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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.
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.
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.