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Here is an example Carotenoid bioavailability is higher from salads ingested with full-fat than with fat-reduced salad dressings as measured with electrochemical detection. It is basically accepted lore in the field that fat is required to absorb fat-soluble nutrients (if there were no fats, all the hydrophobic molecules would cluster together into unabsorbabably large clumps; with fats they would dissolve into them, which can then be absorbed in the intestines).

Worth mentioning that humans evolved to eat animals with standard fat percentages, not margarine or mealworm-sheep. There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD, and there are healthy populations that traditionally go 6-9 months with no fats except animals fats.

FWIW, the main advance with this announcement is not the omega-3/FAT-1 transgenic aspect, it is the new cloning technique BGI calls handmade cloning which apparently allows lower-tech facilities and higher transgenic clone yield. BGI has already done this transgenic modification with pigs and now they have done it with sheep. With this new cloning technique, however, it might be possible to do this at an industrial scale.

However, If you are interested instead about this specific "fat-1" transgenic idea, it was done with mice way back in 2004.

Although that is possibly true that saturated fats aren't corrolated with increased risk of CHD or CVD, omega-3 fatty acids are required for controlling blood clotting and building cell membranes in the brain and are assumed to be a necessary nutrient. The "healthy populations" you seem to be alluding to likley maintain their consumption of omega-3 fatty acids from seafood and nuts and oils for 6-9 months of the year.

Worth mentioning that humans evolved to eat animals with standard fat percentages, not margarine or mealworm-sheep. There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD, and there are healthy populations that traditionally go 6-9 months with no fats except animals fats.

You will need to cite the "not ecologically sound part". I have on hand a few journals that do scientifically quantify the ecological impact of an animal-based diet versus a non-animal-based diet for humans. I am a vegan by virtue of the scientific arguments, and the ecological argument is bar far the most soundly proven. http://www.ajcn.org/content/89/5/1699S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/660S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/664S.full That said, I do wish to point out that at no point in my post did I mention caging an animal for the entirety of its life - but simply to correct a view I find misleading that somehow a scientifically established balanced diet from non-animal sources is inferior to that of animal-based feed (and as a volunteer for the SPCA, I can confidently say some of the well-known products can cause kidney failure if you were to only feed your cat with those products, and they are neutered males). Your arguments that seeks to disparage vegan products as "industrial mush" and "chemical additives" smacks of hypocricy when you consider the animal-based stuff you do put into your cat's face, or whenever you visit the vet.

You will need to cite the "not ecologically sound part". I have on hand a few journals that do scientifically quantify the ecological impact of an animal-based diet versus a non-animal-based diet for humans. I am a vegan by virtue of the scientific arguments, and the ecological argument is bar far the most soundly proven. http://www.ajcn.org/content/89/5/1699S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/660S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/664S.full That said, I do wish to point out that at no point in my post did I mention caging an animal for the entirety of its life - but simply to correct a view I find misleading that somehow a scientifically established balanced diet from non-animal sources is inferior to that of animal-based feed (and as a volunteer for the SPCA, I can confidently say some of the well-known products can cause kidney failure if you were to only feed your cat with those products, and they are neutered males). Your arguments that seeks to disparage vegan products as "industrial mush" and "chemical additives" smacks of hypocricy when you consider the animal-based stuff you do put into your cat's face, or whenever you visit the vet.

You will need to cite the "not ecologically sound part". I have on hand a few journals that do scientifically quantify the ecological impact of an animal-based diet versus a non-animal-based diet for humans. I am a vegan by virtue of the scientific arguments, and the ecological argument is bar far the most soundly proven. http://www.ajcn.org/content/89/5/1699S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/660S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/664S.full That said, I do wish to point out that at no point in my post did I mention caging an animal for the entirety of its life - but simply to correct a view I find misleading that somehow a scientifically established balanced diet from non-animal sources is inferior to that of animal-based feed (and as a volunteer for the SPCA, I can confidently say some of the well-known products can cause kidney failure if you were to only feed your cat with those products, and they are neutered males). Your arguments that seeks to disparage vegan products as "industrial mush" and "chemical additives" smacks of hypocricy when you consider the animal-based stuff you do put into your cat's face, or whenever you visit the vet.

I'll try to resume some data in this message.

Vitamin D supplementation was found in years-long, randomized interventional trials, to slash cancer incidence - by, for example, 77%. ( http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/6/1586.short [ajcn.org] , http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/7/451.short [oxfordjournals.org] ) Even mechanisms of action are known ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076010001822 [sciencedirect.com] , http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.24762/full [wiley.com] , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20936945 [nih.gov] ), althought not all are fully understood.

Vitamin D RDA was 200 IU, which is a joke, almost the same thing as nothing. Specially if we consider the human body will produce 10.000 IU in a 15-minute tropical noon-day sun full-body exposure ( http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/3a0/1e8/00e/Cannell-Vitamin-D-study.pdf [nccdn.net] The FDA was faced with this new Vitamin D pleiotropic effects, and given that the RDA was old and obviusly innadequate, it asked the IOM (Institute of Medicine) to review it. They dismissed a Vitamin-D -cancer connection in a completely biased, and non-scientific report, cherry picked some articles, ignored many articles. It shocked the vitamin-D research community, as this link is more than clear. ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.328/full [wiley.com] , http://brn.sagepub.com/content/13/2/117 [sagepub.com] ). The committee had conflicts of interest, and deliberately suppressed the favourable studies ( http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8225367 [cambridge.org] , http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/today-the-food-and-nutrition-board-has-failed-millions-111112159.html [prnewswire.com])

It's interesting to note that people in the committee were hand-picked to have conclicts of interest and are developing vitamin D analogs (that work the same way, but are patenteable), so their best interest is to keep natural vitamin D the lowest level possible. Like Glenville Jones, from Cytachroma, developing CTAP101, a medicine to treat vitamin D insufficiency. Or Hector F. DeLuca, that has 101 patents of vitamin D analogs. Or J. Christopher Gallagher, working for GlaxoSmithKline, that develops Sirilux, a vitamin D analog to treat psoryasis. There are other to cite, but you got the point.

