Lowcarbarama

Los Angeles Times: Harvard's Willett and others say to fear sugar, not fat

2011-10-12T13:50:00.002-05:00

A reversal on carbs
Dec. 20, 2010
Los Angeles Times

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/20/health/la-he-carbs-20101220

Marni Jameson wrote the following. Great job, Ms. Jameson! Thanks for telling it like it is, without any cautionary "...but just in case..." obligatory quote from some antifat "authority" at the end.

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should.

But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

"Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."

It's a confusing message. For years we've been fed the line that eating fat would make us fat and lead to chronic illnesses. "Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1," says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. "Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar."

Americans, on average, eat 250 to 300 grams of carbs a day, accounting for about 55% of their caloric intake. The most conservative recommendations say they should eat half that amount. Consumption of carbohydrates has increased over the years with the help of a 30-year-old, government-mandated message to cut fat.

And the nation's levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease have risen. "The country's big low-fat message backfired," says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today."
Tell us what you think: Are carbs to blame? Add your own comments to the discussion. —

To understand what's behind the upheaval takes some basic understanding of food and metabolism.

All carbohydrates (a category including sugars) convert to sugar in the blood, and the more refined the carbs are, the quicker the conversion goes. When you eat a glazed doughnut or a serving of mashed potatoes, it turns into blood sugar very quickly. To manage the blood sugar, the pancreas produces insulin, which moves sugar into cells, where it's stored as fuel in the form of glycogen.

If you have a perfectly healthy metabolism, the system works beautifully, says Dr. Stephen Phinney, a nutritional biochemist and an emeritus professor of UC Davis who has studied carbohydrates for 30 years. "However, over time, as our bodies get tired of processing high loads of carbs, which evolution didn't prepare us for … how the body responds to insulin can change," he says.

When cells become more resistant to those insulin instructions, the pancreas needs to make more insulin to push the same amount of glucose into cells. As people become insulin resistant, carbs become a bigger challenge for the body. When the pancreas gets exhausted and can't produce enough insulin to keep up with the glucose in the blood, diabetes develops.

The first sign of insulin resistance is a condition called metabolic syndrome — a red flag that diabetes, and possibly heart disease, is just around the corner. People are said to have the syndrome when they have three or more of the following: high blood triglycerides (more than 150 mg); high blood pressure (over 135/85); central obesity (a waist circumference in men of more than 40 inches and in women, more than 35 inches); low HDL cholesterol (under 40 in men, under 50 in women); or elevated fasting glucose.

About one-fourth of adults has three or more of these symptoms.

"Put these people on a low-carb diet and they'll not only lose weight, which always helps these conditions, but their blood levels will improve," Phinney says. In a 12-week study published in 2008, Phinney and his colleagues put 40 overweight or obese men and women with metabolic syndrome on a 1,500-calorie diet. Half went on a low-fat, high-carb diet. The others went on a low-carb, high-fat diet. The low-fat group consumed 12 grams of saturated fat a day out of a total of 40 grams of fat, while the low-carb group ate 36 grams of saturated fat a day — three times more — out of a total of 100 grams of fat.

Despite all the extra saturated fat the low-carb group was getting, at the end of the 12 weeks, levels of triglycerides (which are risk factors for heart disease) had dropped by 50% in this group. Levels of good HDL cholesterol increased by 15%.

In the low-fat, high-carb group, triglycerides dropped only 20% and there was no change in HDL.

The take-home message from this study and others like it is that — contrary to what many expect — dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor.

Gary Taubes on Salt: Shake off Your Worries!

2011-07-20T20:56:00.001-05:00

This one is hard to find sometimes. Gary Taubes's piece on salt was a winner of the 1999 Science in Society Journalism Awards.

The (Political) Science of Salt
https://www.nasw.org/sites/default/files/Taubes%20part%201_%20The%20salt%20controversy.pdf

It seems that salt, for some reason, is commonly feared even by cholesterol skeptics who embrace a high-fat, low-carb diet, who know well how misleading and misled the common nutritional talking points are. Dunno why. The links between high sodium and blood pressure problems are even weaker than those between high cholesterol and heart problems. If such a thing is possible.

Read this. It's the article that, I believe, sent Gary Taubes down the rabbit hole. And I'm so glad it did.

Web Exclusive: Dr. Oz and Gary Taubes Debate Exercise

2011-03-11T10:17:00.001-06:00

As Dr. Oz’s outspoken adversary, Gary Taubes’ theories go against Dr. Oz’s most fervent beliefs. In this web exclusive segment, Gary explains...

The Man Who Thinks Everything Dr. Oz Says is Wrong, Pt 3.

2011-03-11T10:16:00.001-06:00

Award-winning science writer Gary Taubes disagrees with the medical community’s most basic rules of dieting. Here, Gary challenges Dr. Oz to ...

The Man Who Thinks Everything Dr. Oz Says is Wrong, Pt 2.

2011-03-11T10:15:00.001-06:00

Award-winning science writer Gary Taubes disagrees with the medical community’s most basic rules of dieting. Here, Gary challenges Dr. Oz to ...

The Man Who Thinks Everything Dr. Oz Says is Wrong, Pt 1.

2011-03-11T10:14:00.001-06:00

Award-winning science writer Gary Taubes disagrees with the medical community’s most basic rules of dieting. Here, Gary challenges Dr. Oz to...

Gary Taubes on Dr. Oz's TV show

2011-03-11T07:10:00.000-06:00

The Man Who Thinks Everything Dr. Oz Says is Wrong -- that's the hyperbolic title of the TV episode from February, 2011. At time of this writing, it's been removed from YouTube. Here's a link to a portion of it from the Dr. Oz TV show website.

The Man Who Thinks Every Dr. Oz Says is Wrong, Part I

Gary Taubes is the award-winning science journalist whose works on nutrition and diet include the NY Times article Big Fat Lies and the books Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat.

Gary Taubes on Dr. Oz's radio show

2011-03-03T09:20:00.000-06:00

Gary Taubes appeared on the radio show of Dr. Mehmet Oz on Feb. 24, 2011. The news peg was Gary's new book, Why We Get Fat -- which I got for my birthday and am reading happily.

Jimmy Moore, of the Livin' La Vida Low-Carb blog, podcast and video podcasts, has posted the Taubes interview in two parts on YouTube. Here are the links.

Find Gary's new book here:

Carb mouthwash?

