Once you understand carbs as described by Gary Taubes it is like living back in the 50s when the evidence was there that smoking was bad for you, but nobody believed it. I'm an outcast in my social groups.

But this stuff has been known for decades. It's too tiring to get mad over it, when people just look at you like a nut job for saying that thousands of "nutritionists" are wrong. How do we even begin to get this message across?

Amy, thanks to reading your posts about Taubes and health (for a couple years now), I finally changed my diet in October. Since then I've steadily lost weight--about twenty pounds now(and pretty much without any exercise besides walks). So a BIG thank you for consistently blogging about this issue!

So what, should they should start serving chocolate milk at fancy state dinners? Rib eye steaks in the school cafeteria? Setting aside ridiculous comparison of two entirely different audiences and occasions, the reality that high protein meals cost more than the cheap, starchy carbohydrates that constitute cafeteria staples--should the government/taxpayers be subsidizing that?

You also have to consider what kids will eat--you could serve the governor's dinner to 100 first graders and you'd probably end up with 75 plates that were virtually untouched. There are ways to steer kids towards healthier options, but ultimately you can't force kids to eat and if they don't do it voluntarily then it's just a waste of money. If the government can serve better food just as easily and inexpensively and kids like it just as well, then of course they should. If they're subsidizing free meals that kids just toss and then go home doubly hungry and primed to binge on crap, then they haven't actually accomplished anything.

Well, I am definitely against serving children "low rat ranch dressing"...

@Shannon: You make a very practical point. Who's to say the kids will ever eat the healthy stuff? At the same time, however, it is sending the wrong message that the lunches they are being given are actually healthy.

It sort of bothers me when my ten-year-old will argue with me about how we need to eat bread because that is what the food pyramid says. It would be nice if the government didn't advocate a nutritional model that is plain wrong.

Save for the bread, crab mac and cheese, and ice cream, my child wouldn't touch any of that food to save her life. And she would undoubtedly pick the crab out of the macaroni and not eat the bread crusts.
That's not to say that I don't make her healthy meals (using full fat ingredients), but I'm at home with her to not only model eating the healthy meal, but make sure she at least eats something for dinner, or goes without a (small) dessert. At school she would probably just go hungry and then come home cranky. Besides, kids love bananas! I agree that the lowfat milk and dressing should go.
All of this is a moot point for me though, because I pack her lunches myself.

Nutrient composition:

Carbohydrate: 138g
Fat: 16g
Protein: 37g
Fiber: 10g
Net carbohydrate (ie., digestible): 128g
Calories: 886
CPF composition by calories: approximately 62:16:17

Assumptions: 1 slice commercially prepared whole wheat bread, 1 oz carrots, low fat ranch dressing

Source: nutritiondata.com

Comments: Yikes! That's about as much carb as I eat in three days. No wonder kids who eat school lunches are more likely to be overweight.

> but otherwise no flour, sugar, starchy vegetables...

Life without pizza or pasta is an abomination. And those cheeseburgers without buns wrapped in lettuce are mankind's greatest perversion.

PS- I sooooooooo want a pan-fried ribeye steak right now with a bourbon peppercorn sauce, with onion rings, baked potato, and ceasar salad, but that's a 25 minute each way drive to the store...

Life without GERD, bloating, congestion, midafternoon slumps and 20 extra pounds is wonderful. But to each his own. I love those Carl's Jr. low-carb burgers.

Fair enough, Lori. There are about 20 pounds I pay for my diet, especially wine which is loaded with carbs. But I really don't want to stick around more than 65 or 70 years.

If you were in N Idaho, I would tonight offer you a homemade taco (or two) with ground beef, green bells, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and pico d gallo with a fat glass of wine. And the torillas come from some gourmet artist who really is worth the $5.00/10. :-) Sometimes I pull them from the fridge and eat them raw with some cheese and salsa.

Life without GERD, bloating, congestion, midafternoon slumps and 20 extra pounds is wonderful.

I eat carbs and don't have any of those problems.

Low-carb may very well be the healthier way to go. But I've accepted that I'm going to die someday, and in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my beer and pizza.

Angelina.

Eric - I, too, am against serving children low "rat" dressing.

I would save that for the politicians; but no one should eat their own kind.

See below post where the rich drive cadillacs. They also eat steaks and pear tarts.

It's not the carbs/starches. It's the oil and fat and processed crap we eat with them.

I've been eating brown rice, potatoes, whole grain pasta until I'm stuffed, and I've lost 5 pds so far. I'm officially off the LC bandwagon.

I won't bore you with a long post, but if interested, just try it. You'll learn it's not the carbs/starches. Every large, slim, civilized population has made starches the base of their diets.

http://vimeo.com/17033908

I respectfully disagree, Amy. I know you're a strong advocate for LC, but none of that is absolutely proven.

So many studies touting LC are actually funded by the meat and dairy indutries, or by the Atkins foundation. There are few, if any, studies of LC against a truly low fat diet. Almost all those studies have been with the low fat group still recieving 30% of calories from fat (the typical western diet is 33-38% fat), so it wasn't low fat at all.

Starches/grains alone aren't the culprit. I'd appreciate if you'd listen to Dr. McDougall's lecture, just for an opposing view. He's been treating people with a starch based for 30+ years, and they're not becoming obese or diabetic. They lose weight and get healthier.

The video on "The Starch Revolution" seems to be more of a marketing pitch than a scientific presentation. It starts off with a bunch of doctors lauding the achievements of Dr. McDougall, which is always a red flag for me (appeal to authority). The video then goes on to present a series of anecdotal evidence, which is worthless, scientifically.

The fact that he claims that all the body needs is energy is the point that makes me dismiss his theory out of hand. He calls fat "empty calories", as if the body doesn't use it for important things like brain function.

I'm willing to believe that some people can get thin eating starches; I know people who can stay thin eating nothing but Doritos and Mountain Dew. But I know plenty more people who have tried the low fat diets and, while they lost weight, were not able to sustain it. I am one of those. I have managed to lose weight and keep it off effortlessly (without regular exercise) for a few years now by cutting carbs.

