Low-Carb Diet Trumps Low-Fat Diet In Major New Study

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Low-Carb Diet Trumps Low-Fat Diet In Major New Study

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 2, 2014 @12:12AM from the you-can-pry-my-cereal-from-my-cold,-dead-hands dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports on a new study (abstract) showing that low-carb diets have better health benefits than low-fat diets in a test without calorie restrictions. "By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity. While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat. They actually lost lean muscle mass, which is a bad thing,' Dr. Mozaffarian said. 'Your balance of lean mass versus fat mass is much more important than weight. And that's a very important finding that shows why the low-carb, high-fat group did so metabolically well.' ... In the end, people in the low-carbohydrate group saw markers of inflammation and triglycerides — a type of fat that circulates in the blood — plunge. Their HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, rose more sharply than it did for people in the low-fat group. Blood pressure, total cholesterol and LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, stayed about the same for people in each group."

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The diet is unimportant... by Karmashock · 2014-09-02 00:17 · Score: 5, Informative

Simply eat what your body needs... beyond that, exercise. That is why people are getting fat. Not because they're eating too much but because they're not doing anything.
Look at what Michael Phelps ate. Something like three pizzas a day or something. And he was in great health at the time. Won Olympic gold medals and everything.
The diet is the wrong way around to solve a problem. Which is how to stay healthy without exercising. Now maybe there is a diet that does that but most of them say "oh and exercise"... well, if you exercise the rest isn't important.

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1. Re:The diet is unimportant... by Shaman · 2014-09-02 00:20 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Anyone that has tried to exercise and eat what they want can tell you that it doesn't work. You also need to eat fairly cleanly. Phelps is like 7 feet tall, extremely active, very muscular and was taking both legal and not-so-legal supplements. You can't equate the nutrition needs of someone working out 2+ hours a day doing high-impact strength and endurance training with your average person.
  
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2. Re:The diet is unimportant... by rcharbon · 2014-09-02 00:21 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  All Michael Phelps did was eat, sleep, exercise, and do bong hits. The typical Slashdotter, with his monitor tan, should not use him as a guideline.
3. Re:The diet is unimportant... by Lumpy · 2014-09-02 01:03 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The other problem is that cheap food is full of crap and calories that are not needed. all foods should have the calories and servings printed in large print on the front.
  Many poor people will eat an entire box of mac and cheese dinner for a meal, that is 1450 calories if prepared with skim milk or powdered milk. That is an UNGODLY amount of calories for a single meal, and they will feel hungry in 1 hour because it's all empty calories with no fiber or substance to it.
  If all someone eats is the pre-packaged processed crap in boxes, they will gain weight because a sane calorie amount of that meal is so small, they will over eat because they think they are eating a sensible meal but in reality the calorie count of the pre-packaged crap is sky high and not printed in big letters on the front.
  
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4. Re:The diet is unimportant... by DarkOx · 2014-09-02 01:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I agree with your statement but what people *need* to understand about exercise is that its not really about the calories you burn while you are doing its about your overall metabolism.
  If you say go hiking most weekends in summer and cross country skiing most weekends in winter, you are going to have a great deal more muscle tissue on your legs are arms than someone who spends their weekends in front of their xbone. You will also have cardio-pulmonary development to support sustained high output.
  That muscle tissue and elevated metabolism is going to sit there burning more calories during the week while you sit in the office at your desk. So in the context of exercising to lose weight its not really about the energy expenditure in performing the direct act, its about about turning your body to "run hotter".
  
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5. Re:The diet is unimportant... by SQLGuru · 2014-09-02 01:32 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  If the equation to be healthy is (and I'm not arguing that it isn't)
  Caloric Intake == Exercise (or at least approximately equals)
  You are assuming that people want to maximize the Caloric Intake variable. I think most of us are trying to minimize the Exercise variable instead. To do so, we are looking for the maximum Caloric Intake that requires the least amount of Exercise so that we can still be healthy. Low-carb seems to be better at this than Low-fat.
6. Re:The diet is unimportant... by kilfarsnar · 2014-09-02 01:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The reason rates of obesity and associated afflictions like diabetes have skyrocketed in the past 30 years, is not because Americans' willpower has somehow become more lacking. It's because of the atrocious job the authorities have done in demonizing fat, and encouraging a high carb low fat diet. Fat does not make you fat carbs do by triggering an insulin response that converts the sugars in the blood stream into fat to be stored in cells.
  That and the fact that we subsidize corn and soy at the federal level. Processed foods like Cheetos and Hot Pockets end up being cheaper than healthier foods. So people on a budget (most Americans) can stretch their dollar by buying cheaper food that is higher in simple carbs and salt but not very nutritious.
  