2010-07-24T17:44:00.001-05:00

Finally, a good use for carbohydrate in sports?

Personal Best: With This Rinse, Performance Improve by Gina Kolata, in the New York Times. Yes, Gina Kolata, she of the disappointing hatchet job review of "Good Calories, Bad Calories." It seems that athletes who rinse their mouths with a carbohydrate-water solution get the same performance boost as those who just drink the stuff. And somehow, artificial sweetener doesn't produce the boost.

I first heard of this experiment -- or perhaps it was just one like it -- on the podcast of the science radio show WNYC RadioLab. Interesting stuff. I wonder if the same effect would be found whether or not the athlete is carb-burning or fat-burning. I will have to try to figure out which episode it was. If anyone knows, please drop a comment -- thanks.

Karbs for Kids: More must be better!

2010-07-20T09:05:00.000-05:00

The USDA released its 2010 dietary guidelines and everyone is horrified who knows the harm of an excess of carbs and a deficit of fat in the human diet.

Meantime, I dropped off my child at his summer enrichment program this morning. We strolled through the cafeteria, where he can share in the breakfast they offer, if we wish. It was early, and I took a look at the plastic trays set out ready for the children soon to arrive. I also peeked inside the milk locker.

Here's what they consider a suitable breakfast for children. Remember that this is in accordance with the current USDA recommendations. It is difficult, very difficult, for me to imagine how it could be even worse, but that's what the new guidelines promise.

Three doughnut holes
A heap of fruit cocktail, apparently from a can. I would estimate 1/3 to 1/2 cup
Choice of fat-free milk (30g carb, 28g as sugar per 8-ounce serving) or 1% fat chocolate milk whose second ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup

It is a recipe for diabetes, obesity, heart disease, behavioral problems. Name the modern pandemic, this breakfast will help you get there.

Think it can't get any worse? Here's a great post from Tom Naughton about the newer guidelines:
Carbohydrates Are Wonderful

Pandora's Seed

2010-07-11T08:03:00.000-05:00

I just found out about this book via my Audible recommendation. It looks really interesting. I am curious to see how it compares to and relates to Guns, Germs and Steel, which also explores the some of the devastating effects brought on by the advent of agriculture.

From Publisher's Weekly, June 8, 2010, as presented on the Amazon.com page for Pandora's Seed:

"More food but also disease, craziness, and anomie resulted from the agricultural revolution, according to this diffuse meditation on progress and its discontents. Wells (The Journey of Man), a geneticist, anthropologist, and National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, voices misgivings about the breakthrough to farming 10,000 years ago, spurred by climate change. The food supply was more stable, but caused populations to explode; epidemics flourished because of overcrowding and proximity to farm animals; despotic governments emerged to organize agricultural production; and warfare erupted over farming settlements. Then came urbanism and modernity, which clashed even more intensely with our nomadic hunter-gatherer nature."

MSNBC on the new Atkins book

2010-03-12T11:10:00.000-06:00

MSNBC Online pans the new Atkins diet book with the usual alarmism, misunderstanding (for instance, that Atkins is a high-protein diet, whereas it's actually a high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb diet), appeal to baseless dietary guidelines (this diet recommends eating less carbohydrate than the U.S. government recommends -- what a shocker!) , and reference to flawed or misconstrued studies.

Here's the link to the article, titled "New Atkins Diet — a Protein Overload? A steak may satisfy, but it's not a weight-loss secret weapon."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35819203/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

The article is written by Elisa Zied, R.D., who is identified as an MSNBC co-contributor in her byline at the top of the article, but who is revealed as a "spokesperson" for the American Dietetic Association at article's end. That should tell you everything you need to expect about her point of view.

My only hope is that, with all her complaining about how the diet makes you lose weight fast while not feeling hungry, she will inadvertently lead people to the book instead of away from it.

It's almost cute. According to this article and its headline, a steak is not a secret weapon for weight loss -- except that it is.

Here's the book's Amazon link.
New Atkins for a New You: The Ultimate Diet for Shedding Weight and Feeling Great
The authors are doctors Eric C. Westman, Stephen D. Phinney, Jeff S. Volek. Dr. Westman was interviewed on Jimmy Moore's Livin La Vida Low Carb Podcast in February. Check it out here.

Another place to learn more about a carbohydrate-restricted approach to diet, health and weight loss can be found at my friend Misty Humphrey's new site, free-healthy-diet-plans.com.

Carbs are the culprit

2010-02-04T11:47:00.001-06:00

A phrase for today:

Carbs are the culprit.

(Nothing to add. I just thought it was a good phrase, and I didn't want to forget it before I wrote it down!)

"Purity and quanity" of modern sugar and fat

2010-02-03T06:40:00.000-06:00

In his blog post The Unwisdom of John Mackey Seth Roberts wrote:

John Mackey is the founder of Whole Foods, a business I greatly respect. But he’s not always right.

“You only love animal fat because you’re used to it,” he said. “You’re addicted.”

Well put, Seth. The rest of his post is worth reading, as is the comment thread below.

I commented in response to the following comment (which was not made by Seth):

The conventional wisdom is that sugar other than honey and fat other than blubber weren’t available in modern quantities and purities until agriculture.

My comment follows:

Sugar *including* honey was not available in modern quantities and purities until recently. Agriculture was invented some 10,000 years ago. Sugar became cheap and plentiful with the advent of the European powers developing warm-weather colonies around the globe suitable for sugar plantations. Honey became cheap and plentiful much later.

The 19th century saw the invention of human-made beehives with removable, replaceable square frames that bees spontaneously fill with honey. Until then, humans had to smash a beehive (and usually kill the bees) to get at the honey. Honey in any controllable, scalable quantity dates only from that time.

Modern, large-scale, commercial beekeeping involves keeping a cheap syrup solution near the beehives for the bees to visit. Cheap honey comes from bees that never lit upon a flower. I suppose you could call the resulting product “pure” in that it is simpler, lacking the complexity of wild or artisanal honey, in content and in taste.

As far as the “purity” of modern fat, I don’t understand what is meant by this. True, olive oil has been available in large quantities since the dawn of the agriculture. (Only in its “extra-virgin” form, though.) But modern plant oils, like canola and cottonseed, are the result of complex, high-tech processes like bleaching and hydrogenation that result in substances that may appear “pure” to the naked eye, but they are so altered from any naturally occurring fats that our animal bodies cannot safely metabolize them. The problem with them does not inhere in their quantity, but in their quality: they are not fit to eat.

