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Large-Scale Dietary Study: Fats Good, Carbs Bad (cbsnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CBS:
New research suggests that it's not the fat in your diet that's raising your risk of premature death, it's too many carbohydrates -- especially the refined, processed kinds of carbs -- that may be the real killer... People with a high fat intake -- about 35 percent of their daily diet -- had a 23 percent lower risk of early death and 18 percent lower risk of stroke compared to people who ate less fat, said lead author Mahshid Dehghan. She's an investigator with the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Ontario... At the same time, high-carb diets -- containing an average 77 percent carbohydrates -- were associated with a 28 percent increased risk of death versus low-carb diets, Dehghan said...
For this study, Dehghan and her colleagues tracked the diet and health of more than 135,000 people, aged 35 to 70, from 18 countries around the world, to gain a global perspective on the health effects of diet. Participants provided detailed information on their social and economic status, lifestyle, medical history and current health. They also completed a questionnaire on their regular diet, which researchers used to calculate their average daily calories from fats, carbohydrates and proteins. The research team then tracked the participants' health for about seven years on average, with follow-up visits at least every three years.
For this study, Dehghan and her colleagues tracked the diet and health of more than 135,000 people, aged 35 to 70, from 18 countries around the world, to gain a global perspective on the health effects of diet. Participants provided detailed information on their social and economic status, lifestyle, medical history and current health. They also completed a questionnaire on their regular diet, which researchers used to calculate their average daily calories from fats, carbohydrates and proteins. The research team then tracked the participants' health for about seven years on average, with follow-up visits at least every three years.
I've known for a long time from personal experience that sugar is a very, very bad thing. The best thing you can do in your diet is severely restrict the amount of sugar you consume. And then go from there, but start with that.
Anybody with an IQ over room temperature has known this for years. Funny that the obesity epidemic started in earnest right around the time they started taking fat out of everything and replacing it with sugar.
Until next week!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
When I switched to keto I felt much better. My blood pressure dropped along with my weight. I also don't get as hungry between meals, even when it's a long time in between.
After a year I've started to add back in some carbs but not refined sugars. I have fruit, like blueberries, a couple times a week, maybe lentils. I try to keep my total carbs below 100 grams on any one day.
Not every diet works for every person. The key is finding the one that's the best match for your metabolism. I had one funny issue, Splenda was causing me problems. When I cut that out, it made a world of difference. What works is what works for you.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Not just fats less bad - fats good (up to a point). The study found that your risk of early death goes down the more fat you eat, right up to 2.5 times the current recommended fat intake.
This is a good example of why average people, who maybe only have a rudimentary background in science, no longer trust it or what scientists are claiming.
There have just been too many situations like this where scientists say one thing, as if they're 100% sure they're right, and then sometime latter they have to backtrack on their claims. Sometimes it even turns out that the exact opposite of what they're saying is actually true!
The problem isn't that scientists are retracting their incorrect claims. That's exactly what they should be doing, and it's what science as a practice requires be done. The problem is that they should not be making claims that they can't substantiate, and they surely shouldn't be making claims that they'll need to retract just a few years later, especially if any sort of political policy will be based on their claims.
Nutrition science and climate science have shown themselves to be two fields where claims are made too easily, and what is claimed either ends up being obviously wrong, or the predictions being made do not come to pass.
Scientists in other fields, especially ones that have a much better track record of consistently being right, should try to publicly separate themselves from scientific fields like nutrition science and climate science. Greater denouncing of scientific fields and scientists with poor track records may be the only way to maintain, never mind restore, any trust that the public at large may have in science.
The obesity epidemic really started when the government told us to start taking fat out of the diet and replace it with bread.
I was in high school and college when this really started to kick off (late 1970s), and the comment was "don't eat meat and butter, eat bread and rice. It's good for you."
When the Food Pyramid hit, the diagrams always had a small chunk for meat and fish, with the entire base was made up of bread and rice and potatoes, and a tiny part at the top for sweets and fats. It was usually something like "2-3 servings of meat, fish, and nuts, 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice."
That's the problem, not sugar. While people say "sugar is poison," plain old carbs aren't much different, especially in those proportions.
I'll eat whatever I want. And I'll die happy.
America's entire food supply is simply awash in carbohydrates, especially sugars and refined grains. I walk into a grocery store, run my eyes across the shelves, and mentally tick off the items I can consume: no, no, hell no, no, maybe, no, no, ok, no, no, are you kidding, no, and no. And restaurant food? Don't make me laugh. Carbs piled on top of carbs on a bed of sugared fat topped with sugar sauce.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The key is to live to be 100.
Very few people die over the age of 100.
Time to swap that bowl of pasta for a bowl of bacon!
Professional Genius
The news media hardly helps. I can't count the number of times I've read some story where they've grabbed on to some result and misrepresented what the science actually says or use it to draw conclusion that aren't supported by the research.