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7. Re:The diet is unimportant... by u38cg · 2014-09-02 02:12 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Please don't assume that the diet of an Olympic athlete consuming ~12,000 calories a day has any relevance to what is a generally healthy diet for you.
  
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8. Re:The diet is unimportant... by AmiMoJo · 2014-09-02 02:15 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  When people have a strong will, they are healthy.
  Sorry, that's complete nonsense. The reality is that few people over the age of about 30 have a fully working, fully healthy body. Stuff goes wrong and it has nothing to do with will power, it's just genetic defects, the lasting effects of illness, accidents and age. Some people are lucky, some are not and telling the unlucky ones that they just need more "will power" is both insulting and unhelpful.
  Careful selection of foods can have a huge impact of many people. I suffer from CFS and a diet that specifically supports the parts of my body that don't work very well any more really helps. The CFS developed as the result of an infection, it was nothing to do with my "will power" and no amount of will can snap me out of it.
  
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9. Re:The diet is unimportant... by bluefoxlucid · 2014-09-02 02:18 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You will be an unhealthy, lean couch potato. Exercise builds blood vessel networks, breaks down old body mass, and allows your body to remain healthy. Physical activity causes consolidated fat cells to deflate and get replaced; it causes muscle cells to rework and replace; and it moves fat storage from fat cells to highly-active muscle cells, allowing burning of fat for energy via oxidization rather than lipolysis. The physical movement of blood helps wear down arterial plaque; the heart becomes stronger with increased load; and the metabolism of more fat during increased load cycles out the blood-borne cholesterol (necessary for life!) and corrects the balance of HDLs and LDLs of various types.
  I'm not gonna say it removes toxins from the body, but it does free some up if they're absorbed into cells which get deflated or replaced. Urination removes toxins from the body--that's what the renal system is for; otherwise you'd just sweat and conserve water by not pissing. Putting load on the body does tend to free float things, though: your body will engage in demolition as well as building, restructuring things instead of just adding more dense muscle mass on top of less-dense muscle mass.
  The only thing you particularly emit from the process is salt (magnesium, sodium, etc.), which is not toxic; but some soluble compounds constricted within cell membranes will become free-floating, either being re-absorbed or filtered by the renal system. Most of the toxic compounds are heavy metals (chelation required), which don't move around readily, and gases (CO2, chlorine, NOx), which move around quite easily anyway--you'll accelerate the removal of everything but CO2, which is scaled, simply by accelerating respiration and blood movement.
  In short: exercise has structural effects which greatly enhance health. It also accelerates the removal of some free-floating toxic compounds that your body eliminates anyway, and can temporarily make bound toxic compounds free-floating; but the removal of "toxins" isn't a major effect. Nevertheless, the slight increase in motility of nitrous oxides, the more rapid oxidization of free radical oxidizers, the more rapid elimination of excess salts and other compounds normally removed by the lymph and renal systems, and the replacement of overprovisioned forms of cholesterol with a more correct blood stream balance are, in combination and across decades, an important enough effect to warrant consideration.
  The major and minor effects of physical activity are interesting to me.
  
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10. Re:The diet is unimportant... by Shaman · 2014-09-02 02:38 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  That's because in actuality, you're eating healthier than someone eating two cups of rice with coconut milk in a thai chicken dish that most people think is healthy. A burger with fries is actually better in terms of protein:carb content and could be healthier. There's a lot of confusion about what "eating clean" means. It does not mean "eating low fat." The sushi on the other hand - not good for you, really. It's about 85% rice, which has virtually no nutrition beyond white carbs.
  