Why marginalize blubber? The fat of many types of marine fauna supported the human race throughout our history. Arguably, it was eating all those high fat creatures so easily captured along shorelines that enabled our brains to grow big enough for us to figure out how to hunt down faster, stronger land creatures. Humans have long thrived on a lot more fat than many well-meaning people allow themselves today.

Authority versus humble reasoning

2010-02-02T05:13:00.000-06:00

This quote comes from my A.Word.A.Day e-mail from wordsmith.org.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

- Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

It got me thinking about the processes that have shaped modern mainstream thinking about diet, especially as the 2010 USDA dietary guidelines are being formulated. The fifth meeting of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee will take place Feb. 9-10. You can attend via Webinar.

Not a single researcher or other representative of a reduced carbohydrate, raised fat point of view was included on the panel, despite several excellent candidacies, which I think included such important figures as Dr. Jeff Volek, Dr. Mary C. Vernon and Dr. Eric Westman, among others.

Instead we have the sorts of people who say that there's no real difference between the impact of high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose on the body.

No difference? One is processed directly by the liver, while the other isn't. The liver. That thing people are getting transplants for. That sounds important to me. We have people who say that it's not a problem if up to 25% of our total caloric impact comes from HFCS -- a substance unknown to the human body until a few brief decades ago.

We have people saying that total fat intake should be reduced still further, down perhaps as low as 7.5%.

Authoritative bodies such as the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the Centers for Disease Control, the Mayo Clinic, the United States Department of Agriculture and on and on have been proclaiming for decades that dietary fat is our enemy. They say that our modern woes come from to the saturated fats and animal foods on which our species has flourished since time immemorial.

They say that refined vegetable oils are the answer to our troubles. They propose the preposterous idea that our bodies not only can use, but require, substances impossible to come by previous to 20th century industrial technology.

They leave implicit the notion that the proper human diet is mostly made up of grains, and center on a tangent: whether the grains can be refined or must be left whole.

They assert most of our energy should be taken in as carbohydrate, and as little as possible from fat, despite the record of human history and despite the inability of countless researchers working for scores of years to find any evidence for this recommendation.

And they selectively, consistently, ignore scientific results from colleagues who follow the data towards the support of an alternative hypothesis.

It matters not how weighty and ponderous are these authoritative bodies. What matters is the humble reasoning of individuals.

A developing site dedicated to just such research-based reasoning can be found at Innovative Metabolic Solutions, a project of Drs. Vernon and Westman and science journalist Gary Taubes. I learned about it through Dr. Vernon's recent appearance on Jimmy Moore's podcast. Check it out for some actual information about the interplay of diet, health and the chronic conditions debilitating so many members of our society today.

How shellfish saved the human race Boing Boing

2010-01-04T20:48:00.000-06:00

How shellfish saved the human race Boing Boing

Ketogenic Diets and Physical Performance

2009-12-23T11:46:00.000-06:00

There's a good chance someone you know has told you, "Low carb! I tried that, and I felt horrible." Further conversation will reveal that your friend switched abruptly from eating lots of carbs -- if not in the form of sugar, then definitely in the form of starch: bread, pasta, potatoes and so forth -- to eating virtually no carbohydrate at all. Whatever the ratio of protein to fat in the diet your friend jumped into, the resulting effects included lethargy, hunger, muscle weakness. Further conversation will, no doubt, also reveal that your friend did little reading, followed no particular author or doctor's plan, and simply winged it, with little information and less understanding about how and why reducing carbohydrates leads to fat loss, and what it takes to adjust your metabolism to this new regimen without suffering. Or even any understanding that a low-carb diet is healthier overall, not just a quick way to weight loss.

Or you may have heard that studies show the benefits of carb-loading for exercise, or that carbohydrate provides better fuel than dietary fat for exercise.

The key concept missing in all this is "keto-adaptation." It takes time to adjust after carbohydrate consumption is cut down. That means that studies lasting less than a week don't really show how well the body works in the absence of carbs; they only show how rocky the withdrawal phase can be.

Here's a paper that expands on this topics, explaining what the studies really show. It's easy to read and has lots of good info.

Ketogenic diets and physical performance

Stephen Phinney wrote this paper, which appears on the National Institutes for Health (NIH) Web site, and was published by Nutrition and Metabolism (London) in 2004. It appears on the NIH site courtesy of BioMed Central.

Thanks to Richard Tamesis, M.D, whose comment on this Protein Power post on a natural treatment for GERD led me to Phinney's paper.

Dr. Phinney was featured in the "Atkins Nutritionals Teleconference Call with Dr. Stephen Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volek in Episodes 170, 171 and 172 of Jimmy Moore's spectacular Livin' La Vida Low Carb podcast show. At the time of this posting, I am unable to access the podcast files from Jimmy's site, but if you contact me via the comments field, I'll do my best to get the MP3 files to you.

What's become of Mediterranean Diet Central?

2008-09-25T06:07:00.000-05:00

A lot has changed since the famous Seven Countries Study, in which Ancel Keyes creatively presented data that would support his hypothesis that a diet high in saturated fat leads to heart disease, and that a diet low in saturated fat protects against it.

Rosenthal, who evidently hasn't read Good Calories, Bad Calories, mistakenly dates the identification of Crete as an exemplar of good nutrition from the early 1990s, but Keyes put forth his views in the 1950s.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/24/europe/diet.php

Flood of junk food puts Greeks at risk
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
Published: September 24, 2008
International Herald Tribune (an international version of the New York Times)

Excerpt:

KASTELI, Greece: Dr. Michalis Stagourakis has seen a transformation of his pediatric practice here over the past three years. The usual sniffles and stomachaches of childhood are now suddenly interspersed with far more serious conditions: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. A changing diet, he says, has produced an epidemic of obesity and related maladies.

Small towns like this one in western Crete, considered the birthplace of the famously healthful Mediterranean diet - emphasizing olive oil, fresh produce and fish - are now overflowing with chocolate shops, pizza places, ice cream parlors, soda machines and fast-food joints....

