Study: 12 weeks, obese men, very high fat low carb (VHFLC) vs. low fat high carb (LFHC) (Veum et al., 2016) #FATFUNC
Pictorially:
It wasn’t explicitly AD LIB, but pretty close. I say this because that is the magnitude of appetite decline we might expect when people go on The Hunger Free Diet(s), eg,
^^^ GOOD IDEA
Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, Sugar, TPMC
Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, ketosis, nutrition, processed food, protein, soda
It started out as “lose weight without hunger on LCHF” and went all the way to “effortless fasting on keto.” Works for some and it might be true, but the same can be said for low fat diets! The key, I think, in both contexts, is simple: fewer processed & refined foods… something the Paleo movement got right, imo (although I still think many low-calorie sweeteners are way less unhealthy than HFCS & sugar).
The logic:
1) add “good calories” like almonds to your diet and appetite spontaneously compensates by eating less other stuff: energy neutral
2) you don’t compensate for added “bad calories” like sugar-sweetened beverages: positive energy balance
3) remove bad calories from your diet and you don’t compensate by eating more other stuff: negative energy balance
Book: Good Calories, Bad Calories
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diabetes, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, fiber, gluten, insulin, muscle, Protein, sleep, TPMC, Trans fat
Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fat, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, obesity, Paleo, processed food, protein, soda, sugar, trans fat
:::begin rant:::
Trigger warning? Maybe.
Disclaimer: I’m pro-LC (P<0.05), but not anti-LF because LF works better than LC for some people. And with the exception of things like keto for neurological issues, I think macros take a back seat to many other factors.
Myths: carbs cause insulin resistance (IR), diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. Carbs are intrinsically pathogenic. If a healthy person eats carbs, eventually they’ll get sick.
And the only prescription is more keto.
And of course all of this could’ve been prevented if they keto’d from the get-go.
Proponents of these myths are referring to regular food carbs, not limited to things like Oreo Coolattas (which would be more acceptable, imo). Taubes, Lustig, Attia, and many others have backed away from their anti-carb positions, yet the new brigade proceeds and has even upped the ante to include starvation. Because “LC = effortless fasting?”
Does this sound sane?
“No carbs ever,
no food often…
otherwise diabetes.”
no one in their right mind would say lentils & beans cause diabetes
Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, diabetes, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, fiber, Fish, Fructose, gluten, Grains, insulin, Ketosis, melatonin, mortality, muscle, Protein, sleep, smoking, strength, Sugar, Sun, TPMC
Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, carbs, circadian rhythm, diabetes, diet, empty calories, energy balance, exercise, fat, fiber, high fructose corn syrup, insulin, ketogenic, nutrition, obesity, protein, soda, sucrose, sugar, trans fat
From what I gather, it’s been difficult to pinpoint the role of plants in the diet of our ancestors for a variety of reasons. For example, evidence of plants on cooking tools and dental remains is suggestive but doesn’t disprove the possibility that said evidence came from preparing the plants for some other purpose (eg, tools, weapons, or medicine), or that the stomach contents of an herbivore was ingested (which gets partial credit).
That said, after reviewing a few studies on the topic (see below), it’s safe to say that plants were eaten, probably frequently, and the types & quantities varied seasonally & geographically. Collectively, the data suggest we aren’t carnivores.
@CaloriesProper I do wonder why there is so much debate around this? Ancient humans ate plants and animals. The end.
— Jamie Scott (@_Jamie_Scott) July 2, 2014
…you had to have something to hold you over until the next fish fell prey to your deadly hunting spear…
Posted in Advanced nutrition, chocolate, circadian, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, Fish, Leptin, microbiome, microbiota, Sugar, TPMC
Tagged calories, calories proper, carbs, chocolate, circadian rhythm, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fat, fiber, high fructose corn syrup, insulin, nutrition, obesity, Paleo, processed food, soda, sugar
Inverse Carb Leverage HypothesisTM
Protein Leverage Hypothesis: Dude eats 15% protein on a 2000 kcal diet (75 g protein). Exchange 25 grams of protein with carb, and he’s now eating 10% protein on a 2000 kcal diet (50 g protein). Theory states Dude will increase total food intake to get back those 25 grams.
Ergo, Protein Leverage Hypothesis:
Disclaimer: I don’t care much for the Protein Leverage Hypothesis. It might be true, but that doesn’t mean it matters. It works well in rodents, but obese patients eat tons of protein. The rebuttal to this is that the protein in their diet is too diluted with other [empty] calories. They’re overeating because of low protein %.
The flipside, confirmed ad nauseam in rodent studies, is that frank protein deficiency increases food intake. Frank protein deficiency means negative nitrogen balance & tissue loss… not just skeletal muscle; organs, too. Incompatible with survival.
Feed someone a low protein low fat diet, they get hungry. If it’s ad libitum, they eat more.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Protein, TPMC
Tagged calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fat, protein, soda
As previously discussed, DRINK was a randomized intervention study that gave children either regular or diet soda for a year and surprise surprise, the regular soda drinkers gained about more body fat than the diet soda drinkers (de Ruyter et al., 2012). And in the follow-up, with an opposite study design, overweight & obese children who continued to drink regular soda gained twice as much weight as those who cut their intake (Ebbeling et al., 2012). There was no apparent black box in the latter study as the kids who stopped drinking soda also decreased their intake of other foods…
-does not compute-
wait a minute … By switching from regular soda to diet, you just end up compensating by eating more of something else, right? My initial response to that has always been that it doesn’t matter – ANYTHING else is better than a straight shot of 100% HF
Does HFCS soda make you eat more?
