I saw this article in the NY Times today about a new book, which surprisingly enough is plugging the new “low carb renaissance” as one of my peers called it a little while ago. Please do read it until the end before making any judgements. I have highlighted in red what I consider the crucial facts to bear in mind before leaping onto this latest bandwagon as so many will without doubt do….
I have reproduced the article in full and also linked to the original site here NY Times
Carbophobia
By GINA KOLATA Published: October 7, 2007
Gary Taubes is a brave and bold science journalist who does not accept conventional wisdom. In “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” he says what he wants is a fair hearing and rigorous testing for ideas that might seem shocking.
GOOD CALORIES, BAD CALORIES – Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease.
By Gary Taubes. 601 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.
His thesis, first introduced in a much-debated article in The New York Times Magazine in 2002 challenging the low-fat diet orthodoxy, is that nutrition and public health research and policy have been driven by poor science and a sort of pigheaded insistence on failed hypotheses. As a result, people are confused and misinformed about the relationship between what they eat and their risk of growing fat. He expands that thesis in the new book, arguing that the same confused reasoning and poor science has led to misconceptions about the relation between diet and heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, dementia, diabetes and, again, obesity. When it comes to determining the ideal diet, he says, we have to “confront the strong possibility that much of what we’ve come to believe is wrong.” The best diet, he argues, is one loaded with protein and fat but very low in carbohydrates.
Taubes spent five years working on the book, which runs to more than 450 pages. The bibliography alone goes on for more than 60 pages. He also says he interviewed more than 600 doctors, researchers and administrators, though he adds that “the appearance of their names in the text … does not imply that they agree with all or even part of the thesis set forth in this book.” Taubes does not bow to the current fashion for narrative nonfiction, instead building his argument case by case, considering the relationship between dietary fat and heart disease, carbohydrates and disease, diet and obesity. As a result, the book can be hard to read, tedious in many places and repetitious.
Yet much of what Taubes relates will be eye-opening to those who have not closely followed the science, or lack of science, in this area. (Disclosure: At one point he approvingly cites my articles on the lack of evidence that a high-fiber diet protects against colon cancer.) For example, he tells the amazing story of how the idea of a connection between dietary fat, cholesterol and heart disease got going and took on a life of its own, despite the minimal connection between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol for most people. He does not mince words. “From the inception of the diet-heart hypothesis in the early 1950s, those who argued that dietary fat caused heart disease accumulated the evidential equivalent of a mythology to support their belief. These myths are still passed on faithfully to the present day.” The story is similar for salt and high blood pressure, and for dietary fiber and cancer.
In fact, Taubes convincingly shows that much of what is believed about nutrition and health is based on the flimsiest science. To cite one minor example, there’s the notion that a tiny bit of extra food, 50 or 100 calories a day — a few bites of a hamburger, say — can gradually make you fat, and that eating a tiny bit less each day, or doing something as simple as walking a mile, can make the weight slowly disappear. This idea is based on a hypothesis put forth in a single scientific paper, published in 2003. And even then it was qualified, Taubes reports, by the statement that it was “theoretical and involves several assumptions” and that it “remains to be empirically tested.” Nonetheless, it has now become the basis for an official federal recommendation for obesity prevention.
But the problem with a book like this one, which goes on and on in great detail about experiments new and old in areas ranging from heart disease to cancer to diabetes, is that it can be hard to know what has been left out.
For example, Taubes argues at length that people get fat because carbohydrates in their diet drive up the insulin level in the blood, which in turn encourages the storage of fat. His conclusion: all calories are not alike. A calorie of fat is much less fattening than a calorie of sugar.
It’s known, though, that the body is not so easily fooled. Taubes ignores what diabetes researchers say is a body of published papers documenting a complex system of metabolic controls that, in the end, assure that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.
He also ignores definitive studies done in the 1950s and ’60s by Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University and Rudolph Leibel of Columbia, which tested whether calories from different sources have different effects. The investigators hospitalized their subjects and gave them controlled diets in which the carbohydrate content varied from zero to 85 percent, and the fat content varied inversely from 85 percent to zero. Protein was held steady at 15 percent.
They asked how many calories of what kind were needed to maintain the subjects’ weight. As it turned out, the composition of the diet made no difference.
As I read Taubes’s book, I kept wondering how he would deal with an obvious question. If low-carbohydrate diets are so wonderful, why is anyone fat? Most people who struggle with their weight have tried these diets and nearly all have regained everything they lost, as they do with other diets. What is the problem?
On Page 446, he finally tells us. Carbohydrates, he says, are addictive, and we’ve all gotten hooked. Those who try to break the habit start to crave them, just as an alcoholic craves a drink or a smoker craves a cigarette. But, he adds, if they are addictive, that “implies that the addiction can be overcome with sufficient time, effort and motivation.”