Links or it didn't happen.

I'll try to resume some data in this message.

Vitamin D supplementation was found in years-long, randomized interventional trials, to slash cancer incidence - by, for example, 77%. ( http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/6/1586.short , http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/7/451.short ) Even mechanisms of action are known ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076010001822 , http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.24762/full , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20936945 ), althought not all are fully understood.

Vitamin D RDA was 200 IU, which is a joke, almost the same thing as nothing. Specially if we consider the human body will produce 10.000 IU in a 15-minute tropical noon-day sun full-body exposure ( http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/3a0/1e8/00e/Cannell-Vitamin-D-study.pdf
The FDA was faced with this new Vitamin D pleiotropic effects, and given that the RDA was old and obviusly innadequate, it asked the IOM (Institute of Medicine) to review it.

They dismissed a Vitamin-D -cancer connection in a completely biased, and non-scientific report, cherry picked some articles, ignored many articles. It shocked the vitamin-D research community, as this link is more than clear. ( http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.328/full , http://brn.sagepub.com/content/13/2/117 ). The committee had conflicts of interest, and deliberately suppressed the favourable studies ( http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8225367 , http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/today-the-food-and-nutrition-board-has-failed-millions-111112159.html)

It's interesting to note that people in the committee were hand-picked to have conclicts of interest and are developing vitamin D analogs (that work the same way, but are patenteable), so their best interest is to keep natural vitamin D the lowest level possible. Like Glenville Jones, from Cytachroma, developing CTAP101, a medicine to treat vitamin D insuficiency.

Or Hector F. DeLuca, that has 101 patents of vitamin D analogs. Or J. Christopher Gallagher, working for GlaxoSmithKline, that develops Sirilux, a vitamin D analog to treat psoryasis. There are other to cite, but you got the point.

"MDs have extensive training on the importance of nutrition, lifestyle,"

Citation needed. How many hours out of their medical training does the average MD have in these topics? Factoid for you to start with if you want to talk BS:
http://www.ajcn.org/content/83/4/941S.full
"A total of 106 surveys were returned for a response rate of 84%. Ninety-nine of the 106 schools responding required some form of nutrition education; however, only 32 schools (30%) required a separate nutrition course. On average, students received 23.9 contact hours of nutrition instruction during medical school (range: 2-70 h). Only 40 schools required the minimum 25 h recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. Most instructors (88%) expressed the need for additional nutrition instruction at their institutions. "

That's 25 hours out of how many thousands?

Anyway, I could go point by point though the rest of this, but I won't. :-)

But a few comments anyway.

First off, the lung cancer may be more from vegetable deficiency disease and iodine deficiency disease and vitamin D deficiency disease and other messed up social processes leading to distress than from smoking. I'm not saying smoking is good for you generally, of course, but consider:
"Why I Recommend to NOT Stop Smoking"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9DZBzKppHQ

Ask your wife, outside of an initial patient intake interview, how many minutes can her practice let her spend actually with a patient per visit? I doubt the average is higher than ten minutes. How can that result in good outcomes? It's like schools. No matter how well the staff means, the overall institutional dynamics prevents really good stuff from happening for most people most of the time.

Contrast with:
http://www.patchadams.org/
"The Gesundheit! Institute is a project in holistic medical care based on the belief that one cannot separate the health of the individual from the health of the family, the community, the world, and the health care system itself."

Or read the last chapter of:
"Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future" by M.D. Andrew Weil
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Our-Health-Matters-Transform/dp/B004KAB3U2

I'd just suggest you, your doctor, and your wife read "Eat To Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD and you'll see why sending a patient to the hospital for heart disease may someday be considered malpractice. :-)
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
"Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."

Here are a collection of links I put together about wellness:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

See especially this on losing weight:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

I feel 20% of what most MDs do is miraculous (e.g. burn care, reattaching severed limbs, therapies for genetic defects, etc.), even if much of the other 80% is probably misguided (the part mostly about treating the symptoms of malnutrition, and where a good alternative practitioner probably does better). The problem is being able to learn which is which... So, this is not to disagree with that aspect of your point about homeopaths.

By the way, strep throat may be a sign of vitamin D deficiency and other nutritional deficie

Most of us would rather be well-toned than waif-like. Therefore it's not just about burning calories but building muscle. And unless you want to starve yourself, it's much easier to build muscle.

Pearson and Shaw claim that plummeting growth hormone levels is why people over 30 find exercise less beneficial in toning their bodies.
They also claim that supplements promoting growth hormone release increase/restore this ability.

This latter claim has been demonstrated in many animals including pigs:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m7q0118602n8l37x/

Caffeine also seems to slow lipid (fat) formation:
http://www.ajcn.org/content/79/1/40.short

Both have strong effects for me. I take 200mg of niacin 1-2 hours before exercising and drink coffee with meals.

And "vastly healthier" could be scientifically argued and proven wrong within the vegetarian community...not that you really need to when a simple visual comparison between the two groups is obvious enough.

Right, 'cause only meat causes obesity, and there's no such thing as a obese vegan... /sarcasm

Let's not split hairs here. Obesity is caused by overeating, regardless of what you eat. But the average carnivorous American who could give two shits about the crap they put into their body vs. a vegetarian or vegan, which most(all?) are usually very sensitive as to what goes into their bodies is certainly NOT equal by any stretch of the imagination.