The conversion of a raw vegan family

2008-06-21T08:08:00.000-05:00

In the UK Independent:

"How our vegan diet made us ill"

By Natasha Mann
June 17, 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/healthy-living/how-our-vegan-diet-made-us-ill-848322.html

Excerpt:

One morning over breakfast, Holly Paige looked at her daughter and realised things weren't right. Lizzie should have been flourishing. Instead, her cheeks were pinched, she was small for her age, and although she had skinny arms and legs, her belly was big and swollen. When Lizzie smiled, Paige suddenly noticed her upper front teeth were pitted with holes.

"I was absolutely horrified," recalls Paige.

At the time, Paige was feeding them what she thought was the most nutritious diet possible. They had been raw vegans for three years, and ate plenty of fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, soya and pulses, but no meat, fish or dairy.

Thanks to renegadediabetic at livinlowcarbdiscussion.com forum for the tip.

Epidemiologist Paul Marantz criticizes dietary guidelines

2008-05-06T06:45:00.000-05:00

Here's the Feb. 13 podcast of Scientific American.

Fat Chance: Do Dietary Guidelines Actually Contribute to Obesity?

http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=13BE8F96-CC52-62E0-362994556CDDD508

Paul Marantz criticizes the dietary guidelines to reduce dietary fat, as well as the standard practice of treating markers for disease (cholesterol levels, blood pressure) rather than the diseases themselves. Here's he's interviewed by Steve Mirsky in the weekly podcast, Science Talk.

The link above will take you to a written transcript, as well as a link to the audio podcast.

Thanks for laughingW on the Protein Power forum for mentioning it in this thread about whole grains.

http://proteinpower.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4760

Pro-Low-Carb article on ABC News!

2008-04-16T07:04:00.000-05:00

This article was written by Adam Campbell, features editor for Men's Health Magazine and apparently a force behind that magazine's favorable stance towards dietary fat.

Five Reasons You're Still Fat
Five Weighty Mistakes That Many People Make -- and Advice For Shedding Pounds
April 15, 2008

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Fitness/Story?id=4649098&page=1

Michael Pollan interviewed on Democracy Now

2008-03-08T19:23:00.000-06:00

This is a transcript of Amy Goodman interviewing Michael Pollan about his newest book, the bestselling In Defense of Food.

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/76987/?page=entire

I wonder whether Pollan has read Taubes, specifically Good Calories, Bad Calories. I wonder what those two think of each other. For all the great insights Pollan has, he still seems to be under the impression that red meat is not good for humans to eat. But maybe that's because he hasn't come upon the same source materials in the course of his work that Taubes has.

He does, in this interview, use words like "probably" when talking about whether it's good or bad, and he exonerates cholesterol early on here. However, the mantra of "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much" (other articles call it a mantra; I didn't come up with that myself) is what people quote over and over.

His idea of "nutritionism" as ideology is priceless.

A link to an MP3 audio file of this interview can be found in the third (non subthreaded) comment.

Gary Taubes at Stevens Institute of Technology

2008-02-29T18:37:00.000-06:00

Gary Taubes gave a talk earlier this month at Stevens Institute of Technology.

You can watch it on Google video via this link.

Calorielab on why eating fat is good

2008-02-23T07:35:00.001-06:00

Calorielab.com isn't a low-carb site, but it covers much that's of interest to low-carbers, Here's an article posted May 21, 2007. The sidebar headline is "Eating Fat is Good For You," by Sara Ost of Mark's Daily Apple.

The lipid-phobe’s guide to dietary fat: 11 ways fat can help you (and 4 ways it can’t hurt you)
http://calorielab.com/news/2007/05/21/the-lipid-phobes-guide-to-eating-fat-11-ways-fat-can-help-you-and-4-ways-it-cant-hurt-you/#comment-194965

Lowcarbarama posted the following comment today:
Lowcarbarama says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 am

“this wasn’t Atkins (I’m all about the greens), but…”

For several decades, Dr. Robert Atkins promoted eating regular, generous quantities of low-starch vegetables, including greens, as an important part of his nutritional approach. The company he founded continues to do so.

Crabby,
“Fat, while really good for you, adds up fast when compared to boring but filling alternatives. So some people might need to concentrate first on adding lots of bulk in terms of veggies to their diets before they go to wild slathering on the butter and cream sauces, or even the olive oil and nuts.”

This is a common misconception. Lowfat bulky foodstuffs fill the stomach, but don’t satiate. High-fat, low-carb, moderate protein (for instance, 50%-70% fat, and no sugar or starch) will satisfy and satiate at much lower caloric totals. Try it, you’ll see. When you cut the carbs and up the fat, it’s much harder to overeat.

The delicious truth that Sara discovered is that, as long as you restrict sugar and starch, when you allow yourself to eat all the fat you want, you’ll find that you’re eating no more than you should.

Myths surrounding Dr. Atkins's death

2008-02-19T07:07:00.000-06:00

In April 2003,just as low-carb was posed to explode onto the mainstream media and diet news scene, Dr. Atkins, who was largely responsible for bringing this approach into view, died.

He slipped on an icy Manhattan sidewalk, hit his head and was dead days later, after languishing in a hospital bed.

Probably because his nutritional approach was controversial, rumors started that it was his diet that killed him. Tragically, this has become a pervasive myth. It's even begun to appear in print over the years that have elapsed since then. At least one diet book critical of his work even uses the phrase "Why Dr. Atkins is dead" as part of its subtitle.

Here's an item on the Smoking Gun web site that clears up the nonstory of what killed Dr. Atkins. Thanks to SkeeterD on the Lowcarbfriends.com forum for posting it there. It includes a facsimile of the doctor's death certificated, which lists "blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma" as the cause of death.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bloombergatkins1.html

Mayor Bloomberg ignorant of Atkins' death cause

Hacking blindly at a problem

2008-01-25T07:05:00.000-06:00

"'It's the best therapy for diabetes that we have today, and it's very low risk,' said the study's lead author, Dr. John Dixon of Monash University Medical School in Melbourne, Australia."

Sounds fantastic! Is Dr. Dixon speaking of restricting carbohydrates in the diet, so as to not flood the bloodstream with the glucose that a diabetic person's metabolism is ill-equipped to handle? So that person doesn't need to rely on insulin injections to normalize blood sugar, with side effects like obesity from the insulin moving the excess into fat cell storage?

Alas, no.