In my opinion, "Why We Get Fat" is not trying to sell a diet. It is trying to educate people about what the body does with what we feed it, and it presents the science very convincingly.

Truly, the hardest part about a low-carb diet is not the cravings, because those go away. It is not the hunger, because that doesn't even happen. The hardest part is other people. Everywhere I turn there is someone shoving a cupcake in my face and asking me to eat it. The peer pressure is the real challenge.

Started low carb in 1999 after years of following low Gary as per out government's recommendation.
A friend turned me into protein power by Dr eades and then soon after Dr Atkins' work.
Well,12 years later,at 47 years old have never looked or felt better. No longer fat and sluggish,I have the body of a 30 year old, youthful vigor of the same age, rings of energy, and have the sexual stamina of an 18 year old.
Nowadays paleo, primal and others have come along and are preaching some of the exact same things as low carb and it truly is making a big difference in peoples lives.

I can attest to its life altering effects although like anything else YMMV.
Eating while foods, fish a few times a week and lifting weights does wonders.

Darn Swype on my phone .
Above post should say"following low carb as per our governments recommendation."

Please listen to the lecture. Of course, he had some people lauding him before the introduction. This is a youtube video filemd by many of his patients. But his presentation about the civilizations who have lived on starch-based diets for up to 105,000 years is very informative.

For instance, primarily the Aztecs/Mayans lived on corn. In Africa it was millet. Rice has been the basis of the Asian diet for over 10,000 years. The Roman gladiators were actually vegan -they lived on a diet of beans and barley.

Trust me, it's a really interesting, informative lecture. Just keep an open mind. Grains/starches aren't the culprit for obesity and diabetes.

We, in the modern western world, simply don't eat grains/starches in their whole state, and without mixing in other elements, like oil, which just adds empty calories to an already calorie dense food. That's what makes us obese.

I can't stay strictly low-carb for more than a week or so. I get bad-tempered and yearn for carbs to the point of distraction. Pizza, bread, and cake are some of the things that make life worth living. Giving them up entirely is just not sustainable for me.

I have had better long-term results on a diet that LIMITS whole grains, sugar, and fruit, and that is protein/fat-centric. My body is still fit and tight, and I don't think of murder all day.

Insufficient Poison, you might just try this for a few weeks, as I did. I was VERY skeptical that I could eat grains/starches again without substantial weight gain. The key is not to eat them with oils, cheese, or fat. But you CAN enjoy a plate of rice, or some whole grain pasta with tomato sauce.

I'm not pushing a vegan diet. I'm still eating some seafood because it's fresh and delicious where I live, but concentrating on WHOLE, unprocessed foods is the healthiest diet, and grain/starches, in their whole state, are nothing to fear.

Bacon , butter .. yum.
Fat is good.
Some folks refuse to believe it.
I swear by it.

I do wonder if there might be multiple methods to achieve the same thing. It may be that certain cultures have evolved their bodies to process the food that is readily available in their environment. So Asian cultures that eat a lot of starches may just have adapted a resistance to the insulin problem (via natural selection), much like eastern Europeans retain the enzyme that processes lactose. It may be that certain individuals have this same insulin adaptation, so that they can eat starches (but no fat and sugar) without the negative effects that seem to plague most people.

Dietary science is incredibly complicated, and there is a lot of conflicting research, but it has been pretty well established for the past few decades that insulin is the reason for fat. And it is pretty well established that carbohydrates prompt the release of insulin. Maybe some people have just adapted to this better than most of us.

A banana, like other fruits, is a simple sugar, so it's not the most ideal for weight loss, but that doesn't make it unhealthy.

Nor is there any real proof that all these populations that ate starch-based diets were unhealthy. They certainly weren't obese for tens of thousands of years, so how could grain/starch itself cause obesity? Why wouldn't they have been enormously obese if grains/starches were the basis of their diets and their insulin was spiking all the time? That doesn't make sense.

Besides, primitive populations were hunter GATHERERS. The LCers only focus on the hunting part. As he says in the lecture (rather humorously), just because they found hunting tools, not a fruit skin or a grain seed in these archeological sites doesn't mean these people lived solely on meat. Plus, they have found grain seeds in skeletal teeth.

The invention of agriculture fueled civilization. Less people had to hunt and gather, so they could doing other things, like building and creating art/music.

I know it's all the rage, but it's kind of funny that we'd even want to adopt the Paleo diet...or what we assume it was.

Amy: Thanks for the link. Interesting, but not convincing one way or another. There is a link in there to a study that found a genetic mutation in Asians 8,000 years ago that may have something to do with glucose. It's not very definitive.

Probably the real factor is that their pancreases haven't been abused as harshly by the refined carbohydrates and sugars like ours have, and so the ones who follow traditional Asian diets don't suffer the obesity problem (as much). There is plenty of (anecdotal) evidence on that page that suggests there are a host of other health problems, though.

Why would it first be assumed that some genetic mutation has occurred, rather than this:

"...there are plenty of Caucasians in the West who do eat carbs on a regular basis and live to a ripe old age. However, I'm willing to bet money that both groups are adhering closer to their traditional diets rather than a modern one of processed foods and insulin-spiking refined carbs."

This is actually McDougall's point - eat whole foods and unrefined grains - and he has countless success stories of this diet helping people LOSE weight (read his star mcdougaller stories http://www.drmcdougall.com/star.html)

I know it's anecdotal, but I'm losing weight too, while eating copious amounts of rice, potatoes, and legumes, and that simply wouldn't work if I possessed some mutated western gene that wouldn't allow me to process these starches. But I'm eating whole grains/starches, not refined crap.

Maybe the insulin spike isn't the whole picture? Couldn't there be something else going on? It's something to keep an open mind about.