And oddly enough, the latter study you cited came to the same conclusion, so I'm not exactly sure what you were trying to prove there.

And "vastly healthier" could be scientifically argued and proven wrong within the vegetarian community...not that you really need to when a simple visual comparison between the two groups is obvious enough.

Right, 'cause only meat causes obesity, and there's no such thing as a obese vegan...

/sarcasm

We could argue what constitutes that start of modern medicine, or how long it took to spread to the majority of practitioners. However, my main point is the efficacy of treatment. Here is an example, note the sudden decrease in maternal death rate around 1930. Antibiotics were not discovered until the 1920's. Hospitals and doctors were just not that effective before the mid 20th century. Now that they are effective, there is increased demand. We are trying to grapple with something less then 100 years old. There is not enough data for economic models to interpret.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/66/5/1264.abstract [ajcn.org] takes the integral of the insulin graph over 2 hours, it does not look at spikes and dips. Beef takes twice as long to digest as brown rice and that largely depends on how well cooked the rice was. If the rice was very well cooked then it could have caused an insulin spike then tapered off to nearly nothing for the rest of the 2 hours. The beef would cause a relatively constant insulin level over the 2 hours. Thanks for the links, will have to look at the other ones later.

As I said upthread: Taubes was of course taken by complete surprise by the existence of Acylation Stimulating Protein http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10355026 which is about two-three orders of magnitude more potent driver of fat storage than insulin is and stores fat in the complete absence of insulin in your system, and he also failed to take into account that protein stimulates more insulin release than carbs do, which leaves both parts of his hypothesis falsified.

Beef stimulates as much insulin release as brown rice: http://www.ajcn.org/content/66/5/1264.abstract ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9356547 ) - The acute effects of four protein meals on insulin, glucose, appetite and energy intake in lean men: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20456814 - James Krieger did a write-up of this and a few other studies that excerpted the relevant graphs for anyone who doesn't have full-text access to clinical journals at http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

Beef stimulates as much insulin release as brown rice: http://www.ajcn.org/content/66/5/1264.abstract (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9356547) - The acute effects of four protein meals on insulin, glucose, appetite and energy intake in lean men:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20456814 - James Krieger did a write-up of this and a few other studies that excerpted the relevant graphs for anyone who doesn't have full-text access to clinical journals at http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

IT workers wear phones. IT workers are traditionally heavily caffeinated, at least I am, so that's 100% of IT workers. Caffeine also has effects on bone loss. http://www.ajcn.org/content/74/5/694.short The problem is that if both of these things are true I should be so brittle that I can't walk without my bones crumbling under my own weight.

1/2 x 30 x (y0min +2y30min + 2y60min + 2y90min + y120min)

This makes me think that Tai didn't "rediscover" anything, but brazenly plagiarized from a calculus textbook.

I believe he means the Maillard reaction (PDF)

It's pretty complicated stuff. I don't think he was trying to get on the cover of a pamphlet on corn-syrup
activism. This is /., we know how to use Google so sometimes it's OK to be a bit vague and still be on topic
and interesting.

So what about Dr. Robert Atkins?

You do realize that Atkins has been roundly criticized in the literature by every nutritional authority, right? The National Academy of Sciences, the AMA, the ADA, the ACS, the AHA, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, the American Kidney Fund, the American College of Sports Medicine, and the National Institutes of Health has all criticized the Atkins plan. See the AtkinsExposed website I linked above.

You can find a handful of people with "Dr." before their name who will tell you than smoking cigarettes is fine and dandy, or with "PhD" afterward who will tell you that climate change is a hoax -- or that 9/11 was a controlled demolition, or that we never went to the moon, or whatever. This does not change the science.

How do you explain the coexistence of malnutrition and obesity within a community?

Malnutrition includes deficiency of micronutrients -- kwashiorkor, for example. Empty calories are cheap calories.

Japanese people also work far harder than most us Westeners, in addition to eating a lot of fish, shellfish, eggs and meat. Their overall sugar consumption is also faaar lower than most so-called "Americanized" societies.

None of which addresses the point that their consumption of carbs is high, putting the lie to the "high carb diets make you fat!" theory. And no, they don't eat a lot of meat -- though the consumption of meat is trending upward, along with the incidence of obesity, heart disease, and all the other fun stuff a high-protein, high-fat diet brings with it.

Yes, their sugar consumption is far lower. Large amounts of sugar are a bad idea, I think we can all agree on that shocking conclusion.

Insulin is pro-inflammatory

No, in fact insulin has an anti-inflammatory effect (see also here.)

Also, what we have done in recorded history has nothing to do with our biology or evolution. The fact is, we've been growing crops for the past ~10.000 years which in evolutionary terms is just barely a blip on the radar. Hunter/gatherers collected fruits and berries when they could and fattened up for winter, but otherwise ate what the hunters brought home. After all, wild carbohydrates aren't exactly "in stock" all year around while meat and fish is.

Ah, bad anthropology rears its head again. First, our existence as hunter-gatherers was a blip in evolutionary terms; our digestive metabolism remains mostly the same as our primarily herbivorous primate ancestors and our primarily herbivorous chimp and gorilla cousins. (Yes, chimps eat some flesh -- mostly insects; that does not change the fact that they are primarily herbivorous.) Second, carbohydrates are indeed in stock all year round in the areas where we evolved -- what do you think those animals our ancestors were hunting were eating? Not just fruits, but roots, tubers, seeds, nuts, leaves...we've been eating grains for 20,000, perhaps even 100,000, years, well before the Neolithic revolution.