According to the lead author of a study published in JAMA Vol. 299 No. 3, January 23, 2008, as quoted in an AP release, the "best therapy for diabetes that we have today" is not cutting sugar and starch from the diet. It's bariatric surgery. Cutting down the size of the tummy. That's correct. There are doctors who believe that surgery -- gastric bypass, lap band surgery and the like -- with its risk of complication and morbidity, is a low-risk endeavor. Where's the risk in cutting sugar, wheat, potatoes, rice and other starches from the diet first? The foods that were absent from the diets of some of the healthiest groups of humans known to history, even into the twentieth century? (And perhaps also today, if groups like the Masai are still living their traditional lifestyle.)

Ironically, these are among the foodstuffs that are prohibited during the recovery period after these surgeries. In the AP/Yahoo article, Dr. David Cummings of the University of Washington in Seattle says that patients' diabetes often goes into remission shortly after the surgery, sometimes within only days. I wonder what would be the results in a control group of patients who adopted the post-surgery recovery diet, but who didn't actually have the surgery?

That is, is the miraculous remission from diabetes from the surgery? Or from the elimination of glucose from the bloodstream?

In the article, the assumption among the doctors seems to be that the positive effects in the diabetic condition result from the weight lost. Impossible. No significant amount of weight can be lost within several days. So what's the diabetes miracle? The fact that weight will be lost, now that the stomach is smaller? That would be a farfetched hypothesis.

A simpler one would be: something in the post-operative period itself relieves diabetes. The objective scientific mind would inquire as to what that is.

The quote that opens this post is appeared on Yahoo! News, dated Jan 24, 2008, here:
Obesity surgery seen as diabetes cure

Many more articles on this topic can be found through an Internet search for a set of terms like "diabetes obesity surgery JAMA."

Gastrointestinal Surgery as a Treatment for Diabetes
David E. Cummings and David R. Flum
JAMA. 2008;299(3):341-343.

Here's a link to JAMA's extract of the full article:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/299/3/316

Full text is available to site members only. A trial site registration is offered at the link above.

"Carb Comeback" puff in Arizona Republic

2008-01-11T08:39:00.000-06:00

The following appears on the Web site of the Arizona Republic.

I would love to know what is behind an article like this. A commenter on the AR site insinuates it's compiled largely from industry booster brochures. Note that Fernau cites nothing at all in support of her central assertion that that "we" (Arizonians? Americans? Humans?) are eating more carbs, and feeling better about that emotionally. Nor does she quote any of the "former low-carb disciples" that she refers to.

(Via "John" commenting on Dr. Mike Eades's Protein Power blog, on the 'Low-carbs and lipids" post.)

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/food/articles/0109Carbs0109.html
Carb comeback
After years of diets badmouthing pasta, potatoes and rice, they're happily back in style

By Karen Fernau
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 9, 2008 12:00 AM
With low-carb eating back in its rightful spot alongside cabbage soup and grapefruit diets, we again are celebrating foods that give comfort and energy.

We are cooking and ordering three of our favorites - potatoes, pasta and rice - without feeling the guilt of committing a dietary no-no. Alas, we're carbo-loading again and proud of it.

"So many of the messages in the last decade have been negative: 'Don't eat carbs. Don't eat this or that.' People are ready to enjoy food that tastes good and is good for you - like carbs," said Cynthia Harriman, spokeswoman for the Whole Grain Council in Boston. "The carb mania finally has subsided."

Carbohydrates, an important part of any healthy diet, are the body's No. 1 choice of fuel. Before the Atkins and South Beach diets vilified and blamed carbs for super-sizing our bellies, they were accepted as the building blocks of a sensible eating plan.

Today, carbs have regained the respect they deserve, with the realization by former low-carb disciples that, when eaten regularly, carbs do not lead to weight gain unless they are gobbled to excess.

"It never made sense to me that people believed that if they stayed away from pasta for more red meat, they would be thinner and healthier. Those of us who know the power of pasta survived the attack by realizing that moderation eventually will prevail," said Wade Moises, chef at Sassi, a high-end Italian eatery in north Scottsdale.

"Carbs were never the enemy, and finally the low carb is exposed as the fad it was."

Nutritionists, in fact, recommend a carb-heavy diet. Calories should be divided this way: 40 to 50 percent from carbohydrates; 20 to 30 percent from protein; and 30 percent fat.

Pasta, potatoes and rice - the three missed sorely during the no-carb era - also provide essential nutrients and little harm.

• Pasta is fortified with folic acid, an essential B vitamin. A half-cup serving of cooked pasta contains a mere 99 calories, less than half a gram of fat and less than 5 milligrams of sodium.

• Potatoes are high in vitamin C, fiber and potassium. They contain no fat or cholesterol and minimal sodium. And a 6-ounce potato contains 3 grams of highly digestible protein, almost as much as half a glass of milk, making it a great foundation for a whole meal.

• White rice is a good source of insoluble fiber, low in fat, contains some protein and plenty of B vitamins.

Nutrients weren't enough, however, for rice, pasta and potatoes to make "good" carb lists with high-fiber, slow-burning types such as lentils and beans. Instead, they often found themselves on the "bad" carb lists with Twinkies and sugary cereals.

"The attack on the potato was unfair and misleading. We were on the wrong list as far as the low-carb movement was concerned," said Frank Muir, president of the Idaho Potato Commission, which fought back four years ago with an expensive advertising campaign celebrating the potato's virtues.

These three carbohydrate staples also provide culinary vessels for other favorite foods: macaroni tossed in a creamy cheese sauce, mashed potatoes spiked with wasabi, pasta topped with fresh chopped tomatoes and garlic or rice stir-fried with broccoli and peppers.

The key is eating these time-tested and economical favorites in moderation.

"A small bowl of pasta is wonderful," Moises said. "A tub is too much."

Post a Comment

Dustbag
Posted Jan-09
7:46 AM

It is disappointing that repeating food industry talking points is now passing for journalism at azcentral.com. Here's an idea - maybe Ms. Fernau could earn her salary and actually research her articles instead of reprinting brochures mailed to her by pasta and potatoe peddlers.

While the "low-carb fad" is having its death knell sounded by the grain and starchy food lobbies, the USDA is revising its guidelines to eliminate refined wheat products and focus on whole grains and leafy vegetables, the American Diabetes Association is recommending controlled carbohydrate nutrition to its members including eliminating starches in all forms. The nutrional science proves that controlling carbohydrates and getting sufficient PROTEIN in the diet is far and away the MOST HEALTHFUL DIET that the human body can consume. Its the diet your body was designed to eat.