This pretty much explains it. Caloric density and satiety. Refined foods vs processed and how they effect those two elements. If you'll look past the fact that this doctor is a very thin vegan, you'll be glad you made it through the whole lecture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAdqLB6bTuQ

A big dose of sugar and starch (which the digestive system breaks down into sugar) is a problem for kids. A couple of studies have found that "a concentrated dose of sugar resulted in a dramatic increase in blood levels of adrenaline in children..." and "...nearly all the children complained of feeling weak and shaky." (Interested readers can see my latest blog post for references and details.)

Humans evolved primarily as meat eaters. See the expensive tissue hypothesis and carbon 13 isotope analysis of analysis of paleolithic humans, along with the fact that humans don't have a dietary need for carbohydrate. We do have a dietary need for fat and protein.

Again, people without insulin resistance can lose weight on a low-fat diet. I did several years ago, and felt great. But the low-carb and paleo world is full of former vegetarians and people who got fat and/or sick on the low-fat thing: Denise Minger, William Davis, Chris Masterjohn, Lierre Kieth, Tom Naughton, Dana Carpender, several clients of Sean Croxton, and me among them.

Lori, there's no question that vegetarian diets can lead to weight gain and sickness. Vegetarian doesn't mean low fat. A vegetarian diet can, in fact, be a very high fat diet, with lots of cheese, oil, and processed foods.

I can't explain it any better than Dr. Lisle does above. Please watch his lecture. He brilliantly explains caloric density and how we are designed, like all animals, to stay at optimum weight if we eat whole, unprocessed foods.

People can lose weight on either diet, and any weight loss will result in lower blood sugar. Atkins himself acknowledged that these numbers always improved at first in his patients, but ultimately, they stopped working for many and they developed insulin resistance.

Unlike most low-carbers, I started LC as a healthy, thin person, and, over time, my whole cholesterol panel went UP. If I'd been 250 pds, I'm sure my cholesterol and blood sugar would've gone down, but the fact that they improve in obese people who lose weight doesn't prove the diet is healthy, only that the diet causes weight loss, which is healthy.

And of course eating straight sugar is bad, and makes kids hyper. No one is saying otherwise, but complex whole grains/starches are NOT sugar.

Amy and LS, I will probably experiment again when I want to lose 2-5 pounds for beach season. I will see if upping my fat intake reduces cravings. If not, I can play with keeping the carbs separate, a la Schwarzbein.

Because my body composition and BMI are already healthy, I may not be an ideal test subject.

Amy, do you ever cheat (aside from your weekly ice cream)?

I'd just like to see an honest study of LC diet against a truly low fat, whole food diet like McDougall's (10% or less of calories from fat). It should be easy to do. He has a treatment center, where researchers could track participants progress and everything they ate. Surely, Eades or Taubes could arrange the same on the LC end.

I suspect it would prove once and for all that whole, unprocessed grains/starches aren't causing diabetes or weight gain. Starches may temporarily spike blood sugar but that, alone, can't be what adds weight, even in people with insulin resistance (if so, they couldn't possibly lose weight on these diets and drop their diabetes meds)

Unfortunately, the dairy and meat industries have no interest in funding a study like that. They'd rather have one group eat basically the Western highly processed diet and call it "low fat", even though it's still 30% or more calories from fat (not much different than the typical 33-38% calories from fat of the regular western diet). That's not a valid comparison.

Personally, it doesn't matter to me whether anyone is LC or LF - it depends on how you enjoy eating and what works for you. I just don't believe it's reasonable for the LC side to irrationally scare people away from whole grains/starches in an effort to sell the LC diet.

Low carb scaring?
We don't possess the bully pulpit, the US government does with their food pyramid and Mrs Obama lecturing.
We are the minority attempting to make sense of all the BS that we are constantly bombarded with.

Meat and dairy industries? I don't think these have the clout you think they do. There is far more to be feared from the wheat and corn industries, which control the meat and dairy industries. What are the cows and chickens and pigs and fish fed? Corn. Why is HFCS in everything? Corn subsidies. Ethanol? Corn subsidies.

If we're going to play the conspiracy/money angle, we need to be looking at corn. That's where the money is.

So are those who advocate a low fat, whole food, unprocessed plant-based diet. They are probably even more of a minority.

"But the low-carb and paleo world is full of former vegetarians and people who got fat and/or sick on the low-fat thing"-Lori

Yep, me too Lori. I went vegetarian at 15 and dropped about 30 lbs in a pretty short time. It felt great, and I thought I was very healthy. Before that, I was chubby and miserable. Thing is.. by the time I hit my second and third year in college, weight just kept creeping in, and I hadn't changed my diet toward typical college foods, if anything I was MORE "healthy" and even went vegan, and was exercising regularly. Nothing helped. Then I came across Amy's blog, and while it was a really big struggle for me, I gave up being a vegetarian, and I'm really glad I did.

I also suggested my parents give low carb a try, and my dad cannot stop raving about how I "saved his life" and how great he feels after losing 30-40 lbs in 4 or 5 months. My mom has lost weight too, but she definitely carb-cheats more than my dad does.

I have never seen Taubes,Eades,Banting,Atkins,Wolff,Sisson,Kresser,Steffanson,Alkon ever ever attempt to scare anyone into lowering ones carbs.

Let's not argue where we're basically in agreement. No major food industry is seriously advocating for whole, unprocessed food. That's not in Big Food's interests.

Corn oil, along with other oils, is one of the main problems. In fact, there's oil in EVERYTHING. Even at Whole Foods, there was oil listed in so many things. I'm reading every label now, and we have a whole lot of refined garbage in even most of our supposed "healthy" foods.

"I have never seen Taubes,Eades,Banting,Atkins,Wolff,Sisson,Kresser,Steffanson,Alkon ever ever attempt to scare anyone into lowering ones carbs."

If they're saying grains are bad...grains cause insulin spikes which lead to obesity and diabetes...then that's scary. Amy has said she wouldn't eat grains unless she was forced to. I submit that's scaring people away from grains/starches (carbs).

