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Why the Calorie Is Broken (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Nutrition is a subject for which everybody should understand the basics. Unfortunately, this is hard. Not only is there a ton of conflicting research about how to properly fuel your body, there's a multi-billion-dollar industry with financial incentive to muddy the waters. Further, one of the most basic concepts for how we evaluate food — the calorie — is incredibly imprecise. "Wilbur Atwater, a Department of Agriculture scientist, began by measuring the calories contained in more than 4,000 foods. Then he fed those foods to volunteers and collected their faeces, which he incinerated in a bomb calorimeter. After subtracting the energy measured in the faeces from that in the food, he arrived at the Atwater values, numbers that represent the available energy in each gram of protein, carbohydrate and fat. These century-old figures remain the basis for today's standards."
In addition to the measuring system being outdated, the amount of calories taken from a meal can vary from person to person. Differences in metabolism and digestive efficiency add sizable error bars. Then there are issues with serving sizes and preparation methods. Research is now underway to find a better measure of food intake than the calorie. One possibility for the future is mapping your internal chemistry and having it analyzed with a massive database to see what foods work best for you. Another may involve tweaking your gut microbiome to change how you extract energy from certain foods.
In addition to the measuring system being outdated, the amount of calories taken from a meal can vary from person to person. Differences in metabolism and digestive efficiency add sizable error bars. Then there are issues with serving sizes and preparation methods. Research is now underway to find a better measure of food intake than the calorie. One possibility for the future is mapping your internal chemistry and having it analyzed with a massive database to see what foods work best for you. Another may involve tweaking your gut microbiome to change how you extract energy from certain foods.
FTA "Nash uses an app to record the calories he consumes and a Fitbit band to track the energy he expends."
Is it possible that the Calorie is just fine and maybe using some cheap piece of electronics strapped to your wrist is just a really piss poor way to track the energy expended?
Whatever happened to eating a balanced diet and getting exercise?
What I don't get is the people that eat 3 full meals a day, go to work and sit down all day then come home to sit down all evening and then wonder why they get fat.
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I don't see how any of that stuff makes the calorie "broken". Sure, "Differences in metabolism and digestive efficiency add sizable error bars." etc etc. Gasoline has 30MJ/L of energy, and the fact that cars have different fuel efficiencies doesn't mean that isn't useful data, or that the joule is "broken" either.
Is it really news to anybody that you need to take account of more than just pure calorie intake when monitoring your diet?
Oh no... it's the future.
If we're talking about obesity, then it's still a case of you only get fat if you eat too much. And here (for those who haven't already clicked Reply and are starting an argument) "too much" means more than your body needs to function, for however much or little exercise you take.
If your weight is increasing and you don't want it to: either exercise more to burn off the excess, or eat less. That is independent of whatever unit of energy you use - or the accuracy of the food labeling.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Sorry to be presumptuous, but that can not be right. Assuming by exercise you mean something at least as vigorous as walking, two hours of that will burn ~500 calories alone. That leaves you with around 500 calories of energy to keep your body alive. Your body would not be able to cope with that for extended periods of time, and there's no chance it would reserve those precious calories as body fat.
Of course it's individual.
However the gutbuster 3.2387490e+47 calorie lasagne and chips caff special (which is sodding awesome by the way) is going to give you more energy than that little salad from Pret.
So yes, if you're measuring your energy expenditure very accurately (you're not) then the precise calories matter (so they don't).
However they give approximate answers. Count up calories. If you're fat, try reducing the numbers while eating the same sort of stuff. The thing is the absolute numbers aren't important. However, the relative numbers are more useful.
You can also help by changing the type of food too. But if you don't, the relative counts are good enough for may purposes.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Whatever happened to eating a balanced diet and getting exercise?
What I don't get is the people that eat 3 full meals a day, go to work and sit down all day then come home to sit down all evening and then wonder why they get fat.
Well that is one question that the conventional research does not adequately address.
If someone is a diabetic, all of the numbers are skewed towards fat storage being a priority in general. If this were not the case, and you could validly shift all the blame onto the "people are overeaters and lazy " as a 100% valid and testable explanation of the problem, then you have been hiding under a rock in the US for about 40 years now and are not paying attention to any evidence.