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11. Re:The diet is unimportant... by AthanasiusKircher · 2014-09-02 02:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Anyone that has tried to exercise and eat what they want can tell you that it doesn't work.
  THIS. Some people just have better regulating systems in their bodies -- either they have better genes, or they good about recognizing when they are full and stopping eating, or they have strong willpower, or they naturally gravitate toward eating things that their bodies will regulate well... or some sort of combination.
  But the simple fact is that -- unless you're a professional athlete or a manual laborer who does REALLY hard work for many hours per day -- chances are dietary inputs have a MUCH greater impact on weight than exercise.
  I know there are people here who will chime in and say "all calories are not the same" and that's true. But we can at least use calories as an approximation. It takes VERY little imbalance for your body to get way out of whack. Say you eat enough that your body stores an extra 100 calories per day. Roughly speaking, about 3500 calories will equal a pound of fat. If you maintain this, you'll gain about a pound per month. Do this for a few years, and you could end up 50 pounds overweight... all because of an extra 100 calories per day.
  Now, think about what it would take to correct that extra 100 calories per day. In terms of exercise, that's roughly running a mile, or doing some other sort of less vigorous workout for a longer period.
  But in terms of eating, 100 calories can be pretty small. That's less than a typical can of soda. Or a SMALL cookie. Or a tablespoon of butter or mayo. Did you squeeze an extra packet of mayo on your sandwich today? That could be your 100 calories.
  So, roughly speaking, which is easier to correct? Refrain from squeezing that extra packet of mayo, or running a mile every day? If you start talking in terms of real desserts -- like a large cookie or a piece of cake or a bowl of ice cream, you can easily get to 300-700 calories. If you eat dessert most days, you'd have to run 3-7 miles to correct for that.
  Of course -- it's not quite that simple. Different types of calories will produce greater or lesser feelings of fullness. Protein and fats seem to be better at reducing hunger than carbs are (in general -- again, this is speaking very roughly), which is probably the reason for the results seen in this study. So, chances are if you have the right balance of foods in your diet, you'll be less likely to accumulate that 100 calorie/day excess or whatever, because you'll feel more full without eating more.
  Anyhow, that's all in the details. My general point is: it takes a lot more work to offset extra caloric input through exercise than it does to just eat a little less. If you stop and buy the giant cinnamon bun in the mornings with a large latte, you may have already consumed more calories than a typical large steak dinner. And when a single cinnamon bun or a large dessert might be 800 calories or more, offsetting that with exercise would be just insane.
Re:What they don't tell you by jandersen · 2014-09-02 00:21 · Score: 5, Funny

So, in a word: a low fad diet?
Too simple by Errol+backfiring · 2014-09-02 00:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

That is a bit too simple. Lots of modern food contains so much energy that our internal alarm switches are blown off-line. Therefore, you don't feel full anymore and you keep eating. That is called Insulin resistance (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) It is hard to overeat on apples. It is easy to overeat on sweets.
Off course, the food industry just loves to create food that makes you keep eating, because that will also make you buy more of it. That is why even organic meat contains sugar and all kinds of syrup nowadays. The first step to a healthy life is to eat real food.

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1. Re:Too simple by Lumpy · 2014-09-02 01:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  " It is hard to overeat on apples."
  It's because fruit has a built in regulation system, eat 8 apples, and your system will do a high pressure speed purge out the other end. I ate 2 pints of blueberries once... I spent the evening on the toilet afraid to leave it.
  
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I hate carbs ... by CaptainDork · 2014-09-02 00:32 · Score: 3, Funny

... they have that gasoline taste.

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A change in diet - from what? by jandersen · 2014-09-02 00:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

What kind of diet did they start from? If the participants were typical Americans, it was probably something that was very heavy in sugar and other refined carbohydrates; more so that in fat, if I'm not mistaken, so cutting down on carbohydrates is no doubt the most important improvement to the diet one could make. Cutting back on fat would probably be the next, big step.
It is sometimes hard to remember just how extreme the typical Western diet is; it is perhaps particularly visible to me, because I have completely stopped drinking sweet drinks (including fruit juices and artificially sweetened drinks). Now I find I can't get through a whole glass of Coke - it's just too much, but only a few years ago I could drink whole liters of the crap.
As others have remarked, there is no need to follow any special diet, just stop eating and drinking crap. Of course, with the selection available, that in itself is actually not easy.
1. Re:A change in diet - from what? by ameen.ross · 2014-09-02 00:47 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The whole point of studies such as this is to find out exactly what is the crap that you need to avoid, really. That part certainly isn't common knowledge.
  