Maybe it's unintentional, but, until the last few weeks, I was terrified of potatoes. I hadn't had one in years. So many of starches/grains had been equated with weight gain, so learning that isn't the case, is simply wonderful.

All I had to do was stop putting oil and fat on them! So simple. But we LOVE our carbs with oil and fat, which increases the caloric density.

We also should consider that the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acid ratio seems to have a strong impact on cardiovascular health. Humans can only really get omega-3 from animal fat, so in our high grain diets we tend to have an imbalance (too much omega-6, not enough omega-3).

Cows who are fed grains (corn) have an imbalance as well. Cows who are fed grass are much healthier, and they are able to create more omega-3 fatty acids in their bodies. Humans, unfortunately, cannot make this conversion from grass to omega-3. The only way to get this is through supplements or through meat.

Meat is necessary for humans. Fat is definitely necessary.

The Omega oil thing is overblown. So is the "olive oil is good for you" rhetoric. Vegans can get all the nutrients they need from plant sources, except B12. The potato, alone, has every nutrient needed, except B12. Maybe that's why meat and potatoes were first combined?

Here's a little more on caloric density:

Fresh Veggies are around 100 cal/lb
Fresh Fruits around 250-300 cal/lb
Starchy Veggies/Intact Whole Grains around 450-500 cal/lb
Legumes around 550-600 cal/lb
Processed Grains (even if they're Whole grain) around 1200-1500 cal/lb
Nuts/Seeds around 2800 cal/lb
Oils around 4000 cal/lb

They've done studies where they allowed groups of people to consume as much food as they wanted. What they found is if the calorie density of the food is below 400 calories per pound, no matter how much they ate, they all lost weight.

Between 600-800 calories per pound, with some moderate exercise, they all lost weight. Between 800-1200 calories per pound, people gained weight, except for those with very high activity levels. Over 1200 calories per pound, everyone gained weight.

As Dr. Lisle's made clear, we all eat roughly around the same WEIGHT of food at each meal. There's a certain point where our stomachs feel satisfied and we stop eating, and that doesn't differ so much from person to person. Overweight people don't really eat that much more food. What differs is the caloric density in that particular weight of food, especially if it's highly processed.

So, someone can eat far more veggies and grains, and still lose weight, as long as they're not loaded with oils and fats.

Not exactly sure why anyone would eat vegetables and grains since they are not essential, while protein and fats are most definitely essential.

LS, how do you make potatoes without fat taste good? Do you add herbs or spices, or are you on a bland diet? I suppose you could use chicken or veggie stock instead of water.

"Not exactly sure why anyone would eat vegetables and grains since they are not essential, while protein and fats are most definitely essential."

Vegetables and grains have protein. Fat is essential, but in small amounts. However, you'll need more fat for energy if you eliminate carbs, and you'll need less fat for energy if you eat carbs.

The main point is that, for weight loss, it doesn't really matter which way you eat. Some people prefer a diet of vegetables and grains (like slim Asians, for thousands of years) and others don't.

What matters is the caloric density. People eating lots of calorically dense meat will likely need to minimize grains/starches in order to lose, and this is probably why the LC diet works. But it's also, conversely, why low fat works. As long as the fat is kept truly low, it's nearly impossible to consume enough calories from grains/starches to gain weight.

I could eat 3 pds of potatoes today, and I wouldn't gain an ounce. However, if I added oil and fat to that starch, I probably would gain because my caloric intake is going to be higher...but not because it's a starch.

Monica, I'm experimenting with that. :) I made some hashbrowns the other day with taco seasoning. I baked them in the oven, with a little fresh salsa. They were delicious! Even my husband raved about them. We definitely don't eat bland food. I love spices. Yesterday, I made Indian curry with potatoes and other veggies, over whole wheat cous cous.

You keep stating that low fat works.
This country is obese.
The government has been advocating low fat for 30 years.
Low fat is not working.

Ron, that's because few people were actually eating low fat. Go to the store and look at all the foods labeled "low fat" or "reduced fat" and you'll see that they usually aren't a) whole foods, or b) actually low in fat. They're highly processed foods. That's what people were eating thinking they were doing something healthy. Even worse, many believed that if they ate those foods, they could eat more of them since they were "low fat".

I get what u are saying in regards that many don't follow a true low fat diet and that your woe works for u, and thats pretty great that u found something that u can hang your hat on.

Interesting column in regards to Dr McDougall.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/vegan-island/#axzz1niT3ou5V

I read Taubes and thought he did an excellent job demolishing the history of medical nutrition analysis that has led us to fear eggs, meat, and fat. (To be fair, I was already on his side on this one: I've long been amazed what medical researchers have been willing to publish compared to our standards in the physical sciences.) The subsequent hypotheses on the role of carbs and insulin response in weight management were intriguing but not yet proven to my mind. Amy does, as she says, a great job making sure her opinions are backed by solid research but I am sometimes amused about how much faith she seems to put in "the science." Maybe it's because I know how the sausage is made (as a prime purveyor myself of sausage and sausage accessories).

"The science" is shorthand for "that which is evidence-based." There's no "faith" involved.

Science just isn't that clean; it's not engineering. We don't get evidence, we get data, and how we analyze and interpret it and treat uncertainties strongly affects the results.

The low-carb advocates have an interesting hypothesis and some of data seem to support it, but the problem of correlation vs. causation and handling systematic uncertainties affects them as much as it does mainstream medical nutrition researchers. It's bad enough when astrophysicists look at the same data and come to opposite conclusions. It's that much worse when you have to work with the human body, studies with strong reporting biases worked in, and big money involved.

I was simply saying that I don't share your level of certainty that the evidence is so cast in stone.

Ron, that was a pretty (admittedly biased) article about McDougall. If I were to go on the annual LC cruise (as I previously wanted to), I'm sure I'd see people of various sizes, some still very obese, and some with apparently slacking muscles, but perhaps that's because they've already lost 200 pds? Who am I to say what "looks healthy"? Maybe I'd conclude that because some of them are still struggling with weight that LC doesn't work.