The idea that our paleolithic ancestors were mostly hunters is not based on good evidence, but on "me mighty hunter!" mythology. Contemporary hunter-gathers get the bulk of their nutrition from plant foods.

But finally, the evolutionary tale tells us jack shit about what makes for a healthy diet . Evolutio

And you can explain why a ketogenic low-carb diets gives no better results than non-ketogenic low-carb diets?

The study you cite is flawed. Both diets contained about the same number of calories which is not the point of the Atkins diet. The point of Atkins is that if you stick to the rules, it doesn't matter how much you eat. They should have had both groups on 2,000 calories or even more.

Thus, if you are in ketosis, and the calories you consume are from fat, you won't get fatter.

So you believe that if you can consume 10,000 calories of fat a day and 0 carbs, sit around on your ass, and not gain weight? I'm sure that you can reference a published, peer-reviewed study that demonstrates this magic? And you can explain why a ketogenic low-carb diets gives no better results than non-ketogenic low-carb diets?

Except that pure glucose syrup also doesn't cause as much weight gain as an unbound mixture of glucose and fructose (a.k.a. HFCS).

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/88/6/1733S.pdf

Glucose absorption is regulated by your body using insulin. Fructose is not. Thus, pure fructose is significantly worse than HFCS. Pretty much every study I've ever seen has conclusively shown that fructose is the worst of the sugars, and that it is converted more easily to fat than any other sugar.

And now, with this study, we can state with a fair degree of certainty that the AMA was wrong. So now, hopefully, this will put to rest the question of whether the rise in HFCS has caused the temporally coincident rise in obesity in the U.S. (which was previously only suspected due to correlation) so researchers can focus on the more important question of why the body treats it differently.

But it won't. This isn't the first study that has suggested a strong causal link between HFCS and obesity. This one will be ignored by the nay-sayers just like all the others. (Note that some of those links aren't to studies, but rather to papers about the studies, etc., but the links in their references are staggering.) *sigh*

And now, with this study, we can state with a fair degree of certainty that the AMA was wrong. So now, hopefully, this will put to rest the question of whether the rise in HFCS has caused the temporally coincident rise in obesity in the U.S. (which was previously only suspected due to correlation) so researchers can focus on the more important question of why the body treats it differently.

But it won't. This isn't the first study that has suggested a strong causal link between HFCS and obesity. This one will be ignored by the nay-sayers just like all the others. (Note that some of those links aren't to studies, but rather to papers about the studies, etc., but the links in their references are staggering.) *sigh*

I'm sorry, are you in the U.S.?

1. Low-salt products are in a container that looks just like the original, only with a different color band on it declaring it's low-salt status. Usually the band is blue, and the original is red, but sometimes the original has no band and the low-salt version has a red band on it. They are set right next to each other, unless all the low-salt versions are stocked in a separate Healthy Choices aisle. Of course, just grabbing the low-salt version without looking at it is not the wisest thing to do, because...

2. Every product also contains a nutritional label, which gives you the raw information of how much sodium is in a certain product and then gives you the percentage of your daily recommended intake based on a 2,000 calorie diet. As a quick For Instance, let's take a look at a can of Progresso Healthy Classics Beef Barley Soup. Here's the label, let's see...

Sodium: 470mg...........20% (Daily Value on a 2,000 calorie diet)

Now let's look at the box of Shake 'n Bake Original Recipe:

Sodium: 795mg...........33% (Daily Value on a 2,000 calorie diet)

Have I just been deprived of the ability to make an informed choice as to which food contains more sodium and what percentage of my daily recommended consumption it contains?

As it happens, I tend to reject them both and go for no-sodium products, like packages of dry lentils and other unprocessed foods. Then I salt them myself while cooking. :)

The reason why you are not aware of any research showing that the native Americans generally suffered more from goiters is because they were not aware of the problem and attempting to correct it until the early 1900's. You may find this link interesting: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/642

People can take mortgages against illiquid assets to pay taxes. Native Americans are a special case of cultural genocide; to disprove your point, there are about six million millionaire families in the USA -- are they all drug addicted? This study shows most addictive behavior is environmental:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
You have a good point on relative affluence, except that, as James P. Hogan suggests:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
once wealth ceases to matter as status, people may find more worthwhile things to do with their time (like, the fact that someone might be unable design and construct their own handbags might be seen as a sign of shame?). The economy you describe, requiring economic slavery to force some people to clean other people's toilets, is on its way out one way or another:
    "Ladybug robot cleans restrooms"
    http://pinktentacle.com/2007/11/ladybug-robot-cleans-restrooms/
Gandhi had a lot to say on that toilet cleaning issue too. :-) People should vote in a good way for their interests. And they will see the consequences. If people had more free time from a basic income, many could become more informed voters and more active in various decision making processes. The health care issue shows that -- other industrialized countries have cheaper and in many ways better health care for most people than in the USA. (Granted, health care for the ultra-rich or certain others in the USA can be good within some expensive areas like cancer treatment, even if cancer treatment is often slighted and more dependent on good research for everyone.)
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
By the way, vitamin D deficiency may help explain the addictive behavior and other health problems you see in darker skin sun adapted Native Americans in Arizona who have adopted an indoor mainstream US lifestyle (including working in casinos):
    "Vitamin D insufficiency in southern Arizona"
    http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/87/3/608

The Slashdot summary says, "UK's FSA Finds No Health Benefits To Organic Food".

That's wrong in two ways. It was the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that did this study: Nutritional quality of organic foods: a systematic review.

That abstract says NOTHING about the effect of traces of poisons in conventional food. It is ONLY concerned with nutritional differences: "Objective: We sought to quantitatively assess the differences in reported nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs."

