Scientific Battlegrounds in Diets

There's an interesting article currently carried by the NYTimes (free reg. yada yada) that talks about the world of dieting, National Institutes of Health, Atkins as well as low-carb vs low-fat. The interesting thing, from a scientific perspective, is the sheer lack of study - and the reticence from the scientific community to question the party line.

Comments

Not the case...

[mensan98th]

Caveat: I work at Pennington Bimedical Research Center, and my boss, Dr. George Bray, was interviewed for but not quoted in the NYTimes article, I suspect because he argues for what he calls "the inevitability of calories." Some problems with the article:

1. It's lopsided journalism (surprised?). There's no *honest* attempt at balance, which is precisely what the author accuses the researchers of doing.

2. The acknowledgement of the validity of the alternative position is buried in the middle of the article on page 4: "Few experts now deny that the low-fat message is radically oversimplified." The author seems to return to it, but never really does.

3. Atkins's program, as with other low-carb programs, work well initially but are extremely difficult to maintain. (The same is true of low-fat diets, incidentally.) This is acknowledged by the research community.

4. Some of the substantiations, such as that claiming that one's body sees all carbohydrates as sugars (page 5), is imprecise.

5. An "Atkins diet without excess fat" (page 7) is a low-fat diet. Someone needs to get over himself.

6. This quote is especially choice: "...the public-health authorities may indeed have a problem on their hands. Once they took their leap of faith and settled on the low-fat dietary dogma 25 years ago, they left little room for contradictory evidence or a change of opinion, should such a change be necessary to keep up with the science" (page 7). It only seems like "contradictory evidence or a change of opinion" if you're outside the research community. This is one research community that is not monolithic.

Do more investigation before taking this article as gospel.

Re:Not the case...

[jqcoffey]

1. It's lopsided journalism (surprised?). There's no *honest* attempt at balance, which is precisely what the author accuses the researchers of doing.

True. However, how much lopsided journalism and research has the low-fat diet seen over the past 25 years? The NIH hasn't even sanctioned a research project on anything else until now!

3. Atkins's program, as with other low-carb programs, work well initially but are extremely difficult to maintain. (The same is true of low-fat diets, incidentally.) This is acknowledgedby the research community.

I won't say untrue, however I do disagree. I've been on it in "maintanence mode" for the past year, without issue. People think that the Atkins diet is just a "cold-turkey" kind of deal. It's only that way for the first couple of weeks. After that you slowly ramp up your carb intake to something more inline with your fat and protein intake, still avoiding processed and bleached carbs (white bread, potatoes, etc.)

4. Some of the substantiations, such as that claiming that one's body sees all carbohydrates as sugars (page 5), is imprecise.

I think you're misinterpretting here. He's talking about simple/processed/bleached carbs, which indeed your body turns almost immediately into sugars.

5. An "Atkins diet without excess fat" (page 7) is a low-fat diet. Someone needs to get over himself.

Does without excess food mean a low food diet? No, it means food in moderation, just as "without excess fat" means fat in moderation. That does not mean a low-fat diet.

It only seems like "contradictory evidence or a change of opinion" if you're outside the research community. This is one research community that is not monolithic.

I will bow to your experience/background on that comment, however, so called legitimate research has never been done or released to the general public on anything but low-fat diets. In fact, not to long ago the "food pyramid" replaced the "four food groups" advocating an even starchier diet! The old "four food groups" diet was a much saner plan, and in reality is much closer to the "revolutionary" Atkins diet than you might think.

Remember, the Atkins diet is a crash diet only in the beginning. It's designed to get people who are overweight into ketosis so they can "eat themselves" and start losing weight right away. Once they get to a healthy weight it goes into maintanence mode, which is damn close to the old four food groups doctrine.

Ahha!

[Latent IT]

Obligitory Hackers Diet reference.

Still the king, baby. Common sense, and a lot less trendy crap, and a whole lot more suck it up and deal mentality.

Re:Moderation

[meowmonster]

Almost two years ago I went in for a physical and to talk to my doctor about losing weight. I was almost 400 lbs. At that weight, you can't exercise because you'll destroy your joints before you lose any weight (and on an bicycle you fsck over your lower back). Trust me, I've done it. My doc spent several hours doing a physical and taking blood tests, did and EKG, etc...

After looking at the results he recommended that I get on the Atkins diet. He did recommend getting some exercise after losing some of the weight, but I had to get the weight off first. He also had me stop weight lifting because I was actually developing an un-healthy level of muscle mass. Trying to supply too much muscle with blood is actually hard on your heart. Also I found that when you have too much muscle in your upper body you can develop breathing problems in your sleep becuase your torso is too massive. These are some of the probs that body builders put up with. Also my cholesterol was in the 280's and the ratio was "way off" but I don't remember the numbers.