Here are some things we know now that are not being acknowledged that is along this line of questioning and you can see results with today (and the calorie as a concept is only partly to blame, the proper question being "What sorts of calories are needed and what sorts of calories cause a problem?")
1- Since the 1950s, the poor conclusions of research by Ancel Keys was treated as gospel, and yet he cherry picked his evidence, that the best diet to prevent heart disease was a high carb , low fat diet. This failed to explain the Innuit people, the French and the Japanese, who eat high fat moderate protein diets and had anomalously low rates of heart disease and obesity despite eating high fat diets.
2- It is nearly impossible in the US to find foods that do not have carbohydrates added to them.
3- Mountains of research have shown that high carbohydrate diets lock down your stored fat such that you cannot access it even if you do enough exercise in a day that would kill an olympic athlete, it is not laziness that is the problem because if you run the numbers on how many calories you eat and how many you expend, on the normal american diet, you would have to kill yourself to lose the average of a fraction of a pound a day. Exercise, in general is not an effective method of weight loss, and your body will actively fight you on it if your macronutrients (how much fat, carbohydrate and protein) are skewed toward energy being derived from carbohydrates.
4- despite all the claptrap, there is no such thing as an "Essential Carbohydrate". This has been shown over and over..
So if you want to lose weight and you are the supposedly lazy office worker you talk of, perhaps you could:
1- limit carbohydrate intake to as low as possible. .6 to 1 gram of protein for every pound of lean body weight, which every is closer for your activity level)
2- get adequate protein in your diet (20% of daily calories or enough that you have
3- Consume saturated fat for energy and put this up to somewhere around 75% of daily caloric intake.. and of these fats have 1/2 of your fat intake from short chain fatty acids and about 46% from mono-unsaturated fatty acids which would be your olive oils etc and limit your poly-unsaturated fatty acids in a 50/50 mixture of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids totaling your intake of poly-unsaturated fats to no more than 4% of total caloric intake per day.)
if you can do those 3 things correctly every day, you will lose body fat, even if you are eating over your magic number of essential calories. I have done it and I am a diabetic who many doctors just throw their hands up and say that this is a chronic problem I will never be able to fix (they being fat themselves) and then when I come back and give blood they have no idea how I am able to control my blood sugar so tightly , keep my cholesterol numbers so fantastic and lose fat without losing lean body mass and then their explanation turns to some vague mention of being "Genetically lucky". All the while all I am doing is Ignoring the bullshit bad science being pushed on us by Ancel Keys.
Oh and by the way, in summary the concept of a "Balanced Diet" is a snow leopard, there is 0 consensus on what a "balanced diet" is. Never has been, yet you hear
You're making several errors, the first of which is that it's overweight people whining about BMI. It is not, from what I've seen. Fit people talk about BMI. I was one of them, and I was borderline overweight despite being a very thin person.
The second is that one's daily schedule is irrelevant if they are careful about what they eat. A full meal can be very low in calories, and a lack of exercise does not necessarily lead to obesity. There are many, many more factors at work here.
Most people claim that BMI is inaccurate because...it's inaccurate. Professional athletes whose bodies are the epitome of fitness perfection are rated obese by BMI. The BMI was designed to determine the overall fitness level of a large group of people, like a nation. It was never meant to be used as an index for an individual level of fitness. It's used because it's a simple number that most people can understand, but human physiology is complicated. Most people are not smart enough to deal with the level of complexity, all the variables, to make intelligent decisions.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Bmi is a gross descriptor and is NOT meant to be a physical assessment target. It is based on statistical analysis of data, not on prolonged research of how to live right. One must take it as part of a bigger picture.
Especially overweight people actively deluding themsleves by claiming that BMI doesn't apply.
BMI is pretty useless for many people. Taking myself for example. I'm about 5'10 and weigh around 175-180lbs with body fat % somewhere in the low teens. I coach a wrestling team and I'm in reasonably good shape and stronger than average for my weight. If I were to cut to competition weight I would be 150-160 and I competed in college at 150 many years ago. Anything lower than that and I'd be well into unhealthy - certainly nothing sustainable. But according to BMI calculators I would have to get down to around 130lbs to be considered underweight. Last time I weighed that much I was cutting weight as a junior in high school and was under 6% body fat. You'd have to put me in a concentration camp or give me cancer to get me that low again. BMI calculators put me now at borderline overweight at my current weight and that description doesn't make sense. My waist size is the same as it has been since college and while I could shed about 5-10% of my body mass without ill effect that's hardly overweight. I'm not delusional about my weight - I actually have a better idea of my body composition than most people do. Basically BMI is too crude a measure to be much use for a large swath of the population. It does have some utility but it can be pretty misleading too.