Also, the abstract says, "The analyses were restricted to the most commonly reported nutrients."

This is so unbelievably wrong. You get so much more calories per square foot growing vegetables than meat.

"The meat-based food system requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet." http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/78/3/660S

1) OMG. I made a typo. Twice.
2) I am in the business. What exactly are you? I am a biomedical engineer. I understand body mechanics and physiology. I understand the nuances. But a nice ad hom anyway.
3) The equations still have predictive power, or they wouldn't have been published! I read the paper were Mifflin and his group described this equation. At least, I used the paper referenced here: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/51/2/241. The paper does not give any error estimates for the equations. It does say that the variables account for 70% of the variability of the data, but that does not mean that the equations are 30% wrong. It means that their equations are at most 30% wrong. And for them to be 30% wrong, it means that the variables already accounted for have no predictive power towards any other variables that account for the other 30% of the variability.
4) No, I am extrapolating. There is data there, even though the data is not drawn from the same population.
5) We do not know that he is very abnormal. He has claimed to be abnormal. I am claiming that those claims are bogus. Assume for a minute that he has an REE of 0 kcal/day. As I also stated elsewhere, a 380 lb man walking for an hour requires a lot of energy, depending on how he walks; but on average, he'd burn about 600-700 calories in an hour. 2 hours of circuit training and weights come out to roughly 2400 calories. That's a lot more than his daily caloric intake, even with an REE of zero. I used the REE value initially to illustrate quickly why his claims were fishy. But even if we throw those out, there is still a numerical disagreement. Are you going to try to say that he is burning fewer calories exercising than people think he is because he's overweight? All of those estimates come from understanding biomechanics and biophysics; the equations are much more predictive because they are derived from physical principles.

So let's sum up here. You looked at one part of my claim and then proceeded to "sink to my level" and provide a singularly stunning ad hominem attack. Bravo. I was a complete dick to some stranger on the internet based on cool hard facts and the heady, but oh-so-manly scent of my arrogance. Indeed I did bother to think about how much guff this AC has gotten for his weight, but I wasn't calling him a fatty; I was saying that his numbers don't add up. And I provided evidence, numbers. I didn't call him fat, I called him a liar. I never passed any judgment about his weight. Finally, when you called me on my "ignorance," I stated that regardless of his REE he would be using more energy than he could derive from what he eats. Whoops, why did you forget to talk about that?! As you should have read, I updated my claims with some numbers.

Now, I can dispense with the ad hominem attacks. I don't need them because I won. It was valiant of you to defend an overweight gentleman who claims to be actively trying to change his weight to no avail. I really empathize with the guy. I was a fat kid, and I know it took 3 years and puberty (mmm, testosterone) to slim down to a weight that I liked. But if he is working out like he says he is, and eating like he says he is, then he would not still be 380 lbs with a lot of flab.

If you look at studies like Relationship Between Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Mortality in Normal-Weight, Overweight, and Obese Men, or especially Lee et. al. in Cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality in men, your premise doesn't quite hold. Their results are that:

"In summary, we found that obesity did not appear to increase mortality risk in fit men. For long-term health benefits we should focus on improving fitness by increasing physical activity rather than relying on diet for weight control...our data show that fit men had greater longevity than unfit men regardless of their body composition or risk factor status. Obese men should be encouraged to increase their cardiorespiratory fitness by engaging in regular, moderate-intensity physical activity; this should benefit them even if they remain overweight."

The Lee et. al. study shows that the risk of cardiovascular disease goes up with obesity, but even there:
"fit, obese men had a lower risk of CVD mortality than did unfit, lean men"

Also, in response to other comments:

1. As to the "a calorie is a calorie, just eat less" idea. Actually, no. Some people have gut bacteria which are much more efficient at extracting calories than others, so that for the same number of calories eaten, one person can get 30% calories out of it. Obese people often have these efficient bacteria (a survival trait for most of human history, and probably no more in their control than genetics)

2. Your family genetics may imply that you're better off with a higher BMI, all other things being equal. If you have lots of heat troubles, 20 may be good. If Parkinson's, 30 might be better.

All to say- first, get fit. Second, understand your genetics. Then worry about your weight.

NIH: A bunch of self-serving PhDs that make policies about public health then go on to corporations that benefit from those policies. The NIH has yet to do a scientific study on weight loss. (Note: combining diet /and/ exercise in a study is not scientific, as you can't tell if it was diet or exercise that produced the result.)

That's quite a bizarre statement. The NIH does really run any studies, it's a funding body. The have an entire center dedicated to funding obesity research. Here's an example of an NIH funded diet and weight loss study.

Obviously any trial of say diet and weight loss has to involve exercise as a factor to be held constant, otherwise you never will be able to separate the effects. Having said that since we know both diet and exercise affect obesity there isn't a lot of point studying them both separately any more. What is now needed and what the NIH is currently funding a lot of are studies to find ways to actually get people to eat properly and to exercise more by making global lifestyle changes. Kind of life this one".

Incidentally, the paper is certainly interesting, though this letter certainly demonstrates that there's still skepticism in community regarding the role of HFCS in obesity and related diseases.

Thus, I think it's a bit early to declare HFCS an unmitigated evil. Should we all be trying to reduce our intake of caloric sweeteners? Absolutely. But I'm still skeptical that HFCS merits specific attention (though, admittedly, it also tastes like crap, which seems like a good enough reason to get rid of it :).

HFCS depresses production of the hormone that says "I'm full"

Citation needed. And please stick to actual scientific journals or studies, and not BS holistic faith healers.

The authors are, George A Bray, Samara Joy Nielsen and Barry M Popkin,

Or are Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA and the Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill too "touchy-feely" for you?