Time article: "Can a High-Fat Diet Beat Cancer?"

2008-01-01T19:11:00.000-06:00

Article in Time magazine about using a high-fat diet in the treatment of cancer patients:

Can a High-Fat Diet Beat Cancer?
Monday, Sep. 17, 2007 By RICHARD FRIEBE

An excerpt:

"Since early 2007, Dr. Melanie Schmidt and biologist Ulrike Kämmerer, both at the Würzburg hospital, have been enrolling cancer patients in a Phase I clinical study of a most unexpected medication: fat. Their trial puts patients on a so-called ketogenic diet, which eliminates almost all carbohydrates, including sugar, and provides energy only from high-quality plant oils, such as hempseed and linseed oil, and protein from soy and animal products."

Right, don't dare even mention animal fats.

An interesting article. You would think they were talking about restricting oxygen, the way they talk about the temerity with which people cut down their carb consumption. You would think they were talking about giving people heroin or some dangerous drug with loads of awful side effects, like statins, the way they discuss letting people eat fat. Oh, wait ... that's right, it's OK to pump folks with statins. Because ANYTHING is better than letting people eat fat!

Also interesting: The article doesn't say what the macronutrient ratios actually were; just that the diet is ketogenic. That is, carb-restricted.

Gary Taubes and exercise

2008-01-01T07:56:00.000-06:00

New York magazine recently published an excerpted chapter from Good Calories, Bad Calories here:

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

The article is titled "The Scientist and the Stairmaster."

Here's a point many people miss: Taubes is not promoting a theory. He is reporting on the results of scientific attempts to find a link between exercise and weight loss. So far, scientific studies have not found evidence of a strong causal relationship. Taubes is just the guy with the nerve to say that out loud.

American Diabetes Association's 18-degree turn on carb restriction

2007-12-29T16:19:00.000-06:00

The 2008 recommendations by the American Diabetes Association have been released. In regards to carbohydrate restriction, they've done an astounding 18 degree turn -- which is to say, they've gone a tenth as far as they ought to.

ADA Issues New Clinical Practice Recommendations: New Advice for Doctors About Low-Fat, Low-Carb Restricted Diets For Short-Term Weight Loss

(Note that the press release is incorrectly titled. The body of the press release concerns the ADA's new advice about fat-and-total-calorie-restricted diets and carbohydrate-restricted diets .)

The ADA now says -- oh, so grudgingly, it seems -- that low-carb can have a place in the weight loss efforts of a person with diabetes. Specifically, they now admit that low-carb reducing diets, when used over a short term, have the potential to be at least as effective (for weight loss) as a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet.

Unfortunately, in this faint praise, they completely miss the larger benefit of carb restriction as it relates to diabetes: insulin control. Insulin! Insulin! How long will this organization, one ostensibly dedicated to helping the diabetic, continue to ignore the role of diet in the management of blood glucose and insulin?

Speaking of weight loss, here's a sentence that's completely off-base: "[T]here is now evidence that the most important determinant of weight loss is not the composition of the diet, but whether the person can stick with it, and that some individuals are more likely to adhere to a low carbohydrate diet while others may find a low fat calorie-restricted diet easier to follow."

Wrong. The evidence suggests that macronutrient composition is indeed the most important determinant of weight loss. It's more important than total amount of calories. Which, by the way, is the real other choice in the standard debate, not whether a person can stick to it. Framing the debate as one between composition and ease of adherence is what's known in informal logic as a "false dilemma."

At any rate, the evidence -- as well as common sense -- suggests that a low-fat, calorie restricted diet is more difficult to stick to than a diet that sticks to your ribs. Low-fat meals leave you hungry, especially if they're also low in protein. Low-carb meals might leave you a little dizzy, but only until you've broken the addiction. It takes a couple of days for the body to adjust once you stop shooting it up with the glucose from your starchy, sugary food.

Here's a good article by Jimmy Moore: New 2008 ADA Recommendations Partially Acknowledge Low-Carb Diets -- it gets better, more informative, and more thought provoking as it goes along, so be sure to keep going past the first few grafs. He has great info about and links to discussions of many diabetes-related benefits of carbohydrate restriction. Also good commentary on what the ADA spokesperson has said about the new recommendations.

Here's the Men's Health online article by Adam Campbell, "Apparently, Hell just froze over," which discusses the ADA's change in recommendation.

The Atlanta-Journal Constitution overstated with this headline: "Diabetes Group Back Low-Carb Diets."

Men's Health articles on saturated fat

2007-12-19T22:29:00.000-06:00

Saturated Fat:What if Bad Fat is Actually Good for You?
For decades, Americans have been told that saturated fat clogs arteries and causes heart disease. But there's just one problem: No one's ever proved it
By: Nina Teicholz
Men's Health
Section: Health: Heart Health

Saturated Fat: Stop Blaming Saturated Fat
The research is clear: Carbohydrates, not fats, are the foe in America's battle against heart disease and obesity
By: Adam Campbell & Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D.
Men's Health
Section: Nutrition: Food for Fitness

Gary Taubes on Charlie Rose (2002?)

2007-12-16T17:18:00.000-06:00

This show, posted by YouTube member "CharlieRose" -- an official action of the PBS show, or so one would hope -- is about an hour long.

Guest host subbing for Charlie Rose: Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Guests:
Gary Taubes, who had recently published his New York Times Magazine cover article discussed elsewhere on Lowcarbarama.com
Dr. Dean Ornish "who has led a crusade with the low-fat diet ... as a wellness diet."
Dr. Barbara Howard, chair of the American Heart Association's nutrition committee

Interestingly, Dr. Oz is here identified simply as being with the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Five years later -- by October 2007 -- Dr. Oz had attained celebrity doc status, due to his "You On A Diet" series of books and his association with Oprah. Dr. Oz appeared with Gary Taubes on Larry King live, to provide a counterpoint to the conclusions in Taubes's book. It's remarkable to watch the later show in the context of this one, and observe his transformation into a polished, media-savvy figure who appears to have mastered smooth talk and the art of bantering with hosts. None of that is necessarily a bad thing. It's just fascinating to witness.

Top Chef contestant's reference to low-carb

2007-12-16T11:05:00.001-06:00

This December, the Bravo competitive reality series Top Chef aired a holiday special featuring a selection of contestants from the show's three past cycles in a one-day cook-off. This clip, which references a low-carb approach to cuisine, is around 30 seconds long. A transcript follows at the bottom of this post.