Following the diet at the letter was meaning weigh as much I could all the food I was eating and estimate when I couldn't, say wen I was eating outside, and having one and only one meal per week where I eated a bit more, like pizza or sushi, but without overeating.
Of course some foods were banned, like carbonated dink with sugar or industrial snacks. The doctor said to me that if I wanted to eat say some chocolate, having to eat less was way better to eat the high quality one.
When last week I meet him for the control visit, he complimented me with the result and gave me the maintenance diet, that was similar to the one I was following for loss weight but with some more daily food to eat.
I think that self made diets or read on newspapers aren't going to work. Ask an expert..
Remember the government's "four food groups" with X servings of 4 groups (meats, dairy, bread, fruits and vegetables)? (http://www.rootedcook.com/visuals/foodguides/ - 1956-1992) It worked (it was even used on game shows) because people could understand and remember four things and whole numbers without units.
Today's government food pyramid? It's 6 different items measured in a mix of "cups" and "ounces" (http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/05/82105-004-3C485EB5.jpg) - not exactly how food is packaged and remembering 6 different figures with units is beyond what people can easily recollect.
If you want the masses to "get" any nutritional advise, I can't see how blowing up a common denominator like the calorie would help.
This sort of story smacks of "Nutritionism" as explained in Michael Pollan's book 'In Defense Of Food'. Generally people do not need to know how many calories, carbs, nutrients, vitamins, etc. are in a piece of food unless you are a nutritionist, and most people aren't. How to eat healthy comes down to one simple rule:
Eat food(1) mostly plants(2) not too much(3).
(1) Food defined by things your great-grandmother would recognize as being food. Nothing overly processed. Food should spoil. If what you eat will not spoil you should not eat it. Things that are not food, but edible food-type substances: refined sugar (includes soda, twinkies, etc), refined flour (white bread, etc), refined oils of all kinds (peanut oil, sunflower oil, and *gasp* olive oil).
(2) Plants, meaning whole fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes. And a variety. Different shapes, textures, colors, whole and fresh if you can get it. This should make up 90% of your diet. Less than 10% of your diet should come from animal products. This includes dairy and meat.
(3) Don't eat too much of one thing. Don't overeat.
If you do this, you don't need to count calories or take vitamins or worry about your riboflavin intake. Just eat and be healthy.
-Matt
Exercises is fun and pleasant, but when it comes at the cost of not seeing kids at all that day which is reality of many crunch or full-time+ working guys, I guess they favor being present fathers over having fun with friends.
So why can't you exercise with your kids? There are different kinds of exercise. You only need the extreme variety if you're training for the Olympics or are a professional athlete. If playing with the kids is not your bottle of beer, you can do simple light calisthenics before and even after every meal. Just don't eat a horse or you might throw up. You can also try old-fashioned walking. If you work in a high-rise, use the fire exit for part of your journey to your office. If all else fails, do what bonobos love to do when they're not eating bananas.
How much exercise? What is the correct balance of food? What is the baseline and how do we adjust for age, height, climate, altitude and yes even ethnicity? These are the questions that should be addressed. One hugely effective thing that seems to be proven over and over again only to be immediately forgotten a month latter is that you need to time your meals with your circadian rhythm i.e. only eat at certain times of the day based op when you wake up and when you go to bed. These are the kinds of improvements on efficiency that the rest of us are looking for.
The article is a confused mishmash of different topics.
1. They present nothing wrong with the basic method used by Atwater, despite calling it "outdated". Discrepancies like the issue with nuts having 20-30% fewer calories than thought isn't due to a flaw in the Atwater method, it's due to them not actually being tested - they were simply grouped together with legumes and the calories just estimated based on fat, carbohydrate and protein present in them. The solution has nothing to do with there being "something wrong with the calorie" - the solution is that they need to test better and get better data.