Triple my bodymass in grams of protein is 726.75 grams of protein.

Sorry. 2.5x the "high protein" diet.

Back to your enumerated points (I'm focusing on your ridiculously-off-the-charts-high-protein/low carb/low fat diet)

Do you have Inuit genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat large amounts of seal blubber and other fats like the Inuit? Whoops.
Do you eat the mere ~100 grams of protein and ~200 grams of carbohydrate that the Inuit eat per day? Whoops.
Do you have Maasai genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat the very high-fat diet of the Maasai -- so high fat that a common treat for kids is fat boiled in water? Whoops.
Do you have Bantu genetics? Whoops.
"Northern" and "Southern" indians are not technical terms. Whoops. Did you mean to refer to a particular study or were you pulling that out of a hat?
Do you have any native american genetics from any group? Whoops.
Are you of the mistaken notion that people of different genetic makeups process foods the same? Big whoops. (ever heard of "lactose intolerance"? "Lactose tolerance" is an evolutionary adaptation developed in cultures whose diet included dairy. Cultures adapt to their native diets)
Have there been a ridiculously large number of studies on the negative effects of saturated fats? Whoops.

My average training week includes 30mins of weight lifting upon waking, 1hour of training for lunch, and 1 hour of weights/football/throwing everyday for 4 weeks.

That's it? You eat 600 grams of protein per day and that's all you do? For God's sake!

Look, you're free to destroy your body against the recommendations of all major medical organizations who've commented on high protein diets (and by "high protein", they're typically talking about 1g/lb, not 2.5g/lb). But don't try and pretend that it's somehow natural or good for you.

Triple my bodymass in grams of protein is 726.75 grams of protein.

Sorry. 2.5x the "high protein" diet.

Back to your enumerated points (I'm focusing on your ridiculously-off-the-charts-high-protein/low carb/low fat diet)

Do you have Inuit genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat large amounts of seal blubber and other fats like the Inuit? Whoops.
Do you eat the mere ~100 grams of protein and ~200 grams of carbohydrate that the Inuit eat per day? Whoops.
Do you have Maasai genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat the very high-fat diet of the Maasai -- so high fat that a common treat for kids is fat boiled in water? Whoops.
Do you have Bantu genetics? Whoops.
"Northern" and "Southern" indians are not technical terms. Whoops. Did you mean to refer to a particular study or were you pulling that out of a hat?
Do you have any native american genetics from any group? Whoops.
Are you of the mistaken notion that people of different genetic makeups process foods the same? Big whoops. (ever heard of "lactose intolerance"? "Lactose tolerance" is an evolutionary adaptation developed in cultures whose diet included dairy. Cultures adapt to their native diets)
Have there been a ridiculously large number of studies on the negative effects of saturated fats? Whoops.

My average training week includes 30mins of weight lifting upon waking, 1hour of training for lunch, and 1 hour of weights/football/throwing everyday for 4 weeks.

That's it? You eat 600 grams of protein per day and that's all you do? For God's sake!

Look, you're free to destroy your body against the recommendations of all major medical organizations who've commented on high protein diets (and by "high protein", they're typically talking about 1g/lb, not 2.5g/lb). But don't try and pretend that it's somehow natural or good for you.

We need to remember that much of science is politically and or profit driven giving rise to pseudo science. Much of it built on the premise that life is an accident resulting from random mutation and no intelligence was involved. Furthermore it holds that nature is flawed in it's system design and needs to be fixed when in fact it is perfectly designed. We simply need to adapt and integrate with it.

When the new approach is implemented medical treatment costs will be very low reducing and perhaps eliminating the need for health insurance that covers disease leaving only physical injury repair to be insured.

Most people do not know this yet: About 50 human genetic diseases due to defective enzymes can be remedied or ameliorated by the administration of high doses of the vitamin component of the corresponding coenzyme, which at least partially restores enzymatic activity. From the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/75/4/616

The reason you don't know this is that it is a very low cost therefore low profit approach that offers no monopoly or control.

Read about the end of disease protocols here. http://intelegen.com/nutrients/index.htm

I don't see an education problem in Cuba

• Children tend to snack on nutritionally-unbalanced food when watching television, eat unconsciously and eat enough to skewtheir daily caloric intake.
• For some reason, children watching television burn fewer calories than they would at just about any other physical activity, including just idly sitting or lying down.
• Children who were forced to watch less television lost weight.

The author's talking about lower dietary cholesterol levels. You're talking about lower blood cholesterol levels. There've been a surprising number of studies that show that dietary intake doesn't directly correlate to blood cholesterol levels.

In some people who strictly ensure a super-low dietary intake, their bodies will actually make up the difference -- they'll internally manufacture cholesterol from other things in order to keep the blood cholesterol level high! Genetics is a big factor here. In fact most of your cholesterol is built by your body, not taken from your food. It appears that diet is not the major factor for most people. Read more at the American Heart Association, which I would consider a pretty reliable source... http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3046105

Presumably in some people with heart disease, limiting saturated fats helps. But for other people, saturated fats might HELP, apparently (!). Read here:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/5/1102

I'd consider the AHA and Journal of Clinical Nutrition to be rather reliable sources (as opposed to all those "Cholesterol MYTH!" Web sites that take some of these ideas and run with them...)

When it comes to your risk of dying, being fat- obese, even- but fit is much less risky than being thin and unfit.