As far as weight loss, I know LCa works - at least until one plateaus, which seems to invariably happen when the calories the dieter needs are surpassed by the calorie density of the food they consume. That's why calorie density makes so much sense!

If you're 250 pds, you need a lot of calories. If you cut down on calories, by excluding most grains/starches, while still eating calorie rich foods, such as meats and fats, you'll certainly lose weight because you've created a calorie deficit.

Yet, invariably, as these people near goal weight - maybe 30 or 50 pds above - the weight loss slows down substantially because the calorie deficit is no longer that far apart from their calorie requirement. It's then that a whole lot of LC dieters plateau and can't seem to break through. They may, in fact, benefit from eating less calorie dense food, such as more starches.

It was actually on an LC discussion board when I first heard of "carb loading" as a means to break a plateau. Several posters had succcess with taking a day each week and loading up on carbs. A few days later, their weight would drop 3 or 4 pds, and some continued losing.

An athlete posted, "we've known about carb loading for a long time, but it only works if you eat the carbs without fat. You can't just eat all the pizza you want. It has to be plain, whole carbs - bread without butter, pasta without cheese".

I thought that was intriguing, but didn't see how it all fit into the whole...until now.

However anybody wants to eat is fine. We're influenced by our backgrounds and palates, and no meat eater or grain/starch eater is going to be convinced that the opposite way is better. Our preference for foods is very emotionally based.

The good news is that, so far, we don't have definitive proof or "science" (thank you, Astra) that one way is really better or worse.

But it's becoming quite clear that both LC and LF can bring about substantial weight loss. The key is not to give your body both carbs and fat at the same time. They're both fuels, so it's kind of like feeding your car regular gas and diesel. It can only efficiently burn one, and maybe this contributes to the problems with insulin. We just don't know yet.

So, use these theories to eat the way that leaves you the most satisfied and still lose or maintain your weight. For me, that's eating vegetable curries and potatoes. For someone else, it may be bacon and eggs. Until we have further studies, it does no good for LCers to criticize vegans/vegetarians, and vice versa. It's not the macronutrients that are "bad" or "good". It's how they're combined within individual diets.

LS, you make valid points and I will never argue what works for you and others.

You present your points in a well stated manner and appear to have your sh&t together.

Good luck on your low fat whole food eating, u appear to be doing very wellon it. :)

Ron

@LS: "Atkins himself acknowledged that these numbers [weight gain and blood sugar] always improved at first in his patients, but ultimately, they stopped working for many and they developed insulin resistance." Reference, please. Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution says, p. 289, on regaining weight, "You don't have to go off this diet...This is a diet you can live with forever in comfort and luxury."

"And of course eating straight sugar is bad, and makes kids hyper. No one is saying otherwise, but complex whole grains/starches are NOT sugar."

This is like saying that a diamond isn't carbon. Complex carbohydrates are sugar molecules holding hands. They break apart into glucose (sugar) in the digestive system and the glucose enters the bloodstream. This is basic chemistry, not anything controversial, but if you doubt it, ask a diabetic what happens to their one-hour blood sugar when they eat a potato or a slice of healthywholegrain bread.

"There's a certain point where our stomachs feel satisfied and we stop eating, and that doesn't differ so much from person to person."

There are also hormonal reasons for appetite. Leptin is one; insulin is another. Falling blood sugar induces hunger--that's why most people on high-carb diets want to eat every few hours, and most of us on LC diets don't.

LS, how do you make potatoes without fat taste good?

I shread potatoes keeping the skins, rinse under scalding hot water, followed by cold - then I steam them, mix it some powered garlic, onion, a scoop of sour cream, and butter to taste.

So light and fluffy you can 'mash' them with a spoon in a mixing bowl

Is this the same governors' conference at which Obama and the Democratic governors discussed ways to bypass the legislative branches of their respective governments?

Lori, I can't reference it. Maybe you can check the facts. I got it from a McDougaller on the discussion board, who said:

"Dr. Robert Atkins second book, 'Dr. Atkins Nutrition Breakthrough', has several pages on diabetes. In his first book he says his very low carb diet is the best diet for diabetes. His patients all lowered their blood sugars. But in his second book he acknowledges that for many, after a while, the diet doesn't seem to work and their blood sugars rise. You and I know that this is because fat causes insulin resistance and meat can cause insulin levels to rise even more than some starches. So you will find, if you can find the book, that he then develops his "meat and millet" diet in which he adds grains to the diet. He does not discuss this in succeeding books. I guess someone told him this would sound the death knell for his famous diet plan."

I don't know where to track down the second Atkins book, but if he did suggest meat and millet, it would be interesting and make sense, given caloric density.

Both of these diets promise pretty much unlimited quantities of food. LC dieters are told they can have basically unlimited meat products and LC veggies, as long as they avoid starches, and McDougallers are allowed unlimited whole grains/starches and veggies, as long as they avoid meat products.

In other words - to simplify - LC is eating from the TOP end of the caloric density list and low-fat vegans are eating from the BOTTOM end. As far as weight loss, and improvement in blood sugar and overall health, this works well for both groups.

But here is where I think the McDougall approach has an advantage: As LC dieters lose weight, their caloric requirements naturally decrease. Ultimately, they reach a point somewhere above their goal weight where the weight loss slows, then plateaus, and they're going to have to cut back on calories - this after not counting calories for so long and being used to "unlimited quantities" of calorically dense foods. Now, they're going to have to feel somewhat deprived if they're going to reach goal weight. Many get very frustrated at this point and gain back weight.

By contrast, the McDougallers can keep eating unlimited quantities of food, and by this time, they've adjusted to a plant based diet, have learned recipes that work for them, and can easily continue that way of eating to reach their goal and keep the weight off indefinitely.

I don't have "certainty" -- that's not scientific thinking. Nor is thinking evidence is "cast" in stone.