One the holiday special's contestants was Tre Wilcox, a contestant from cycle three, Top Chef Miami, which aired fall 2007. Tre is chef de cuisine at Abacus in Dallas, according to that restaurant's current Web site.

One of Top Chef's judges and hosts is chef Tom Colicchio, owner and executive chef of a string of restaurants including Craft, 'Wichcraft and Crafsteak. This clip is from a portion of the holiday special where Tom talks to all the "cheftestants" in the kitchen to get a sense of what each one is planning, and how they're coming along, on the event's main challenge. Each contestant must prepare his or her own three-course holiday meal for the panel of judges.

In the brief conversation between Tom and Tre -- or at least, the brief portion that was aired in the show -- Tre alludes to using less carbohydrate in his cooking than he did in the past. He says he wants to "get a lot leaner." He describes the reduction of carbohydrate as a way to "refine" traditional dishes.

Of interest is the fact that this professional chef is speaking of reduced-carb cooking in a positive light. He speaks of it as a means of improving the culinary quality of a dish, and also as a means of controlling overweight. (He looks plenty lean on this show -- one could easily guess that the low-carb living is working well for him.) Tre also refers to the traditional dishes as "pretty heavy," which has become, in the mainstream, shorthand for "high-fat." But in this context, he seems to be linking "heaviness" explicitly with starchiness.

Also of interest, although more tangentially, is the fact that during cycle three, one of the challenges involved remaking a classic American home cooking dish into something "more healthy." In the context of the challenge, that meant the usual, unfortunate, modern equation: less fat = better. There was no mention of carb content, or of the unhealthfulness of sugar and starch.

Tre's dish for that challenge was Roast Chicken Cordon Bleu with Bluefoot Chanterelles, Asparagus & Parsnip Sauce. If you read the recipe, you'll note that the only carby component is the parsnips in the sauce. I hadn't noticed it when first watching the show, but the dish is consistent with a low-carb perspective. Most other contestants' entries in that round used more heavy-duty starches, and much more prominently -- pasta, cous cous, potatoes, tortillas -- or else fruity sauces or compotes -- raisins, apricots. These reinterpretations of the American classics were much more in line with the mainstream vision: take out the fat, replace the missing energy and/or flavor with carbs in the form of starch and/or sugar.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE CLIP

TC: Hey, Tre. How's it going, man?

TW: How are you?

TC: Good to see you.

TW: Good to see you, bro.

TC: Happy holidays.

TW: Happy holidays to you, brother.

TC: Growing up in Texas, what were holidays all about? In your house?

TW: Holidays were all about just nice, comforting food. Pretty heavy, you know? I mean I'm trying to get a lot leaner now, so I don't do as much of the carbs and stuff now, but... Lots of ... lots of stuffings and macaroni and cheeses, mashed potatoes, things of that sort. So I'm trying to kind of refine that a little bit, you know? I'm not going to go too ... too down home. I am going to do some mac and cheese, though.

TC: All right.

TW: If I make it through the first round, I feel very good about my two meat dishes.

TC: Awesome. All right. I'll let you get back to it. Good luck man.

TW: Good to see you again.

FGF21 hormone instrumental in use of stored fat?

2007-12-16T10:14:00.000-06:00

A recently discovered hormone appears to control aspects of metabolism: whether the body is burning sugar or fat for fuel, for instance.

Here's an article about a recent study. The first link is the one I encountered first, apparently a reprint, in the course of researching the post about Tre Wilcox

Scientists: Hormone could shed new light on weight lossBy Sue Goetinck Ambrose
The Dallas Morning News, June 6, 2007

The link on the Dallas Morning News site

According to the article, the researchers say their work lends credibility to low-carb diets. It seems that when fasting, or when consuming a low-carb, high-fat diet, this FGF21 is produced, signaling the body to burn fat, including stored fat. The researchers says this could explain why low-carb dieters don't have excessive fat in the bloodstream -- because they're burning it.

The article refers to research done on rats. The researchers are quoted as saying that research with humans would likely be a promising avenue.

Here's an interesting quote from in the article. The speaker is described as "neuroscientist Randy Seeley, associate director of the Obesity Research Center at the University of Cincinnati, who was not involved in the research."

Still, Dr. Seeley noted, the discovery of the hormone alone shows how much scientists still have to learn about why the body burns or stores fat.

“The modern era of studying obesity started in 1994,” he said. “Do we have good treatments yet? The answer is no.”

Gary Taubes on Larry King Live: video clip and transcript

2007-12-14T18:18:00.000-06:00

On October 19, 2007, Gary Taubes appeared on Larry King Live to discuss his just-released book, Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Here's the transcript posted on the CNN site.

Here's a YouTube clip of the show that Jimmy Moore -- the host of the Livin' La Vida Low Carb pantheon of sites and video podcasts -- was good enough to post. The clip runs nearly seven minutes. In it, Dr. Andrew Weil says he's read the entire book, and that he recommends it for docs and students.

Gary Taubes and the Big Fat Lies

2007-12-13T19:38:00.000-06:00

In 2002, award-winning science journalist Gary Taubes wrote an article that appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, titled "What if it's all been a big fat lie?" In it, he questioned the hypotheses that eating a diet low in fat was helpful for weight loss, or in fact, healthy at all. He discussed an alternative hypothesis, which had recently been revived by Dr. Robert Atkins with his New Diet Revolution, and was then gaining in popularity, at least among American dieters: that restricting carbohydrate was more effective -- and more healthful -- than restricting fat, or even total calories. He made much mention of "Endocrinology 101": insulin is used to store fat, and eating carbohydrate causes the body to secrete insulin. This article led to the book deal that made possible Taubes's 2007 masterpiece, "Good Calories, Bad Calories."

Shortly before, Taubes had written an article for Science magazine, The soft science of dietary fat, that covered some of the same ground.

Here are links to these seminal articles, and as many of the published responses to them as I can find. If you know of more, please let me know via the comments field.