I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced. (Kev Grant – Me either Gina, thank you.)
Share and Enjoy
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
hehe – seems you can’t leave this one alone mate??
)
I don’t know this woman in your blog, but all i know is that one approach doesn’t work for all. As my original blog piece stated clearly, MY diet and health improved greatly as a result of reducing my intake of bread and pasta in particular in favour of more fibrous vegetables.
There is a never-ending debate about the ‘ideal’ diet, in fact dieting itself may be one of the problems, particularly given the fact that very few people who try to eat low carb do it as a lifestyle choice and most do it in another desperate attempt to lose weight…again!
Interestingly you will find that Alwyn Cosgrove doesn’t support the calorie is a calorie notion either..
There is a far greater issue here than just diets and weight loss anyway…there is a greater issue of worsening health and chronic disease in the developed world. To say that ‘what’ we put in is not important, merely ‘how much’ is madness.
One look at the kids in the U.K tells us that many problems aside from obesity can be improved through adjusting the quality and type of foods that they eat.
Lastly, I don’t think you will find any of the sources I recommend as being particularly anti-carbs, I certainly am not….what we are anti though is highly refined and overly processed foods that are devoid of nutrients, full of potentially harmful additives, high in ‘calories’
) and generally not helpful in designing a way of eating for long term health.
It isn’t just for fat loss, try gaining lean mass with someone who doesn’t eat a decent diet. Stuff them full of food based purely on calories and you will see the clear difference versus someone who eats excess calories from better sources. (Cosgrove had a study showing the importance of protein intake on his blog quite recently).
In short, it is lively debate but one never to find a clear answer. For long-term health, diet needs to be individualised based on each persons requirements. This is long established since Roger Williams wrote ‘Biochemical Individuality’ back in the 60′s!!
Sorry I didn’t get back to the island – gutted!! All work no play here!!
G
Hi again G.
Hehe it’s not me who can’t leave it, it’s all the people looking for new angles to make money out of their diet books
I also agree about the word “diet” and try never to use it.
The very few people who use low carb as a lifestyle mirrors the very few people who are prepared to get to grips with their own nutrition and energy balance awareness.
I dont think it necessarily means either approaches are flawed, more that human ability to see it through is.
To anyone reading this comment for the first time this has already been debated in depth on this blog
Low Carb Debate
I think we’ve been through this already and agree on some things and will have to agree not to on others.
The low carb approach worked for you to get leaner because replacing pasta & bread with vegetables reduced your intake energy.
I think we agreed that if you want to split hairs there may be small hormonal and thermogenic differences in the way we deal with various calories, but that if 99.99% of people in the world were to actually reduce intake to less than output, weight loss will follow, did we not?
the other 0.01% is that that one fat bloke you always see in footage of famines
As before I personally just do not believe that contributing to the constant food misinformation and faddery by intimating or helping to imply that any one macro food group is responsible for the state of our world’s health problems when it is mainly western culture and human nature that is fundamentally at fault.
Of course adjusting quality & type of foods kids eat would make a difference, but not if they then overconsume later on through not knowing and understanding their own input / output situation.
I personally think it would do more good to include the basic arithmetic and techniques required in lessons so kids could take control and responsibility of maintaining and looking after their bodies as soon as possible.
G. In short, it is lively debate but one never to find a clear answer. For long-term health, diet needs to be individualised based on each persons requirements. This is long established since Roger Williams wrote ‘Biochemical Individuality’ back in the 60′s!!
Couldn’t agree more about individualising but I would start by first determining the energy balance situation and backwards engineer the ideal diet for the client from that, because everything else is only ever guesswork.
G. Sorry I didn’t get back to the island – gutted!! All work no play here!!
hehe don’t apologise to me
i seem to have managed to successfully engineer some play into my lifestyle here as well.
Give me a shout when you next get the chance
Kev
Here’s a link to a Forum thread that discusses this in reasonable depth from different sides of the fence.
ultimately everyone has to decide what they consider the facts to be from the body of evidence and go with it.
JREF Discuss Are Calories all that matter?
Just put a new post up on my blog, sometimes feel like we are debating slightly different points. Energy balance is one aspect of a complex issue related to chronic health and illness.
We can look to cultures of course but that it what we are trying to do, trying to change what it is that people eat – rather than simple equations that are fine when trying to calculate dietary caloric intake, but don’t actually educate people on the various reasons and benefits for choosing what to eat.
It may be that the difference in our clients is central to this very debate. Working with many clients who have issues of adrenal fatigue and several who are looking to gain muscle mass the actual content of their diet is a PRIME concern.
However, not wanting to get back into another debate – I doubt that in practice we are poles apart in what we advise our clients to do or how we live ourselves.
Least we are not ‘chubby’ personal trainers
)
That would really suck!!
G
JP Fitness Forum’s thread on this book can be found HERE