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Personal mistakes vs. governmental ones by mi · 2014-09-02 00:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades [emphasis mine -mi], a major new study shows.
A person can choose to eat this or that and it is his own responsibility. But, when the government decides, what's good for you (based on some "settled" science), it not only affects citizenry's opinion and makes us less responsible for ourselves, it also leaves millions directly controlled by the government — such as pupils in government schools — without choices at all.
Now, I don't doubt, that some of the stuff removed from schools by our omni-scient and caring Congressmen will never be considered good for anyone again. But they still force fat-free chocolate milk on kids, for example, in seeming contradiction to this new study. Maybe, both ought to be available — and parents, rather than the Federal government, be allowed to control the children's nutrition?
Sadly, the movement seems to be in the wrong direction. Some parents are already being punished for children eating incorrectly. And though in this case (200+ pound 8 year old), it is fairly obvious, that the parents are, indeed, screwy, it is likely to be a "poster-boy" for future interventions in cases less and less obvious.

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Re:What they don't tell you by Tx · 2014-09-02 00:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Easy to make such glib statements, but the whole point is to find out what is the ideal balanced diet. Both the groups in this study were eating all the things you'd include in your balanced diet, however the low carb group took a greater proportion of their calories in the form of fat, whereas the low fat group too a greater proportion in the form of carbs.

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Re:What they don't tell you by Wootery · 2014-09-02 00:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

A low fad lifestyle, strictly speaking.
What is essential by manu0601 · 2014-09-02 00:50 · Score: 3, Informative

Polyinsaturated fats (omega 3 and omega 6) are essential. The body cannot produce them, and they are required for major functions. Cutting fat means starving the body for something it needs
On the other hand, carbs are just fuel, and we can create glucose from amino acids if we need some.
Re:Calorific value? by drinkypoo · 2014-09-02 00:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

More important than either of these is the calorific value of the relative diets. Both of them (low carb / low fat) ultimately work by restricting the types of food, and therefore the calories,
No, in fact, that's the opposite of what this study shows. I'm not surprised you got this wrong, because you are simply parroting the prevailing thinking, but it is plain wrong and this study shows that. Of course, so did the ketogenic/Atkins diet, but you ignored that so it's not surprising that you're ignoring this.
Irony: Holding forth with an obsolete opinion as a reply to an article about a study which proves your opinion obsolete. You may try again, but you have failed abjectly and you're spreading bullshit misinformation to make yourself appear relevant.

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Re:Empty Calories by Lumpy · 2014-09-02 01:10 · Score: 3, Interesting

"fried chicken, I've pretty much put back on"
It's the crap on the outside of the fried chicken causing the problem. If chicken places would use a good soy based flour the carb content of fried chicken would drop like a stone. Buddy of mine created a batter for his out of soy that tastes better than anything I have ever had at a chicken joint.
Restaurants sneak in carbs because carbs are cheap.

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My weight loss diet last January by I'm+New+Around+Here · 2014-09-02 01:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