You regularly express certainty on this blog from topics as varied as the importance of low carb eating to the necessity of eye cream use by women.

I'm glad to hear you do understand how that such certainty is not scientific. I simply find it baffling that you don't seem to respect the opinions of those who have arrived at different conclusions via the same process.

Great scientific critique of the LC/Paleo diet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqf7k5Lzhk&feature=autoplay&list=PLCC2CA9893F2503B5&lf=plcp&context=C33fabebFDOEgsToPDskLnvkToZzXRMoMFhlQXr7Pk&playnext=61

You're kidding us all with that link, right?

A person who is not willing to put his name out there attempts to discredit low carb and paleo doctors and nutritionists.
Epic fail.

Have you watched any of it? It's quite compelling. In fact, I'd say it's a slam dunk as far as scientific proof that the Paleo diet is silly.

Why sit through that when he doesn't have the balls to put his name on it.

Today you say paleo is silly.
Paleo is a offshoot of low carb diets.

Yesterday you took the high road and inferred that low carb was a valid diet/way of life.

Seems like you're showing your true colors as vegans always do.

Ron, I'm learning this as I go along. I honestly thought LC wasn't this bad yesterday. Certainly, I'd begun having suspicions regarding its overall healthiness, but I wasn't ready to condemn LC, especially since I followed the diet for 5+ years, and just switched to McDougall's LF vegan diet a few weeks ago.

Yet, after viewing much of this series, it's just too apparent that LC is not a science based "better" diet, and there's very little evidence to support eating that way. I urge you to maintain an open mind. The point he's making is that anybody who says there's a "perfect" diet, determined within our genes, is selling a pile of "truthiness" not supported by scientific facts. That doesn't mean you can't still choose to eat that way, but do so because you make that as an informed personal choice.

@LS, I'm not here to check your facts for you. If you're making a statement, it's up to you to back it up.

You keep saying that LC diets promote insulin resistance and that people plateau and have to cut calories. Can you point to any evidence of this, other than anecdotes and McDougall's say-so? For example, a clinical study of people on a true LC diet (under 50g per day) where this happened to people?

Here's a year-long study on that subject, where subjects were limited to 40g of carb per day. As The Art and Science of Low-Carb Living describes it, "Simply put, here is an example of a cohort of type-2 diabetes who had their disease put into complete remission for a year...during which time they lost and maintained a dramatic amount of weight while markedly improving their severe dyslipidemia." This is NOT a sign of increased insulin resistance. The book goes on to describe why a low-fat diet combined with insulin injections would have resulted in weight gain and elevated triglycerides.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/63/1/110.full.pdf+html

Once again, I've been low carb for 13 years.
Never deviated from it, am 47 with a body of a 30 year old,hdl is 70, lights out energy levels, outstanding sexual stamina, muscular , low body fat.
All this I never possessed when I are what the food pyramid suggested.

I am living proof that it works.
No other reason to accept any other way of life.

PS...you have only been on a vegan diet for a few Weeks?
That is a miniscule sample size compared to 13 years.

Just saying.

Lori, I don't have the background to understand that study, but it looks to me, just glancing over it, that they fed these people a carb diet of high fructose and corn oil! If so, of course the results will compare unfavorably and boost blood sugar.

Please show me a LF study(10% of claories from fat) with WHOLE grains/starches. It really makes a difference what kind of carbs we're talking about. That is the issue. Most of the LC studies rely on comparing the diet to an only slightly better than a normal western diet of refined carbs.

That series is also full of scientific studies that so debunk the idea that we are "designed" to eat a Paleo style diet, or that any reputable research even knows what that diet is/was, or that it would be desirable or beneficial to eat like a primitive man. Or that primitive man didn't eat plant products. Yet, this is the basis of claims that the LC diet is "better for you".

I don't question its weight loss potential. I question the charges made by the LC side that WHOLE grains/starches (not unrefined, processed) are unhealthy for humans. That's simply not supported by science.

LS,
Seems as if you are going out of your way to discredit a way of eating that has been successful for many of us for years, while trying to promote a vegan diet something you have admittedly experienced for only a few weeks.
Truly bizarre.

LS, I don't subscribe to a low carb or low fat (I eat whole unprocessed foods, with vegetables and fat as the base of all my meals) diet but I have to say that every time you post here you are on a new few-weeks-old diet. This inconsistency undermines your conviction that this particular diet is working. Especially since it appears you are of normal weight and good health markers - why are you always dieting?

Astra, I appreciate your thoughtful comments RE: ironclad scientific certainty vs. actual scientific process. I read Good Calories Bad Calories and came to a much more moderate conclusion than many here.

Sam, I'm the first to admit I've been struggling to find answers why I couldn't lose a silly 10 pds to reach my goal weight. I've been seeking and learning. LC wasn't working, but why? I tried adjusting my fat intake, as advised by Amy and others. That seemed to work a little, but then I'd bounce back to where I was. Then, I tried reducing my protein, and that seemed to work a little better. This is actually what lead me to eliminate meat, which lead me to the plant based diets. And that has finally worked!

I don't think the fact I've been searching for answers to this dietary puzzle should undermine my view. If anything, it should enhance it. I like what one researcher quoted in that series said, "if you're not confused, you don't know what's going on". There's so much conflicting data, and people with agendas on both sides.

Amy and Lori criticize the guy who sites numerous and verifiable studies because he "has an agenda". Yet, don't they have an agenda? Of course! They're pushing a meat based diet, mainly because that's how they like to eat. I get it. I just don't think they have irrefutable scientific proof. What they have is confirmation bias. They cherrypick studies and ignore the bulk of the evidence that challenges a meat based diet.

Oops--wrong link to obesity study. The studies I referred to can be found by searching for Dashti, ketogenic diet modifies the risk factors of heart disease in obese patients and Dashti, long-term effects of a ketogenic diet in obese patients.

