.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. My stepfather has Alzheimer's, and he is one of the biggest

sweet tooths I have ever seen.

He was also raised as a vegan till the age of 18 (unusual in those days).

[Lex]

9. I got the book today!

Wow, it's pretty big. I'll be reading awhile! Glad I have it though. :hi:

[hedgehog]

10. I finally started reading the book, Does he address the controversy over

hydrogenated vegetable oil or trans fats at all? It seems to me that this was totallly ignored for 50 years.

[safeinOhio]

12. A little over a month

of restricting my carbs to 60 grams or less. No exercise and no counting calories. I'm guessing about 3500 cals a day. Have lost 23 pounds and feel great. Never hungry. Lots of bacon, eggs, steak, fish and chicken. Strange, skim milk is out, but I can drink all the cream I want.
A week ago I had my blood test. Triglycerides were way down and cholesterol was down. I think the author is right about fat in the diet having little to do with blood levels.
The key is to keep the carbs to less than 60 grams a day..

[Locrian]

13. works great

Im on this diet as well, mainly due to adrenal issues. I now cannot tolerate sugar / carbs: sugar in almost any form makes me "high".

It works great for me. I feel alive again.


When I burned out my adreals, I was a vegetarian, under a lot of stress. TONS of carbs, sugar, beer, whatever. Put on a huge amount of weight, felt like crap every day. Bloated, water retention, etc.

After a few year of this I "crashed" my cortisol went to almost zero, I destroyed my gut bacterica since w/o cortisol you are food sensitve to just about everything. Then I began loosing weight because I couldnt digest anything. It was absolutely the worst period of my life. Loosing 1,2 pounds a week. Lost went down to about 140 lbs. I was on my way into the grave....

I finaly found a doctor that diagnosed adrenal fatigue, thyroid issues and hormone (testosterone) issues (which usually accompany the adrenal issues and/or contribue to them). I now feel like I ate wrong for 90% of my life. Grew up in the 70's-80's eating candy, junk food, whatever because "nobody knew". It was hard giving up the carbs and sugar - they really are addictive: what sounds better right now a cinamon roll or a steak? And what can you "make room for" even when you are stuffed?.

I think the good/bad caloies book, and the paleo diet books are right on track at least in how they worked for me. I eat a LOT of protein powder and berries, nuts, eggs, meat - which conflicts me morally, but I am fortunate enough to be able to buy grass feed beef and natural stuff. Tons of fresh vegatables: kale, collards, greens, peppers, green stuff. Stay away from alcohol (in any form), cereals, potatoes, pastas, bread, sweets, etc. Its hard sometimes. I probably eat like my grandparents did - and people do think you are nuts not eating what is a "normal" meal (which includes a ton of carbs and sugar).

Never felt healthiers or looked, weighed better in my life :) I have more muscle and tone than I did when I was in my 20's.

One of the keys is hormones. If you can get them balanced, and stay away from foods that you know mess with ***your** system then you are on the right track.

[AllieB]

14. Hi Locrian, I was a vegetarian then a vegan also.

It ruined my health, but don't ever admit that in GD or the Lounge because you'll be attacked by the veggy agenda. I believe in eating whole foods also-Paleoish like you. I also feel great. :-)

[pink-o]

15. I have a huge problem with anyone suggesting we cut fruit because its a carb

The vitamins and anti-oxidants in fruit heal the human body, repair cells and prevent a lot of free radicals, even are anti-carsonigenic.

I eat fruit every day, with raw nuts for the fat that stops an insulin spike. And I can tell you, there is a ginormous difference in how energetic I feel when I eat fruit from when I eat processed carbs.

Fruit is humankind's perfect food. We do ourselves a huge disservice nutrionally if we eliminate it!

[Lex]

16. Does the author of the book say don't eat fruit?

:shrug:

[pink-o]

17. Actually, I don't know. I was just commenting on no-carb diets in general.

Cutting out fruit is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Atkins says no fruit and so does South Beach (although I think just for a short time on the latter) but one does himself a disservice by eschewing all those vitamins.

[The empressof all]

18. Actually neither diet forbids fruit after the second week

Berries, Peaches, most Melons and Grapefruit are all low glycemic choices that one can enjoy on a low carb diet. You just get to eat your strawberries with real whipped cream.

[Lex]

19. Actually Atkins *doesn't* say no fruit, nor does South Beach.

You should probably read those books, you'd be surprised at your misconceptions.

[safeinOhio]

20. I'm on it

Less than 60 grams of carbs is tough.
I like fish and catch a lot fish. Right now I have a freezer full of lake perch and have been trying to find a way to eat it without breading. I can only eat so much baked, broiled or boiled fish and perch is so good fried.
So here is what I tried today with great results. Crumbled up a half of bag of Pork Rinds. Dipped the fish in a little half and half, then the Pork Rind crumbs and then pan fried it in Canola oil. Turned out great, golden brown and a little crunchy. The best I can figure, zero carbs. Just need to start playing around with some spices.

[supernova]

21. Another alternative is nut meal

like almond meal or pecans. Makes a very tasty crust if you gotta have crunch. :9

[The empressof all]

22. You may want to try using Carbquick

Carbquick is a product that I use to make low carb pancakes, pizza dough and other bready kinds of goodies. There's a recipe at this site for a breading that you can make. I have used it to make fried chicken but I added more spices to it. You can play around as you wish. I have found that I need to use these kinds of products sparingly even though they are low in carbs. They still trigger cravings for me. YMMV but I can tell you the biscuits, pancakes, impossible pie and pizza dough recipes are great!

http://www.tovaindustries.com/carbalose/page1.html

[safeinOhio]

23. Thanks emperess

I'll try some.
I have found that if I can keep carbs even lower than the 60 grams, I drop weight even faster.