The soft science of dietary fat
(Click here to view as pdf)
by Gary Taubes
– Science magazine, March 30, 2001

What if it's all been a big fat lie?
by Gary Taubes
– New York Times Magazine, July 7, 2002

Big Fat Fake: The Atkins diet controversy and the sorry state of science journalism.
by Michael Fumento
– Reason magazine, March 2003

An exercise in vitriol rather than sound journalism
by Gary Taubes
– Reason online, March 2003

Gary Taubes tries to overwhelm the reader with sheer verbiage
By Michael Fumento
– Reason online, March 2003

Knight Science Journalism MIT article

2007-12-12T22:52:00.000-06:00

The following article is undated, but it appears to have been published in 2003, several months after Gary Taubes's landmark New York Times Magazine cover story, "What if it's all been a big fat lie?"

Inside the story: Gary Taubes:
What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
By Martha Henry, program coordinator for the Knight Fellowships, interviews Gary Taubes about his controversial article.

http://web.mit.edu/knight-science/fellows/interviews/taubes.html

Gary Taubes lectures at Berkeley School of Public Health

2007-12-12T21:24:00.000-06:00

The Quality of Calories: What Makes Us Fat and Why Nobody Seems to Care
November 27, 2007, 04:00PM
Sibley Auditorium

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216

This links to a page with a brief description of Taubes's work and a link to a Real Audio file of the entire lecture. Length: about 1 hour 50 minutes.

In case you were waiting for the movie version of Good Calories, Bad Calories before you read the book, this is it.

The School of Public Health at UC Berkeley sponsored this event. In it, Gary Taubes says it's his first lecture. Lots of great information that's not even in his book. Plus, get the added benefit of facial expression, body language, and inflection. His book is written in such an even-handed, objective tone -- it's exciting to witness his passion, even his frustration at the cockeyed reasoning he's encountered during his many years of research putting together Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Gary Taubes on Quirks and Quarks

2007-12-12T19:37:00.001-06:00

Quirks and Quarks, hosted by Bob McDonald, is a radio show on CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Gary Taubes was a guest on Nov. 17, 2007.

An audio MP3 of the interview is available here:

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/nov17.html

The page also features a brief, but pretty accurate, synopsis of the main points of Good Calories, Bad Calories. It also has a nice related-links section.

Starch Made Us Human

2007-12-11T21:25:00.000-06:00

Starch Made Us Human
By Aaron Retica
New York Times Magazine

Dec. 9, 2007

Guns, Germs and Steel

2007-12-11T19:55:00.000-06:00

Author Jared Diamond has suggested that the invention of agriculture might have been the worst mistake in human history.

A big influence on my initial interest in low-carb theory and practice came from his book Guns, Germs and Steel: The fates of human societies. I had read it a couple of years before I read Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution (DANDR) in October 2001.

Diamond describes in exquisite detail the adoption of starch foods by various human groups around the planet, and the vast effects of this on the human story. In fact, the book could have been titled "Guns, Germs, Grains and Steel."

When I read DANDR, I instantly recognized how our current predicaments fit perfectly into the story thread of GGS. I remember thinking, of course! Carbohydrate! The one macronutrient we humans couldn't have based our diets on before we developed agriculture. That there was no logically possible way that we evolved as grain eaters. That the optimal human diet couldn't possibly be one based around whole grains.

Grains have only been in the human diet in any quantity for maybe ten thousand years, and homo sapiens has been the species it is as we know it for over ten times longer than that. (And homo erectus didn't exactly plow fields of amber waves at any point in the past whatever million years, either.)

Whenever I hear or read anyone saying that we require whole grains for health, that we need carbohydrate, that we need to base our diets on grains, that it should be the one food we eat more servings of each day than any other, I find myself thinking: No way. No way. There is no historical way that could possibly be true.

At any rate, I highly recommend this fascinating book to anyone seeking a non-nutrition oriented companion to Good Calories, Bad Calories, or other low-carb related study. Also check out the 2005 PBS miniseries of the same title: Guns, Germs and Steel.

Announcing: Lowcarbarama!

2007-12-11T19:04:00.000-06:00

Sugar and starch: they underlie not only our modern obesity epidemic, but also, to a surprising degree, much of our scourge of modern chronic diseases: diabetes, heart disease, PCOS, even cancer and Alzheimer's.

Generally speaking, a diet that restricts sugar and starch can be termed a low-carb diet.

By "diet," I don't just mean a reducing diet, followed for weight loss (or "slimming" as they say in the U.K.). The health benefits of cutting carbs are numerous.

The story of how sugar and starch became widely available, first to a few scattered groups of humans, and ultimately across the globe in a myriad of forms, is no less than the story of human civilization itself. It's a story of wealth and conquest, slavery and disease, luxury and overcrowding, environmental bounty and devastation.

Over the past fifty or so years, another story has played out as well: the demonization of fat. That's a story of politics and personality, where the views of a charismatic few pravailed, and the findings of the less socially adept became buried, despised, ridiculed. It's a story of how frighteningly easy it was to subvert the great body of human opinion, grounded in millennia of experience and common sense, enshrined in lore and literature ("the fat of the land" is a positive image, for instance) -- to do no less than brainwash the general public to accept the notion that dietary fat is, as a general thing, harmful. Millions of thoughtful folk have reduced the calories from fat in their diets, nearly always to replace them with calories from carbohydrate. Obesity and other ill effects have soared during this time.

Lowcarbarama is here to help the thinking person connect the dots.

Today there's a wealth of news, reportage, opinion and debate on low-carb related topics. Interviews with prominent journalists who are hot on the trail. Scientific findings. Bogus spins and obfuscation on the same. Popular press coverage that ranges from the misguided to the moronic to the almost-on-target. Insightful blogs, forums, web sites. Historical perspectives.

Lowcarbarama is designed to be a place where you can find out about as many of these varied resources as possible.

Do you know of an article, book or video that relates to this subject? Leave a comment and I'll try to link to it here. Help build a doozy of a lowcarbarama!

Lowcarbarama

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The Man Who Thinks Everything Dr. Oz Says is Wrong, Pt 2.

The Man Who Thinks Everything Dr. Oz Says is Wrong, Pt 1.

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American Diabetes Association's 18-degree turn on carb restriction

Men's Health articles on saturated fat

Gary Taubes on Charlie Rose (2002?)

Top Chef contestant's reference to low-carb

FGF21 hormone instrumental in use of stored fat?

Gary Taubes on Larry King Live: video clip and transcript

Gary Taubes and the Big Fat Lies

Knight Science Journalism MIT article

Gary Taubes lectures at Berkeley School of Public Health

Gary Taubes on Quirks and Quarks

Starch Made Us Human

Guns, Germs and Steel

Announcing: Lowcarbarama!