LS, I abandoned my LF diet two years ago to because I wanted to get off acid blockers and cure my GERD naturally. I was skeptical about LC solving the problem, but I tried it and it worked like a charm. It also brought a bunch of other benefits: weight loss, improved skin, more energy, improved mood, shoulder pain gone, among other things. My mother, a T2 diabetic, improved her blood sugar, her energy, and mood. And for anyone who wants to do a vegetarian LC diet, it's discussed in The New Atkins for a New You.

I agree with Amy and Astra about looking to evidence; I think of it as not being married to any particular point of view. At times, I've changed my diet a little to improve things. And when I've been wrong on my blog, which is mostly about LC, I've admitted it.

That said, when one knows the mechanics of a subject, knows how to critically look at evidence, and has heard (and experienced) differing points of view, there may come a point when you find one side has more credence than the other. I'm not a groupie of Taubes or anyone else. I've been learning about nutrients, digestion, chemistry, critical thinking, and evolutionary diets for two years now, and still feel I have only a basic understanding of these subjects. I've visited McDougall's site briefly last night and found a great deal of reliance on observational studies, and some purported facts (e.g., fruit has more nutrients than meat) that don't check out. While I feel my knowledge the subjects mentioned is basic, it is, with all due respect, more knowledge than you've demonstrated here.

As for posting a link to a VLF study, you're the one making claims about the benefits of such a diet; it's up to you to support those claims. If you're repeating what someone else said, that's fine--just say so. An ad hominem argument is the classic sign of someone without any evidence.

"Actually, a study like that would be expensive and difficult. What follows is probably as close as you'll get (along with the poor health of the ancient Egyptians, who lived in a grainy, low-fat diet)."

First of all, McDougall mentions in his "Starch Solution" lecture that further hair analysis of the Egyptian mummies showed that they actually ate a WESTERN-STYLE, MEATBASED DIET, with rich and fatty foods. After all, who got to be the mummies? They were the pharoahs, who were brought lots of rich meat to eat, even as their people lived on grains. This hair analysis is conveniently skipped over by Eades, or perhaps he's unaware of it.

Second, why would it be expensive or difficult to study both types of diets TODAY? Why do LC advocates lean on old archeological studies and suppositions about the diets of primitive populations to prove the healthfulness of a meat based diet in current times?

I mean, people like McDougall, Pritikin, and others have been recommending an opposing low fat plant-based diet for many years and have many long-term adherents, who've lived on such diets for years. Why would it be so difficult to study both groups and evaluate their health - blood sugar, cholesterol, weight, etc? That would seem much more relevant than using old archeological data.

After all, even hunter gatherers probably didn't eat as much meat as we do today. As the guy in the series notes, they couldn't go to the grocery store and choose from copious amounts of meat products, conveniently packaged, like we do, so what relevance can it really have to the way WE eat meat (and the meat we eat) in modern times?

I don't claim to have a science background, but at least I'm willing to challenge what I *think* I know. I'm willing to listen to McDougall's lecture, and to the apparently extremely well researched series that challenges the Paleo diet. I don't care if the guy doesn't give his name (I wouldn't either). What matters is that he shows all the studies, which anybody can check for themselves.

To be truly open-minded about this, you should at least watch the series, or some of it.

It's still suspicious to me that LC advocates won't partake in an honest comparison of their diet to a TRUE low fat diet. That would actually be very easy to do. As I said, McDougall has a treatment center where he serves participants specific food, so it's already be a controlled environment. How much easier could it be to compare diet data?

My guess is that the LC side is afraid to engage in an honest comparison because they know it would prove that whole, unprocessed grains/starches aren't unhealthy and won't harm people, as they've claimed, and that people eating a low fat plant based diet are at least AS healthy, and possibly healthier, than long-term LCers.

And what would the harm of that be anyway? Would it stop people from losing weight the LC way or promote widespread veganism? That's doubtful. Meatlovers are not likely to come running over in droves to the vegan side.

The only thing it would do is stop the anti-grain/starch rhetoric. It would just acknowledge that there's not one ideal way of eating, and that people can do well on a low fat plant based diet too - as they have for tens of thousand of years!

I just don't understand why the LC rhetoric has to be that it's the "only" right way of eating, especially when that's absolutely not supported by the bulk of scientific evidence. The very claim itself seems to undermine LC credibility. It's arrogant, and especially offensive to those who choose a different path to health for themselves.

You are hopeless. You called paleo and low carb silly
Not one person ever said low carb is the only way.

"Do you dispute that eating carbohydrates raise blood sugar and cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat?"

Yes. I don't dispute that some carbs raise blood sugar, but I question whether this ALWAYS results in body fat gain.

In fact, I know that this cannot possibly be the case, as everyone who follows McDougall's diet, or any starch based diet, would be morbidly obese.

I mean, you don't need a study for that. It's clear as day. So, my belief is that carbs must not be all the same. Eating a plate of whole brown rice is not the same as eating a bowl of sugar.

I don't know why it's not, but it's clearly not. Shouldn't we want to know why? Shouldn't we try to find out?

"And we know that the health of the average man took a turn for the worse when large quantities of carb became available after the agricultural revolution took place."

Really, we know this? And we also know that it's solely because of the grains they ate? Couldn't it also be that they just weren't good at farming yet...that there was a learning curve as they figured out how to farm, which plants to grow for optimal health, etc?

If you listened to the series, you'd hear that explained quite well.

And, again, what does it prove about meat or plant based diets TODAY?

McDougall on mummy analysis:

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2011nl/may/egyptian.htm

"Confirmation of the royal Egyptian diet was provided by research published in 1998 on the molecular makeup of the hair of the mummies. Hair is composed of proteins that are not easily degraded and therefore hair is well preserved for eons for analysis. The carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen isotope compositions of human hair are reliable and powerful indicators of the diet of an individual. When the hairs from Egyptian mummies are compared to those of modern people eating the Western diet the composition is the same, showing they both ate similar diets. (The same kind of hair analysis in this study determined that the Ice Man, preserved in a glacier of the Oetztaler Alps 5200 years ago, was essentially vegan.)"