Well, I was on the diet for almost a year and dropped over 100 lbs. At first I was really skeptical, but after being on it for a couple of weeks, I couldn't believe how much energy I had. I was actually hyper. When I dropped about 50 lbs I started riding a bike and then running when I dropped more weight. Now I am 2 belt levels away from getting my black belt in tae kwon do, a lifetime dream of mine but I have alwasy been too heavy to do.

My cholesterol is in the 130's and the ratio has flipped the other way now. I have been off the Atkins diet for almost 9 mos now and have maintained my weight. I can't say that I am totally off the diet, obviously I had to change my way of eating because that's what got me where I was in the first place. I try to eat a low carb breakfast (bacon and eggs or a flax cereal). And a "lower" carb lunch - chicken salad or left over stir fry, maybe soup. Dinner is usually whatever though, spaghetti, pizza, etc...

The problem with the Atkins diet is that it is INCREDIBBLY BORING. I am so freaking sick of meat and cheese. I really should get back on it and drop another 20 - 30 lbs but haven't come up with the motivation to put myself on it full time again. I probably will this fall but I need a break.

The diet isn't for everyone. If people would shut their yap long enough to research it, the diet is actually for a specific type of metabolism. The metabolic condition is really brought on by a diet that has been extremely high in simple carbohydrates complicated by a genetic predisposition to diabetes (which is rampant in my family). You develop an insensativtiy to insulin and need more and more of it to metabolize glucose. The prob is, with that much insulin you body readily stores glucose as fat rather than metabolizes it - it becomes a viscious circle.

Through testing my doc found this condition in my body and recommended the diet which worked. There are several people I work with that thought they would try it without checking with their doc (which Atkins warns against in his book) after seeing my success that got sick on the diet. It isn't for everyone.

Re:The studies have been done.. by interested part

[Lemmy Caution]

The fact is that most people in most of the world haven't needed to have the sort of self-discipline that you claim suddenly fell out from the bottom of the public spirit, because until lately most people haven't had an excess of food available to them so often and so constantly.

The real reason why a lot of poor (by US standards) and recently-but-no-longer poor Americans eat poorly has a lot to do with class mobility. People learn eating habits early, and as part of family cultures. When families are still in "survivor mode," when the experience of scarcity is still persistant in the values of that family, they are taught, first, that food is an intrinsic pleasure and, secondly, that the waste of food is unethical and risky. Add to that factors like a. stress, b. schedules that encourage fewer, bigger meals instead of more, smaller ones, and c. the lack of information about healthier foods (or of a traditional food-culture, like those in Spain, France, and Japan, that has over centuries learned how to make healthier meals) and you have the formula for obesity.

Ultimately, people have the willpower that they have, and I find it far more logical, and a better use of Ockham's Razor, to assume that their contexts and environments have changed more quickly than some questionable intangible of "willpower" has.

Incidentally, if you think I'm an obese person trying to explain away my condition, you're wrong. I'm completely fit, a little less than my ideal weight, and lead an active lifestyle.

What worked for me

[interstellar_donkey]

About a year ago, I was fat. Not gross, but definatly verging on the relm of unattractive.

I looked into all these diets and there was so much conflicting information, that I just made up my own.

It was very, very simple. 1. No booze except on the weekends. 2. No matter what, no fast food (I still ate out quite a bit, just at sit down resturants where the nutritional value was a little better). 3. Walk for an hour a night. 4. If you ever are full, don't be afraid to stop eating (I had the bad habit of always needing to finish off my plate, even if I was'nt hungry).

Being somebody who spends 90% of his waking hours behind a computer in a desk chair (not to mention quite a few in my sleeping hours), it probably was the perfect fit.

I lost 45 pounds in 7 months, I feel much better, got to learn a lot more about my town (by walking), and have been told I look 'really good' by a number of very nice women.

I doubt this would work for somebody who was highly obese, or somebody who has a eating disorder... but chances are that for your average geek whos putting on the pounds, it just might work.

Re:I've read The Zone, and Body For Life

[sigwinch]

And I've never heard of a natural pesticide that is as dangerous as man-made ones.

Many common plants contain extremely toxic chemicals. Make a salad of tobacco and the nicotine will kill you. Amanitas phalloides mushrooms are famously poisonous. So is jimson weed. Many spices and flavoring herbs are poisonous in larger quantities. Numerous plants contain potentially dangerous amounts of oxalic acid. Milkweed is so poisonous that many insects can't eat it. Monarch butterflies do, however, and in the process become so poisonous that nothing will eat them; another species of butterfly evolved to look like monarchs to scare off predators.