If you look at studies like Relationship Between Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Mortality in Normal-Weight, Overweight, and Obese Men, or especially Lee et. al. in Cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality in men, the results are that:

"In summary, we found that obesity did not appear to increase mortality risk in fit men. For long-term health benefits we should focus on improving fitness by increasing physical activity rather than relying on diet for weight control...our data show that fit men had greater longevity than unfit men regardless of their body composition or risk factor status. Obese men should be encouraged to increase their cardiorespiratory fitness by engaging in regular, moderate-intensity physical activity; this should benefit them even if they remain overweight."

The Lee et. al. study shows that the risk of cardiovascular disease goes up with obesity, but even there:
"fit, obese men had a lower risk of CVD mortality than did unfit, lean men"

All to say- first, get fit. Then worry about your weight.

"Soft drinks sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup are up to 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds, such as methylglyoxal, than a diet soft drink control. Carbonyl compound are elevated in people with diabetes and are blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup

Soda Warning? New Study Supports Link Between Diabetes, High-fructose Corn Syrup
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/532433/

Diabetes fears over corn syrup in soda. New Scientist (04 September 2007)
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19526192.800-diabetes-fears-over-corn-syrup-in-soda.html

Theresa Waldron Sugary Sodas High in Diabetes-Linked Compound
http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.asp?docID=607536

Bantle, John P.; Susan K. Raatz, William Thomas and Angeliki Georgopoulos (November 2000). "Effects of dietary fructose on plasma lipids in healthy subjects". American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 72 (5): 1128-1134.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/72/5/1128

Whey Protein and Fructose, an Unhealthy Combination. Enerex Botanicals. Retrieved on 2007-1-17.
http://www.enerex.ca/articles/whey_protein_and_fructose.htm

Jurgens, Hella; et al. (2005). "Consuming Fructose-sweetened Beverages Increases Body Adiposity in Mice". Obesity Res 13: 1146-1156.
http://www.obesityresearch.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/7/1146

Faeh D, Minehira K, Schwarz JM, Periasamy R, Park S, Tappy L (July 2005). "Effect of fructose overfeeding and fish oil administration on hepatic de novo lipogenesis and insulin sensitivity in healthy men". DIABETES 54 (7):1907-1913. PMID 15983189
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/54/7/1907

high-fat-diet-induced insulin resistance

High-fat diet indeed. When will the low fatters give it up. Fat does not fuck up carbohydrate metabolism. Carbohydrate fucks up fat metabolism.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/86/2/276
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/2/1/21

You can find the official recommended intake amounts

And you can find Vieth's explanation of why there is no RDA for Vitamin D here: Vitamin D insufficiency: no recommended dietary allowance exists for this nutrient

Another thing I found out is that you can't get an optimal amount of Vitamin D from supplements because it is all preformed vitamin D so your blood levels will track your intake, and nobody really knows exactly how much is best. When skin gets exposed to sunlight on the other hand, the vitamin D is stored and released appropriately to maintain the optimum concentration (assuming there's enough sunlight).....

Yes, we are still learning how much is best. No, we are not completely without informed opinions. It is generally accepted that serum 25OH-D status is the best indicator of Vitamin D status. There is an emerging consensus that you need to keep your serum levels above 70 or 80nmol/L to keep your skeleton from falling apart as you age.

Who said they were waiting to see that too much vitamin D causes some other serious illness? It causes "hypercalcemia", at least.

Please cite your cases. Or perhaps you meant to say "COULD cause hypercalcemia in some patients, but rarely in any who have not take INDUSTRIAL amounts of the substance". You may want to start by reviewing Vieth's seminal paper in which he systematically dismantles published accounts of Vitamin D poisoning.

If you were to consume a bottle of vitamin D supplements that would be lethal

Now you have passed along an utter untruth. You're probably unaware that it is not uncommon in Europe for doctors to use "stoss therapy" to assure Vitamin D status in particular patients. Stoss therapy consists of an annual injection of perhaps 150,000IU to 300,000IU -- much, much more than can be found in your local grocery store bottle of Vitamin D. I seem to recall a recent study in which infants (infants!) with rickets were given 600,000IU. I personally took an entire bottle (90,000IU) of Vitamin D3 the last time I started coming down with a cold (checks pulse -- yes, still completely alive!).

Can anyone make a useful comment about those sunlamp things, *please*?

If you elect to use sunlamps, buy from someone who can supply the relative known fraction of UVA/UVB (you want UVB for D production -- you don't really want the UVA that much). Sperti is a possibility. There is a flourescent bulb that really closely emulates the sun's UV frequency power ratios. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell it's only being used in industrial hoods, not consumer sun lamps.

I just want some dam numbers!

Get the #1, most important number: go to your doctor and get a prescription for a test to measure your 25OH-vitamin D serum levels. Make sure the test technology is either Diasorin RIA, or high-performance liquid chromotography with tandem mass spectrometry (or just insist on going to Quest Diagnostics -- I *think* they now uniformly use the latter technology).

My wife and I are planning a family, which prompted me to trawl for "Vitamin D" and "Pregnancy" and I came across this very interesting review of Vitamin D medical research indicating it would be useful for mothers to get a lot more Vitamin D than they are getting. (Note, the article is quite long, but for those in a similar position, its interesting reading and maybe something to discuss with your obstetrician.)

I'll stick to searching 'pubmed.org' for "milk, osteoporosis" and seeing the randomized control trials, thank you.

Culling out publications from obviously biases sources such as the "Journal of Dairy Science", can you find a randomized controled trial showing that unfortified dairy products have a protective impact on osteoporosis?

Such a result would be surprising given the findings of a study published in the American Journal of Public Health which followed 77,761 women and found no protective impact of dairy products on fractures.