This is a good example of why average people, who maybe only have a rudimentary background in science, no longer trust it or what scientists are claiming.
Nutritionists, the real scientists in this field, have not wavered from the idea of the balanced diet. While adjustments have been made, the basics of what makes for good nutrition have not.
Who you AC's define as scientists are people with an agenda. Pro-vegan people, Pro industry groups. Vegans would have us eating tofurky forever, and pro-industry groups would have us bathing in pink slime.
Any you yourself have an agenda, or else are too dim to understand that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
> Nutritionists, the real scientists in this field, have not wavered from the idea of the balanced diet. While adjustments have been made, the basics of what makes for good nutrition have not.
So Mulligan's Stew being replaced with that obviously and highly unbalanced "food pyramid" must have just been my imagination then.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It has been shown by many writers that science was not to blame. Even while charismatic scientists like Ancel Keys were making their controvesial claims that fat kills and we must all eat more "healthy whole grains", their own research results demonstrated otherwise. It's well worth reading "Good Calories, Bad Calories"/"The Diet Delusion", or alternatively Nina Teicholz's "The Big Fat Surprise" or any of the other good books on the subject. Otherwise you simply wouldn't believe the depths of duplicity (or possibly self-deception) to which scientists can stoop.
One conclusion is completely unavoidable. Just as sugar (in any but small quantities) is poisonous to humans, money is poisonous to good science.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Is it ok to shovel that down your fat pie hole?
The steak is good, although fatter cuts of meat are preferable. It has often been observed that carnivores, when they have killed, begin by eagerly devouring the liver, intestines and other fatty parts of their prey and often leave when sated, abandoning the muscle meat - what we call "steak" and the like - to scavengers. Likewise the Inuit, Masai and other carnivorous humans have always tended to prefer fatty meat and organs.
Needless to say, you should avoid ketchup because it is about half sugar - like most manufactured condiments. By all means eat tomatoes with your meat, though!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
There's also lots of money involved with selling a couple of cents worth of corn or grain + chemicals in a box for several dollars with a long shelf life. Meats, cheese, eggs and produce not so much. What do you think is the most likely explanation?
love is just extroverted narcissism
stop being retarded. There was no "healthcare system" in Japan until the 1960s so that doesn't account for 100+ year olds.
One key aspect of physical health is activity. Look how few people walk. There are many people who consider 10,000 steps a day to be "wow". For these people diet is not going to make it. 10,000 steps a day should be a drop-dead minimum (pun not intended).
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Imagine you've been invited to a gourmet meal. The host tells you to "bring your appetite!" What might you do to make yourself hungrier?
Maybe skip a meal or two earlier in the day? (less calories)
Maybe go out for a brisk run, or workout? (more exercise)
So, we know, categorically, that less calories and more exercise creates increased hunger.
How does this help a fat person eat less?
Now, if you understand the biochemistry, and how for a fat person, their fat cells are stealing all the energy from their muscle cells, then you understand the thing driving them to 5000 calories a day is starvation (from the muscle point of view). You don't need to focus on getting them to put less calories in their mouth, you need to focus on getting them to put less calories in their fat cells.
How do fat cells get bigger? Under the influence of insulin.
How do insulin levels get higher? Under the influence of blood sugar (literally to keep you from dying of sugar poisoning - it's a feature, not a bug).
How is blood sugar raised? High glycemic foods, like carbohydrates.
So if you want the fat man to stop being hungry, so he'll eat less calories, and therefore lose weight, you have to focus on the root cause, not just the proximate cause. It's the fat cells that are "overeating" - the fat man is eating 5000 calories because given the glycemic load of whatever he's eating, he needs that much to keep his muscle cells fed.
Reduce the glycemic load, you'll reduce the hunger, and *that* will reduce caloric intake.
tl;dr - getting hungrier doesn't help you eat less.
The hard part would be concealing the Katana.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Actually, these studies are useful to validate or invalidate models of what is going on. The studies themselves are not directly useful to tell you what to do or not (even if the brain-dead press usually presents them as such), but a well-validated model will be much more useful in that regard.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
A few notes to keep in mind with the interpretation of the results:
1. The macronutrient consumption data are based on food frequency questionaires, a somewhat unreliable means to measuring food consumption. How accurate do you think you'd be if asked about how much of each type of food you ate over the past few months? For more disucssion of problems with food frequency questionaires and other general issues with studies on nutrition see: http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
2. The study is an observational study that can only assess correlation, not causation. People who reported eating more carbohydrates had higher mortality. Was eating more carbohydrates the cause of the higher mortality, or were there other differences between people who ate more carbohydrates and those who ate less? A common problem with these studies is that people who follow dietary guidelines are more likely to follow other guidelines for healthy living, so one could just be picking up a signal from decreased mortality of those who pay attention to their health in general. Socioeconomic factors are another potential confounding factor in the results. In many of the third world countries studied, a diet higher in animal protein would likely be more expensive than a diet higher in carbohydrates. These confounding variables make inferring causation difficult. Randomized controlled trials would provide a gold standard for assessing whether there is a causal relationship between carbohydrate intake and mortality, though these are notoriously difficult to perform (how do you get a large cohort of people to change their diets for long periods of time?).