2. Individual differences are generally small, and the only potential for significant deviation from the norm is towards those who get unusually few calories, not unusually many. I don't have time to dig up the numbers yet again right now, but they're in the ballpark of the average person's digestive system consuming ~94% of the protein that they eat, 97% of the fats that they eat and 99% of the carbohydrates that they eat. So a person's digestive system could potentially be much less efficient than average in some regard - although that's not normal - but it can't be much more efficient than average. You can have some more relevant variation on the breakdown of fiber to SCFAs but that's only a very small portion of daily calories. This excuse that the article is pushing people towards of "my body is just a much more efficient digester than the average person, that's why I'm fat" is simply not realistic.
3. Like in #1, there can be a difference between cooked and uncooked food in terms of availability of various nutrients - but again, this is not a problem with the concept of calories, it means that labels need to be accurate in regards to the preparation method. And it has very little impact on meat, contrary to the article's emphasis; it's mainly a plant thing (see the example of the nuts above). The human body is exceedingly good at breaking down cell membranes (animal cells), but not so great at getting through cell walls (plant cells), and it has more effect on non-caloric nutrients (many types of vitamins and minerals) than caloric ones. A lot of the energy loss in cooked meat is simply a fraction of the meat destroyed or otherwise lost (such as grease) in the cooking process. A steak shrinks dramatically when you cook it because it's losing ~45% of its water and a ~30% of its fat in the cooking process. The same steak has fewer total calories cooked, but more calories per gram.
4. Of course how you prepare food has an effect on what sort of nutrients it has, but since when is this news? Broiled, fried, steamed, etc - your mind is immediately jumping to pictures of how healthy that preparation method is when you see those words, isn't it? When you eat meat do you leave the skin on or take it off? Do you cut off gristle? Do you not expect these things to change the ratio of fats and proteins in the meat? We all know that how you fix a meal is going to influence the final picture. You don't calorie count a prepared meal by looking up the raw ingredients, you look up the prepared meal as a whole.
5. Their conflating the issue of cooked rice with the above about "cooking freeing up calories" is totally off mark, and actually backwards. Many types of starches (not just rice - potatoes, for example) partially convert from digestible starch to indigestible starch after cooling for several hours after cooking. There could be a general point to be made about how people should be better informed about the many ways in which preparation can alter the number of calories (though we already are generally rather aware of this), but it's not that the concept of the "calorie" is broken.
6. Metabolic consumption has nothing to do with the calories present in food. And yes, there are variations in basal metabolic rate. But the standard deviation is only 5-8%. Variations in metabolism from exercise betwe
What the hells goin on in the engine room? Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?
Instead of
One possibility for the future is mapping your internal chemistry and having it analyzed with a massive database to see what foods work best for you. Another may involve tweaking your gut microbiome to change how you extract energy from certain foods.
1) Eat food - food does not list ingredients, but often is listed as an ingredient. A potato is food, A box of scallop potatoes is not. If what you are eating is required to have labels to inform you of what is really in it, then it isn't food. (Note: this applies mainly to packaged food products. Obviously, there are foods that have labels, because they may be packed in water, etc.)
2) Don't change calories - Calories simply measure the maximum amount of energy that may be utilized. People have different metabolisms so that one person may be more efficient at utilizing those calories than somebody else, but that doesn't mean we should change the measure. Different automobiles are more or less efficient at utilizing gasoline, but that doesn't mean we should change how gasoline is labeled.
3) Calories aren't nutrition - Calories are about energy, not nutrition. 100 calorie apple and a 100 calories of sugar both provide the same amount of available energy, but the sugar has zero nutritional value. However, since calories do impact weight as in calories consumed less calories burned will either add to or subtract from one's weight, they can't be ignored. On the otherhand, they shouldn't be obsessed over, particularly since metabolism has a major impact on weight.
4) CICO - Calories In, Calories Out - assuming one is getting adequate nutrition, if the concern is weight, then regardless of ones metabolism, if you are gaining weight more weight than you want, you either a) need to reduce calories or b) burn more calories. Likewise, if you are losing more weight than desired, you need to a) increase calories or b) burn less of them. It doesn't take some database tailored to your specific body or specific flora in your gut. Those may explain why one person loses or gains more than another, but it doesn't alter CICO.
TL;DR - We don't need a national database of each person's metabolic profile or gut flora. We simply need to eat nutritious food and have more active lifestyles.
People *want* it to be more complex than that. People don't like the guidance they are given to be active, eat more vegetables and less simple sugars. Every time a study like this comes out they quiver in their seats at the thought that they've been absolved of personal responsibility for their health because the metric was wrong all along.