A PubMed search will find this meta-analyis from Pediatrics on osteoporosis, or this article on the increased risk for prostate cancer from dairy consumption from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This study from the same journal notes "Over the years, doubts have arisen concerning the use of milk as a calcium source in the prevention of osteoporosis, particularly because of potential offsetting effects of protein and phosphorus." This letter in that same journal points out that living in countries with a high dairy consumption is a risk factor for osteoporosis.

This page from PCRM give citations to several studies on the health impact of dairy consumption.

See also this analysis in Public Health Nutrition which states, "Regarding associations relating the consumption of dairy products with chronic diseases, in Western societies consumption of dairy products has traditionally been linked to cardiovascular diseases (arteriosclerosis) and osteoporosis owing to their saturated fatty acids and calcium content, respectively. While the association between saturated fat intake and risk of arteriosclerosis is well established, the association between calcium from dairy products, together with vitamin D, and osteoporosis is less clear."

Here is your study:

Efficacy of a green tea extract rich in catechin polyphenols and caffeine in increasing 24-h energy expenditure and fat oxidation in humans

From the abstract: "Conclusions: Green tea has thermogenic properties and promotes fat oxidation beyond that explained by its caffeine content per se. The green tea extract may play a role in the control of body composition via sympathetic activation of thermogenesis, fat oxidation, or both."

There's many more, perhaps 90% is over the top, but there is much to go on about a reduced risk of cancer. I was hoping you would look more toward the sources listed on the pages, not the pages themselves.

"A vegetarian lifestyle of long duration (> or = 20 y) was associated with decreased overall and cancer mortality. Other determinants of decreased cause- specific mortality were physical activity, body weight, and strictness of adherence to the life-style. The relationship between a vegetarian and fiber-rich diet and a decreased risk for colon cancer has been reported in many studies. In this study, the influence of other factors such as health-conscious behavior and a healthy lifestyle seem to indicate partly stronger effects than nutrition itself. This may explain the generally better health of moderate vegetarians. "
http://intl.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/59/5/114 3S

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=95190656&dopt=Citatio n
"This report is a review of results that suggest that the diphenolic isoflavonoids and lignans are natural cancer-protective compounds."

"Other analyses showed that non-meat-eaters had only half the risk of meat eaters of requiring an emergency appendectomy, and that vegans in Britain may be at risk for iodine deficiency. Thus, the health of vegetarians in this study is generally good and compares favorably with that of the nonvegetarian control subjects."
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/70/3/525S

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=6944545&dopt=Citation

"Frequent consumption (more than once a day) of soy milk was associated with 70 per cent reduction of the risk of prostate cancer (relative risk=0.3, 95 percent confidence interval 0.1-1.0, p-value for linear trend=0.03)."
http://www.springerlink.com/(unt1czj5hhaoh3i5sckbk 255)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&bac kto=issue,5,18;journal,75,126;linkingpublicationre sults,1:100150,1

"We conclude that a well planned lacto-vegetarian diet or a mixed diet with abundant amounts of vegetables and fruits is beneficial as regards the rate of cell proliferation, and most likely also reduces the risk of developing colorectal cancer."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7652722&dopt=Citation

And more:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=vegetarian+can cer&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&start=50&sa=N

No, not everything is "you-must-be-vegetarian" it's more, less red meat(don't have to eliminate) and give soy milk a try. I love to see how defensive people get when you (don't actually) challenge their diet. :)

There's many more, perhaps 90% is over the top, but there is much to go on about a reduced risk of cancer. I was hoping you would look more toward the sources listed on the pages, not the pages themselves.

"A vegetarian lifestyle of long duration (> or = 20 y) was associated with decreased overall and cancer mortality. Other determinants of decreased cause- specific mortality were physical activity, body weight, and strictness of adherence to the life-style. The relationship between a vegetarian and fiber-rich diet and a decreased risk for colon cancer has been reported in many studies. In this study, the influence of other factors such as health-conscious behavior and a healthy lifestyle seem to indicate partly stronger effects than nutrition itself. This may explain the generally better health of moderate vegetarians. "
http://intl.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/59/5/114 3S

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=95190656&dopt=Citatio n
"This report is a review of results that suggest that the diphenolic isoflavonoids and lignans are natural cancer-protective compounds."

"Other analyses showed that non-meat-eaters had only half the risk of meat eaters of requiring an emergency appendectomy, and that vegans in Britain may be at risk for iodine deficiency. Thus, the health of vegetarians in this study is generally good and compares favorably with that of the nonvegetarian control subjects."
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/70/3/525S

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=6944545&dopt=Citation

"Frequent consumption (more than once a day) of soy milk was associated with 70 per cent reduction of the risk of prostate cancer (relative risk=0.3, 95 percent confidence interval 0.1-1.0, p-value for linear trend=0.03)."
http://www.springerlink.com/(unt1czj5hhaoh3i5sckbk 255)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&bac kto=issue,5,18;journal,75,126;linkingpublicationre sults,1:100150,1

"We conclude that a well planned lacto-vegetarian diet or a mixed diet with abundant amounts of vegetables and fruits is beneficial as regards the rate of cell proliferation, and most likely also reduces the risk of developing colorectal cancer."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7652722&dopt=Citation

And more:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=vegetarian+can cer&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&start=50&sa=N

No, not everything is "you-must-be-vegetarian" it's more, less red meat(don't have to eliminate) and give soy milk a try. I love to see how defensive people get when you (don't actually) challenge their diet. :)

In subjects with diabetes, fructose produces a lower postprandial [after eating] response when it replaces sucrose or starch in the diet; however, this benefit is tempered by concern that fructose may adversely effect plasma lipids. Therefore, the use of added fructose as a sweetening agent is not recommended; however, there is no reason to recommend that people with diabetes avoid naturally occurring fructose in fruits, vegetables, and other foods.