3. Even if the differences in diet are causally related to the changes in mortality and CV events, the exact mechanism is unclear. For example, in a commentary published in the Lancet along side the research paper (I would recommend reading the commentary if you are interested in the subject), the authors note:
Micronutrient malnutrition is an important problem in many of the countries included in PURE. Animal products are rich sources of zinc, bioavailable iron, vitamin K2, and vitamin B12, which might be suboptimal in populations consuming high carbohydrate diets. Therefore, one potential explanation for the PURE results is that nutrient-dense meats corrected one or more nutrient deficiencies
http://www.thelancet.com/journ...
If the results are partly due to consumption of animal products alleviating micronutrient malnutrition, it is unclear whether the results would be as applicable in populations where micronutrient malnutrition is not an issue.
Overall, the study is a very important piece of evidence in determining the best amount of carbohydrates, proteins and fats to include in one's diet. However, it is not a definitive study, so one needs to consider the entire body of evidence including observational studies (such as this one) done in a number of different populations, randomized clinical trials, and laboratory experiments that get at the mechanisms involved.
As the old joke goes - both the Italians and the Japanese eat like that and have a greater life expectancy than Americans, British, Canadians and Australians.
Therefore, diet doesn't matter. It's speaking English that kills you.
Not true. Nobody over the age of 130 has ever died.
No sig today...
Fats are popularly divided into 3 categories, saturated (like lard), mono-unsaturated (some components of olive oil), and polyunsaturated (the main component of sunflower oil). You've probably also heard of omega-3 and omega-6 oils (fatty acids), which are polyunsaturated. Many fats are essential to human survival.
Without knowing the details of the kinds and quantities of fats and sugars involved in each group of this study, the results are not very informative.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
For decades the USDA and local governments not only promoted low-fat diets, but threatened people over use of butter — because when Stastists dislike something, they do not simply avoid it themselves, they seek to ban it for all others...
Now we are getting the opposite guidance and very convincing evidence, the earlier imploring and coercion were harmful.
Who will be punished for causing the harm, when, and how?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Pretty much every nutritionist I know believe religiously in the food pyramid. By an enormous factor they have bought in to the far terrible, meat bad, grains good cute of the world.
They are also hardly ever scientists. In fact most nutritionist qualifications involve exactly zero science or medical training.. Because it is not a damn science, it is a job title, more closely related to marketig, and not unlike economics.
Go talk to a research human biologist some time. Suggest a nutritionist is a scientist to them, then listen.. You may learn something.
So no. You are talking bullshit. They are very involved in this, and have made a ton of money out of people's misery.
I see. Well, you need take it up with Luise Light, a nutritional expert, who made recommendations based upon valid food science from the 1980's and who was overruled in the 1992 to make the 1992 pyramid conform to the demands of the Secretary of Agriculture and the food industry. Here is her text "A Fatally Flawed Food Guide". http://www.whale.to/a/light.ht... [whale.to]
Go tell her what nutritionists believe in.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Harvey was advertised as being unusually dangerous because it combined wind with water (though perhaps that theory was all wet).
In any case, harm is not always a single factor condition.
In paleolithic terms, getting a belly full of carbs (fruit grove that ripens all in a day) or a belly full of cholesterol (goodbye now-extinct megafauna) wasn't that rare, but managing both as the same time was a real trick.
Insulin is a storage hormone that directs excess carbs into fat storage. Might complicate mopping up cholesterol at the same time, if these levels are also high. There was probably scant evolutionary pressure in our paleo past to sort this out.
Now I know that diet is no longer considered a major source of blood cholesterol, but for the purpose of the present narrative, how about let's not shuffle the black hats around every time the FDA adds more lipstick to the food pyramid (unless running madly from gunwale to gunwale with every food pyramid adjustment is your favourite sport).
Perhaps there is indeed some other way to adjust your diet so that carbs alone won't kill you. This study does not disagree. What this study says is that as a choice between less carbs and less fat, more people—in the era studied—would have benefited from fewer carbs.
Unless you really know what those other adjustments are, I wouldn't smirk at this gross data point.
I've even read studies in the past where the toxicity of methyl mercury seemed to be highly correlated with low selenium intake (so much so as to not kill the Japanese, unless they eat the wrong kind of whale, but that's actually red meat, not fish—OMG my brain hurts).
No, the study wasn't trying to make you think.
It was trying to tell you that other things you've been told were never all that reliable in the first place.
It takes hard mental effort to navigate a higher dimensional landscape (all of human diet) on low dimensional maps (dietary epidemiology).
Whatever you were eating before, I suggest fish.