A recent study has put a little more fuel on this fire. Similar to the abovementioned two, it’s not a sophisticated study designed to accurately assess the impact of regular soda on appetite, satiety, hunger, etc., but it supports the theory that diet soda negative calories are NOT compensated for by eating more of something else.
Food and beverages associated with higher intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (Mathias et al., 2013)
It was another big cross-sectional NHANES study that simply asked how much regular soda, diet soda, and other foods kids were eating.
They showed that as soda intake increased, so did total calories, which could simply mean the soda was adding calories to their diets. This would indirectly support the opposite of the above mentioned theory, namely, that soda calories aren’t compensated for. But it gets better (or worse, depending how you look at it):
soda didn’t simply add to the total calorie intake. More often than not, calorie intake increased above and beyond that contributed by the soda. And it wasn’t just that bigger kids were drinking more soda and eating more food – these data were controlled for body weight. The authors estimated that for every 100 kcal of soda drank, an additional 36 – 86 kcal of food was eaten.
salt makes you thirsty, and now soda makes you hungry?
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, Fructose, Leptin, Sugar
Tagged calories, calories proper, carbohydrates, carbs, diabetes, empty calories, energy expenditure, fat, high fructose corn syrup, insulin, nutrition, obesity, soda, sucrose, sugar
Do not get your hopes up, do not pass GO! do not collect $200. The Mediterranean Diet. Fail.
Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet (Estruch et al., 2013)
This is one of the biggest diet studies we’ve seen in a while, and no doubt it was a very good one. It very effectively put the Mediterranean Diet to the test.
I felt compelled to write about this study out of fear for the nutrition disinformation that it would likely inspire. The Mediterranean Diet is associated with all good things, happiness, red wine and olive oil; whereas the Atkins Diet is associated with artery clogging bacon-wrapped hot dogs and a fat guy who died of a heart attack. Nutrition disinformation.
If you ran a diet study with 3 intervention groups for 5 years, and by the end of the study everybody (in all 3 groups) was on more prescription medications, would you conclude any of the diets were “healthy?” If so, then we should work on your definition of “healthy.”
Study details: big study, lasted roughly 5 years, and the diet intervention was pristine. Mediterranean diet plus extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) vs. Mediterranean diet plus nuts vs. low fat control. They even used biomarkers to confirm olive oil and nut intake (hydroxytyrosol and linoleate, respectively). Compliance was good.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, Fish, gluten, Grains, insulin, mortality, Protein, Sugar, TPMC
Tagged Atkins, body composition, calories, calories proper, carbohydrates, carbs, diet, empty calories, energy balance, energy expenditure, fiber, gluten, grains, insulin, Mediterranean diet, mortality, obesity, Paleo, processed food, protein, soda, sugar, trans fat, wheat
What happens if you give skinny kids a can of fully sugared regular soda to drink every day for a year?
What happens if you take the soda away from overweight kids for a year?
The answer to these two questions should be a definitive user’s guide to the question: how bad is soda for my children? And we got those answers this week.
A set of powerful studies were recently published, the likes of which I thought we’d never see. It’s unethical to assign anyone to start smoking so we can properly study the effects of cigarettes; and before today, I would’ve thought it unethical to assign young children to start drinking fully sugared regular soda. And not just one or two cans… over 350. For the 4 year olds the first study, by the end of the trial they had been on soda for almost a third of their life… during a critical period of development. Ethics schmethics. Hopefully this study will never be repeated.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, empty calories, Energy balance, Sugar, TPMC
Tagged body composition, carbs, diet, energy balance, fat, high fructose corn syrup, obesity, soda, sucrose, sugar
People have been warned about the dangers of excess sugar consumption, but compared to the anti-smoking campaign, the recent proposal to ban XL soda’s is like bringing a cup of water to a forest fire.
In an ideal world, a proper health initiative designed to provide people (kids too) with good nutrition information would work. The new proposal takes a different route: it bans the sale of soda’s larger than 16 ounces (but you can still buy 2-12 ouncers). I see two possible outcomes: 1) someone who would’ve bought one 24 ouncer of soda might settle for 16 ounces; 2) the one in a million customer who wanted 24 ounces will walk away with two 12 ounce sodas instead. Win-win, right? In the first case, the toxic sugar burden is lessened by a third. In the second, a potentially valuable lesson on “serving size” will be on display. Serving size 2.0, in 3-D, spelling-it-out for all to see.
It might actually work. From a nutritional perspective, 90 grams of highly bioavailable sugar (HFCS) is a biological disaster. Pound for pound, there aren’t many worse things you can consume… it’s the anti-thesis of “moderation.” Regardless of your stance on the calorie debate, no one can argue that 90 grams of sugar all-at-once is more detrimental than it’s caloric content would imply. Even for skinny people (metabolic obesity?). It’s worse than dietary fat, and might be THEE cause of leptin resistance.
This isn’t a TPMC original, but this graph of soda, diabetes, and obesity is just about as compelling as epidemiology can be:
douse those sugar cubes with artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives, and we’re good to go
If the ban goes into effect and actually impacts sales, will there be a backlash? more food company lobbying? increased government subsidies (reduced HFCS consumption -> more taxpayer dollars used to cover the losses)? Who knows. If it teaches people a lesson about serving size or empty calories it might be worth it.
calories proper
Posted in Advanced nutrition, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Fructose, Sugar