A couple months ago, I posted a detail of the diet I was on during January. I'll repost it here. It isn't the best argument that a high-fat diet causes weight loss, because of how radical it was. And it was short-term only. But it did work.
=======================
Let me tell you the long version of my one month diet. The short version is I lost 30 pounds in 31 days, and never felt any different.
On January 1st, I started a month-long diet plan. I had scrambled eggs in the morning, with mushrooms, onions, red bell peppers, and breakfast sausage mixed in them. I sauted the vegetables first in butter, added the sausage, and then the eggs, with some salt and seasoning. I made four days worth at a time, using eight eggs and half a package of sausage. So on average I had two eggs and two ounces of sausage. The calorie count was about 600 calories.
For dinner I had a salad. For a good salad, start with a big bowl. The ones I used hold a quart or more. Shred four leaves of iceberg lettuce, add a couple leaves of romaine, throw out the stalk part (or eat a couple as I'm making the salad). Add half a large tomato, diced, handful of chopped onion, sliced hard-boiled egg, shredded cheese, halved black olives, a few croutons, and small amount of ranch dressing. I prefer Thousand Island, but would have used too much, so went with Ranch, which I don't actually like. If the wife had made chicken the previous night, add a piece of chicken, sliced or pulled. Calories without the egg or chicken was about 100 calories, and is what I had half the time. With an egg add another 80, and with chicken add 300.
So for a month, Jan 1st to 31st, with only a couple exceptions, I had 1000 calories or less a day. The biggest exception was because I was out of town with my wife for a doctor visit one day. I ate a healthy dinner, but a few more calories than a salad. The other exception was a salad at Wendy's for lunch, also out of town, and a salad for dinner at home. Also, for a snack during the day, I would have eight to ten black olives, or a banana. I ate a banana on five or six days, and the black olives on fifteen to twenty days. The other days, I had nothing more than scrambled eggs and a salad.
To round that out, I drank at the most, a quart of water a day. One glass in the morning after breakfast, small sips during the day when my mouth was dry, and one glass after dinner. Again, the two exception days, I had diet soda or tea with the meals. With the salad of course, I got some more liquid, but the water my body used was simply provided by breaking down the fat cells. And I broke down a lot of fat cells. When I got up in the morning and used the toilet, my urine was a very dark orange. That was from the debris, solids and liquids, of unneeded cells.
During that month, I never felt tired, worn out, or light headed. I went from 230 pounds to 200 pounds. I did the same work I do all the time, fixing computers, crawling under desks, carrying them out to the car and back, installing network printers, etc. I didn't go to the gym at my apartment complex, or do any other workout.
As for hunger, I am always hungry anyway. I usually snack whenever I have the chance between jobs, tv shows, slashdot flamewars, and am still always hungry. So going a month being slightly more hungry wasn't really noticeable. Really, it's more boredom than hunger to begin with anyways.
Of course in the five months since I went off the diet, I regained some of the weight. Eight pounds in the first two weeks, as the depleted-but-surviving fat cells refilled with water. But that means I managed to destroy twenty-two pounds of them in one month. I want to go back on the diet, and get well below 200 pounds, but just haven't yet. Maybe now that my daughter's finished school, I can plan my life a bit more again.
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1. Re:My weight loss diet last January by rahvin112 · 2014-09-02 05:07 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  That month of only a quart of water a day just sliced about 10 years off the life of your kidneys. If your urine is dark orange you are actively damaging your kidneys. There is a reason everyone (all doctors, all dieticians, everyone) says drink lots of water, the more water you push through your kidneys keeps the contaminant load lower and works the kidney's less. The less water you drink ups the contaminant load and force the kidney's to process it with less available flow. This damages the kidney's. This is basic knowledge about how the kidney's function and you shortened the life of your kidney's significantly. What you did was very very stupid.
Re:Simply ignore studies ... by CaptainDork · 2014-09-02 01:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

Bulldust.
I can walk on a treadmill for an hour or simply avoid two thin slices of wheat bread. They are calorie-equivalent.
Weight-loss is best accomplished by reducing caloric intake. Trying to exercise weight off is fruitless.
Exercise is great for muscle toning, avoiding injury, increasing balance, beefing up air intake, and strengthening the heart.
It's a huge mistake to think weight-loss can be accomplished by exercise.
It's a huge mistake to think that wellness can be accomplished by diet.
The two should be used together to work on two separate issues.

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Diet is very important. by danaris · 2014-09-02 01:29 · Score: 4, Informative

Then why were people from 50 years ago not hugely fat? Because they were not eating all your little hipster diets and they were not fat.
The lack of understanding betrayed by this is almost ludicrous.
They didn't need to eat a "hipster diet" 50 years ago to avoid getting hugely fat, because an enormous part of the problem is the percentage of our food today that is processed, and the percentage that contains vast amounts of sugar (and particularly high fructose corn syrup). Which is exactly what (many of) the "hipster diets" strive to emulate.
I realize that on Slashdot, where people tend to be highly math-oriented, it's a popular fallacy to believe that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. However, studies like this one have been coming out for years now showing that that's simply not true.
Some kinds of energy are easier for our bodies to extract from food than others. Some kinds of food make our bodies feel more full than others. And our bodies need more in terms of nutrition than just calories—so, contrary to one of your other posts, no, a 12 thousand calorie diet of pizza cannot be healthy, unless the toppings on that pizza are very carefully selected to provide the nutrients that our bodies actually need.
It would be nice if nutrition were a simple formula, where you could just calculate calories in minus calories expended and come out with a nice, pleasing mathematical formula. But the human body isn't a spherical body in a vacuum, and "calorie" isn't a unit of nutrition, no matter how much you try to make it so.
Dan Aris

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The comments in this thread are embarrassing. by BradMajors · 2014-09-02 01:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

Someone posts a scientific article about dieting and everyone posts their wild unproven theories about dieting.
If I wanted to read wild speculation by uninformed nobodies I can find that elsewhere.
Re:Simply ignore studies ... by Karmashock · 2014-09-02 01:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Wrong, it isn't just the exercise. Its the muscle mass.
It isn't enough just to walk a little. you need to build some muscle so your baseline metabolism goes up. That muscle needs to be sustained with a constant extra supply of energy. If you stay in bed all day you will still burn some calories. If your body is very fit then your baseline metabolism will probably be a great deal higher.