After all, if the medical community is so confused who can say if it is or isn't a good idea to tuck into another sleeve of Oreos? The definition of a calorie isn't perfect, so maybe drinking beer and watching TV actually counts as exercise?
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I would recommend reading the article. For once they actually linked to an in depth discussion of the topic and the author cites a lot of useful information. For inctance, there is wild variance in calories based on whether or not the food you eat is completely cooked. Large pieces of meat can be potentially hundreds of less usable calories if prepared rare instead of well done.
It is this evidence that the article uses to criticize the calorie because a calorie is a measure of the absolute value of energy in the food you eat not the measurement of what the usable amount of energy is. Furthermore the article delves into how those calorie measurements are taken, and cites several pieces of evidence that those calorie amounts are highly inaccurate.
The article also disuses the role that gut bacteria play in our digestion, citing an example where a mother had gut bacteria transplanted from here obese daughter and gained 40 lbs without any change to diet an exercise. Thus diet and exercise are not the only influences of what we gain and how much. The article is littered with such evidence.
It is not just as simple as the food pyramid which, btw has been a broken model since its inception. Protein is supposed to occupy the lowest rung not carbohydrates and this has been well understood for years. Any doctor should be able to tell you that.
In the end I do understand where you are coming from. After all I am someone that lost 60+ lbs just by counting calories, but there are a lot of things that I could verify within the article based on my experiences. Such as continued unexplained weight loss even when I seemingly exceeded the maximum calories per day that I should have been eating. The article is definitely worth your time to read and even if you disagree with the assertion that the calorie is a broken method of measurement there is still a lot of useful information present.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
This is the key stumbling block for many. They might think they're being healthy by having whole wheat pasta with veggies, but they pile so much pasta on their plate that they wind up eating five servings instead of one. Then, they wonder why they aren't losing weight. Combine this with mindless eating (open bag of chips and "I'll just eat one... and another... and another... how did this bag get empty so quickly?") and people's best intentions can be thwarted.
This is why I recommend that people:
A) Pay close attention to food labels. That "one serving" bag of chips that you think is only 80 calories might actually have 2.5 servings in the bag. So you're actually eating 200 calories. (Yes, I realize the article was all about calories being a bad measurement, but the point remains valid. You think you're eating X but you're really eating 2.5*X.)
B) Get a food scale and weight their food. Yes, it can be annoying, but it helps you keep track of just how much you're eating. Going "by eye" is a good way to overeat.
C) Write down what you eat. It could be a notebook or an app. (I prefer the MyFitnessPal app.) This helps cut down on mindless eating. And yes, write down EVERYTHING. You ate a few M&M's? Write it down. Cheating here or there (especially when you're just beginning) will lead to you overeating while your recorded food intake seems minimal.
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The calorie works great. Weight is calories in vs calories out. It's simple, effective, and efficient.
Weight is calories absorbed vs calories spent. It is deceptively simple if worded like this, but in practice it's anything but simple. Based on genetics and gut fauna (and other factors), you may absorb a different number of calories than someone else despite eating an identical diet. WOW chips and the like can claim to be zero calorie because 99% of the population isn't able to absorb their calories. Likewise, your metabolism, weight, body composition, etc, affect how many calories you use to do different activities.
Health, otoh, is complicated. Eating balanced meals, exercise, etc. People keep confusing the two.
Yea the humble Calorie is obviously not a totally accurate measuring stick, but it is a useful tool to gauge the energy content of similar foods that is simple and fast. Are their times when the vagaries of digestion and preparation techniques might cloud the accuracy of what it measures? Yep. However I think anybody who understood what it was actually measuring would quickly understand it's limitations and why they exist.
So, for the person watching their weight, it's a good tool to start on, but you are going to have to fine tune the solution based on *your* situation anyway. So long as you understand this, I don't see much of a need to ditch the Calorie, Especially if the tool proposed to replace it is more complex to use for the average consumer.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Google "The Hacker's Diet." In it, John Walker explains the basics of how it's all about just doing the math every day. I lost 33 lbs last year with a slightly modified version of this method. When I tell people I lost weight, the first words, almost invariably, are, "What's your secret?"