Man-made pesticides do awful things to your body and the environment.

Rubbish apocalyptic religion. The scientific truth can be found by simply looking outside: if pesticides were as bad as the envirodorks say, everything would be dead.

(The main problem with synthetics are that certain chemicals structures are highly persistent, esp. molecules containing halogens or aromatic rings. If you use them indiscriminantly, they tend to build up over time, which is much worse than simply being toxic.)

They can't add fertilizers, etc, that speed up the growth of the plant/fruit/vegetable, but often leave them tastless.

Breeding for durability is a bigger part of the problem. From a seller's point of view, a good tomato is one that can be spend weeks in a truck; taste is simply not a consideration. Likewise, a florist's ideal rose is indestructible, rather than a fragrant variety you'd want to grow in a garden.

My personal experience with ATKINS

[MrIcee]

Being a sedentary scientist (e.g., spending ones time on ones ass) I had gradually gotten larger and larger when, about 6 years ago, I discovered that I was over 250 pounds (yikes!!!). My wife and tried numerous *diets* only to find that the weight didn't come off.

Watching an infomercial one day on Atkins, it sounded too good to be true, so we bought his book and tried his diet.

First... here are the good things about the diet (then I'll list the bad things):

THE GOOD

1) Yes, you can eat *unlimited* quantities of meats etc... as long as you totally control your carb intake. We would go to Outback or Ruths Chris and I would eat 3 or 4 porkchops... and some brocolli... till I could eat no more.

2) The diet throws you into ketosis - which is a diabetic term for pure fat burning. You can go to the drug store and get ketosis testing strips, little PH papers that you pass your pee stream over. The color the paper turns indicates the amount you are in ketosis. Once in ketosis, you are in pure fat burning mode.

3) Did I lose weight? YOU BET!!! I dropped from 250+ pounds to 190 pounds in about 8 months. The diet is amazing because on a daily basis, you can easily see 1/2 to 2 pounds disappear (make sure you weigh yourself at exactly the same time each day for accurate statistics). My wife also dropped 50 pounds.

THE BAD

Here are some negative things about the diet:

1) You must be sure to drink LOTS of water on this diet... and I mean LOTS. The diet is very hard on the kidneys because they have to work overtime to break down the larger molocules. By drinking lots of water you assist your kidneys and actually drop the weight even faster. If you don't drink water, kidney damage can result.

2) The closer you get to your desired weight (e.g., the longer you are on the diet), the slower you begin to drop weight. At the start of the diet, the pounds were flying off. By the end, we would even out for a few days and then drop a pound or two. The book says this happens - and indeed it does. The main reason for this is that your body has adapted to the new diet - so for us, that was the stopping point.

3) Upfront it is very gratifying to eat unlimited amounts of all those wonderful foods... but in the end we tended to become bored with the diet - which happens in most diets. But don't get me wrong, we were still happy as can be that we dropped 60 pounds in such a short time.

THE UGLY

You stop pooping. Because you are getting little fiber in your diet (and the diet recommends that you keep up on high fiber, but it's hard) - you literally stop pooping. Other problems associated with not pooping can raise their ugly bumps at this point. However, this all goes away once you ease yourself off the diet.

The other negative... you drop weight so fast that your skin ends up loose. This was a shock to my wife and me. We actually had skin that looked to be very loose. It took about 3 months after the diet was over for the skin to tighten up to our new bodies - but tighten it did.

So did I keep the pounds off?

The diet encourages you to reach a point and then back off the diet. The wonderful thing about the diet is that you now understand how to quickly lose weight... so if you indulge in a weekend of excess, all you need to do is go on the diet for 3 days to lose that excess and back down you are.

I've managed to keep the weight off - and right now I'm fluxuating around 200 lbs. I'm about to start again because I want to drop the final 30 lbs.

Another positive point... if you have cronic heart burn - we discovered it was from eating carbs. In fact, a friend of mine who had been told to sleep upright because of his cronic heartburn, had the symptoms totally disappear (as did I) on this diet. Amazing. And since, I've noticed that I only get heart burn if I eat too many carbs in a meal.

The diet is not for everyone... and it helps to have a partner go through it with you (otherwise whoever you eat with won't like the meat-only choices you are forcing). Anyway... it worked for me - and it tought me to not listen to the government bullshit about the food pyrimid or any of their other crap they shovel out about dieting. They don't have a clue.

ALOHA!