This is the actual study from the Royal Society of Biological Sciences, confirming what McDougall said (I feel the everything is suspect now!)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692445/?tool=pubmed

Yes, but just because grain and bananas make blood sugar rise (so does meat at times) doesn't necessarily equate to fat storage. That's the leap LC makes, yet the evidence seems shaky there, especially when you have so many slim populations living on starch-based diets, historically and currently.

And doesn't it bother you a little bit, Amy, that they'd spin the mummy info to make it seem that carbs were the problem, when that wasn't at all what the science proved? If they'd spin that, what else are they spinning?

You're a person who likes to get at the truth - no matter what your personal beliefs or tastes might be - so I'd think the fact Eades would completely leave out the hair analysis would be a red flag to you.

I have no doubts that people can and do live healthily on diets other than low carb. But it's working for me. I have fewer hunger swings (low blood sugar episodes tended to be a problem for me prior), more energy, and more muscle. I am not strict on it-sometimes I want some damn pasta-but it guides my life. My BMI went from the high end of normal to the lower end. I'm also working out with weights a LOT, so I can't gauge just from BMI. But I feel better. I didn't really have weight to lose, but I have lost some and feel great. Plus, I adore meat. And cheese. And butter. And greens. Bread I can leave no problem. Rice isn't a biggie. Sometimes I want a damn potato. But on the whole, most of it is gone and not missed.

You can still have that potato, M4, as long as you watch your overall calories.

I don't believe I'm losing weight because I've become a "vegan". I'm losing weight because eating vegan has cut my calories enough that I can now lose weight, even while eating lots of potatoes and whole grains (without oils and fats).

I could lose weight eating meat and cheese too, but since I'm so close to goal weight, and these are very calorically dense foods, I'd have to eat MUCH LESS of them to achieve the same results. That's not as enjoyable.

As I understand it, Taubes belief that CARBS SPIKE INSULIN = WEIGHT GAIN is just a hypothesis. A hotly debated one. Some diet experts still say EXCESS CALORIES = WEIGHT GAIN = SPIKED INSULIN. In other words, the old "calories in - calories out" is more influential to weight gain than any particular macronutrient consumed.

I'm not a scientist, but I believe you're supposed to make a prediction based on a hypothesis, then test it scientifically.

So, the prediction we could make for Taubes' hypothesis would be that people who eat a lot of starchy foods should almost always gain weight, or at least have a very hard time losing weight.

For lack of a real study group we can merely make observations, but a visit to McDougall's site provides plenty of observational, anecdotal evidence that this prediction can't possibly be true.

There's well over a hundred "Star McDougallers" -people who've lost 100 pds or more on his low fat, starch-based diet and kept it off. They produce before and after photos and moving testimonies.

And these are people from all over the world, not just some small population of vegans living together in isolation, who may have developed a genetic adaptation to starches. We can rule that out.

They're not dead yet either! We don't need to dig up their bones to speculate about their diet. It's self-reported: low fat, high starch, plant-based.

We can also look at the low-carbers. To my knowledge, there isn't a "hall of fame" for LCers like Mcdougallers, but you can go to several LC forums and see many photos and success stories. You can also view their "ticker tapes", which report what weight they started at, what weight they are now, and what their goal weight is.

The low carbers have lost a lot of weight too!!!

But it also appears that some still haven't reached their goal weights yet, despite eating LC for years.

For instance, Jimmy Moore is a high profile LC proponent. I really like Jimmy's site and his respectful, open-minded interviews, and he's certainly lost a lot of weight on LC.

However, Lori asked me why I believed low-carbers often stalled, and Jimmy came to mind. Jimmy, an outspoken advocate of the diet, appears to have stalled himself before reaching a weight most of us would consider "thin".

Why would this be? He's avoiding almost all starches, so his insulin shouldn't be spiking. If Taube's hypothesis is true, the weight should practically be falling off him now after years of mainly avoiding the "bad" foods.

In fact, if starches are the main culprit, the LC group should always lose more weight, more rapidly, than the starch eating group. Even if Jimmy cheats occasionally ("carb creep"), he still can't be eating the same amount of starches as the vegans, can he?

This strongly suggests that calories do still play a large part. The LC group is almost certainly consuming the highest calories because they're consuming the most calorically dense foods, and, if "calories in-calories out" still holds true - even somewhat - then ultimately, weight loss should slow down in this group as their calories remain high while their caloric needs decrease.

They'll struggle to lose those last 30-50 pds unless they lower their calorie intake, which might mean that they should try eating MORE low calorie whole grains/starches, not less (Atkins may have had this right in his second book!)

We can guess which hypothesis is likely true from these observations, but a legitimate comparison of the two diets would be much more informative. I find it hard to believe that people who sell thousands of diet books can't come up with the money to do an honest, comparative study of live humans in modern times, and this leaves me with questions, not blind faith.

I doubt the metabolism is "broken", unless LC does increase insulin sensitivity in the long run, which is a suspicion that Atkins himself seems to have acknowledged in his myserious second book.

But it's more likely that few people can eat unlimited, high calorie protein, fats, and oils, and still continue to lose those last few, stubborn pds. At first, weight loss occurs because there's a substantial caloric deficit, but more weight lost means less calories are needed.

If one fears starches, their only option then is to increase vegetables - eat salads all day long. But this isn't filling, so most people simply can't do it (believe me, I've tried!).

Eating whole, unprocessed grain/starches solves this problem! If eaten without oil or fats, they're low in calories yet extremely filling. A pd of potatos is only 450-500 calories. No one could eat that many, but if they did, they'd feel very full and still have app 1500 calories or more to "spend" on other foods that day.

My friend, who knew Dr. Atkins, tells me he was a brilliant man. I suspect he was on to something with this "meat and barely" idea. But, unfortunately, the LCers have set themselves up as anti-starch, which makes it harder to advocate adding them back into the diet at all, even if this would help lose those last, stubborn pounds.