When I say "I counted calories every day" they are underwhelmed. The only other "secret" is that you have to be willing to be -a little- hungry, but not starving.
Web edition: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackd...
I lost 30lbs in 3 months. Never felt hungry, didn't count calories, didn't even change what I ate. I simply ate less. My dinner meals were basically either beef or chicken with rice almost every day of the week. While I did cut out snack foods (in fact I made sure to keep no snack food in the kitchen), I didn't stop drinking soda or sports drinks. Never starved myself, never went hungry; I ate until I didn't feel hungry then stopped. I also went from doing a workout designed to maintain conditioning and improve strength (I had just finished up my final season of college football) to a workout designed to improve cardiovascular activity and maintain muscle mass/strength. I weighed a little more than the lightest I had been in the last 10 years (which was my freshman year of high school) but was still skinnier than I had ever been.
The secret to weight loss is there is no secret. There's no magic formula, or algorithm you can plug numbers into, or a fad diet that will make the weight melt away. You simply have to decide on what your goal is: 1lb a week, 10lbs a month, 30lbs by the end of the year, whatever. Then you have to make the changes(severity of the changes depends on your goal): eat a little less, exercise a little more. Don't cut out foods you love, it will only make you want them more and eventually you will cheat; just have less of them. And lastly, you need to actually have the will and motivation to do it and stick with it. And I say this as someone who both got down to their ideal weight in only 3 months, but 7 years later is about 100lbs heavier than that ideal weight. I got down there, but didn't stick with it and eventually it slowly came back on. I am starting to slowly get the motivation to get back onto it though.
Of course, what worked for me may not work for people diagnosed with conditions that affect weight such as PCOS or thyroid issues.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
And there's the problem: you guessed wrong.
No, it's calling out the importance of eating a *balanced* diet, balanced being the operative word and different for each person. I can get 2000 calories a day in a few spoonfuls of sugar, or I can get it in a few well-balanced meals. What you're implying is that those, because they potentially provide the same amount of energy, will have the same effect on my body. This has been proven, thoroughly and repeatedly, wrong.
Your body is going to process everything you put into it until it has everything it needs. If you eat 10,000cal worth of sugar, your body will process every calorie; if you eat the same number of well-balanced calories (nutritionally balanced, that is to say the food you eat contains all the nutrients your body needs, not just referencing the incorrectly-stacked food pyramid), you'll end up pooping out a lot of partially-digested food as your body got what it needed and stopped expending the energy to extract any more.
I'll admit that I started with a sample size of one and that has only grown slightly as I've convinced a few people close to me to try it, but I've tested this with a 100% success rate. And the participants have been healthier (both physically and mentally) to boot, because their bodies are getting all the nutrients they need to fuel their immune systems and balance out body and brain chemistries. Of course, there are still maladies that can befall a person that simple dietary changes won't do much for, but it's amazing the number of "ailments" for which the recommended course of treatment is to mask the symptoms with drugs, rather than face the root cause of the problem.
Don't take my word for it, though. Talk to a doctor and a dietitian; if they don't agree, ask the doctor which drug company is in his back pocket, then talk to a different doctor. Once you find a doctor that agrees with your dietitian on the importance of treating illness with a balanced died over masking the symptoms with drugs, keep seeing that doctor, and know that you can trust that any prescription (s)he writes serves a purpose other than earning them a kickback.
It may appear that I have veered slightly off-topic, but not really; diet and overall health are very closely related.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Most people do not eat carbohydrate, protein, or saturated fat, they eat foods most of which contain several of them, and they have meals which contain a variety of foods
Some carbohydrates give humans no energy, some lots, and restricting intake to extremes has been shown to be harmful (as is too much)
Your recommended diet is impossible for most people to understand or follow, and is by anyone's information unbalanced, it is likely (with some exercise) to allow you to lose weight, but is not a diet you should stick to indefinately, your wieght may be fine but your health may not be ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Let's not pretend their aren't as many bad dietitians as bad doctors.
Cheap storage VM.
Ask someone sometime what a balanced diet is and if they say anything about carbohydrate intake being over 10% of daily caloric intake.. laugh at them and move on. They have been duped too.
Sincere question
But the brain uses ~20% of calories, and the body will throw all nearly all available glucose at it before shifting to ketones. Doesn't that imply that a 20% carb caloric intake can be healthy, so long as it's not a lot of sugar?