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Re:What they don't tell you by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-09-02 02:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

Were is the science that backs your theory?
The whole situation is a little complex, but we might start out with what we evolved to deal with. This seems to work with wild animals. It is obvious in the case of frank carnivores, and frank herbivores. Horses seldom seek out a juicy steak, and Cheetas don't often beg for loaves of bread.
With omnivores like humans, it is a little more complex. We're designed to eat a lot of different things.
So what has happened? Why do people have so much trouble maintaining a healthy weight?
Ever since I can remember, we have been bombarded by th e concept that there is a scale of healthy eating, and that elimination of as much fat as possible is desirable, and the ne plus ultra of healthy living is veganism, followed by vegatarianism, then low fat/high carb, then the unwashed masses of high protein, and the soulles spawn of Satan - the Atkinists.
So here's one citation from the NIH:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... Less central obesity in men consuming a high milk fat diet. It's a narrow study, but interesting.
Here's one from Harvard. An opinion piece, but well done:
http://www.foodandnutritionres...
Here's a nice link with references.
http://authoritynutrition.com/...
I tried a low fat vegetarian diet for a time in the very late 80's, specifically, I ate eggs for protein, otherwise, all "healthy" veggies and starches.
Aside from being hungry all the time, losing only 2 pounds, and having my GI tract all bitched up for months, it was awesome. After 6 months, I gave up and ate a nice juicy medium rare steak. In around a week, I was back to feeling normal,
Interestingly enough, my parents ate probably 4 times the fat I did. And had absolutely no weight problem at all.
Where did we go wrong? Just an educated guess on my part:
Bread and pasta. That stuff is awesome and versatile. It's also a great way to fill a person up with not much more than empty calories.
Sugar. Likewise great tasting stuff. But seriously, just how fucked up is it that we as a nation are debating how Mexican Pepsi is healthier than US Pepsi? It's sugar asswipes.
Now the latest and weirdest one. Soybeans. Seen how many American men have tits now? Even ones who aren't obese?
Our friend the phytoestrogen, brought to you by soybeans and peas. And we are consuming a whole lot more of that stuff than we should. And I'm not certain that the rise of testosterone supplements isn't a backwards way of trying to treat men with bitched up hormone levels.

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Re:What they don't tell you by Wootery · 2014-09-02 02:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

And veganism is completely unnatural and artificial for humans.
It is fortunate, then, that vegans aren't claiming otherwise.
There's a difference between denying the diet of our evolutionary ancestors, and having a problem with the way animals are treated in modern farms. I'm surprised by how often I have to point this out.
Re:What they don't tell you by hsthompson69 · 2014-09-02 03:25 · Score: 3, Informative

There are essential fatty acids.
There are essential proteins.
There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate.
Overeating is a tautology - you only decide if someone over ate based on *outcome*, not on *activity*. Two people who eat and exercise the same amount, but one gains weight, and only one is "overeating".
The fact of the matter is that fat accumulation is driven by insulin. Insulin is driven by blood sugar. Blood sugar is driven by carbohydrates.
A closed-loop feedback diet system by MasterOfGoingFaster · 2014-09-02 04:17 · Score: 3, Interesting

I also lost about 30 lbs, with no exercise, by changing my diet to a low-carb diet. But I used a closed-loop feedback for food selection for less than US$20.
I (and several others) purchased a blood sugar meter. Basically, we would check our blood sugar levels (BSL) at 1 and 2 hours after eating. We all found that some foods would take us up to 120 (the upper limit for our experiment), but some foods blasted BSL up to 200. Avoiding foods that triggered high levels caused us all to lose weight, feel less hungry, and we snacked less or not at all. All of us saw significant-to-radical improvements in our health. The real surprise is how many foods affected some of us, but not others. The more we compared notes on food, the more we realized it to be dependent on the person's response. Foods that affected all of us tended to have wheat, corn and related by-products.
I share this, hoping others will give it a try and report back.
The idea of a one-size-fits-all diet makes as much sense as a one-size-fits-all shoes and clothing. I'm convinced we need to take advantage of the feedback tools available and customize your own diet, based on your body's reactions.

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Place nail here >+
Damned dyslexia! by seven+of+five · 2014-09-02 04:18 · Score: 3, Funny

I gave up crabs for nothing.