The nutrition information we were given in school is mostly a load of baloney, and puts me in mind of the cargo cult science Richard Feynman discussion from the other day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6543791 . It's interesting how much of this nutrition information passes without being scientifically proven.
My once-inflamed pancreas says otherwise. :-) I guess there's no one-size-fits-all solution to that.
And a lot of people are terrified of consuming 5 grams of fat, but think nothing of consuming 400 carbs in the form of bread, pasta, and sugar. I'm advocating an approach based on whole foods, less sugar, carbs only from wholesome sources like oatmeal and whole grains. I'm just trying to say people focus too much on fat.
tl/dr; Guy eats 5800 kcal every day of fat for 3 weeks, gains 1.3 kg and loses about an inch from his waistline, same guy eats 5800 kcal from carbs every day for 3 weeks, gains 7.1 kg and about 10 cm on the waistline. Exercise is supposed to be the similar in both cases.
Yes, it's just an anecdote, but an interesting one. And imho a reason to be a little humble about the things we think we know about how the human body responds to different kinds of foods. More research is needed.
We both have also noticed that we just feel more mental clarity, more energy and no cravings for junk food. It is amazing. I hope this message gets through in the U.S. eventually.
The problem with that is that the consumption of animal products is unethical. You should consider switching to a vegan low-carb diet to decrease suffering.
Unethical is a strange term of eating animal products. I don't think this "ethical" diet is going to work for me.
The treatment of the animals our food comes from is an issue that, as we get richer, we will begin to have the luxury to care about and the tools to fix.
You can go to jail for being especially cruel to your dog (and rightly so), but somehow the treatment of chickens packed in cages without room to move their entire lives is only recently becoming a concern.
And I say this as someone who eats meat and doesn't feel that it's wrong. If I live long enough maybe I'll change my mind.
I fail to see why it is unethical to eat animals or how your comment adds anything to the discussion.
It's just your opinion, not some moral standard in our society.
I've been losing weight through simple calorie tracking. When I hit my daily limit I stop eating. I eat whatever I want. I've lost 22 pounds and feel great.
EDIT: Here's a nutritionist who improved his health markers eating nothing but junk food - http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/
It's great if you feel good with your diet, as it's your body. But it's a single data point. Trying to build a diet that works for everyone is like trying to find a single programming language for everyone. A diet that works for you over a few months isn't enough time to discover its true benefits, just as a terrible diet's effects aren't obvious potentially for much of a lifetime.
There are plenty of people around the world's whose diet is not high fat, low carb (the Mediterranean for one) but still remain healthy so that isn't a great indicator that there is strictly one way to eat.
I took enough biochemistry and nutritional chemistry classes in college to know how complicated our processing of food is, and how difficult it is to make guidelines for how people should eat.
> Sweden has become the first Western nation to develop national dietary guidelines that reject the popular low-fat diet dogma in favor of low-carb high-fat nutrition advice.
Where is the evidence that Sweden has developed "national dietary guidelines"? All the sources link back to the paper [1][2] entitled "Dietary Treatment for Obesity". Clearly, dietary treatment for obesity is not the same as national dietary guidelines, and the conclusions of a paper are not the same as government policy.
Further, the paper found low-carb diets more effective for weight loss only in the first six months. Long term, it found no difference in the effectiveness of low-fat vs. low carb. To quote from google translate:
> In the long run there are no differences in efficacy between weight loss tips on strict and moderate carbohydrate diet, low-fat diets, högproteinkost, Mediterranean diet, diet focuses on low-glycemic load diet or a high proportion of monounsaturated fats.
Further, on the "diet doctor" website, under the section "Warnings Against LCHF Dismissed" [3], it quotes the study criticizing some studies that concluded low-carb diets are unhealthy for not adequately distinguishing between different classes of low-carb diets, specifically those high in fast-food and those not. This may be a valid criticism, but is not the same as endorsing the long-term health of a low-carb diet. The "diet doctor" concludes "We simply don’t know" about the long-term effects of various macronutrient compositions on health, which is fair, but this is a long way short of the national government of Sweden endorsing high-fat low-carb diets as unequivocally healthier than high-carb low-fat diets.
It may appear that I'm against low-carb diets; I'm not. I just think this is a very poor and misleading article.
[1] [pdf warning] http://www.sbu.se/upload/Publikationer/Content0/1/Mat_vid_fe...
[2] [google translation of conclusions] http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&prev...
[3] http://www.dietdoctor.com/swedish-expert-committee-low-carb-...
They also provide national dietary guidelines, found on the site.
I hope that http://nusi.org/ is as honest and openminded as they claim to be when it comes to researching what kind of food is the most healthy to eat.
It surprises me that we don't have more solid knowledge in these questions.
Occasionally I relapse (hmm, chocolate), and every time I do for any substantial period, I see the effect on my weight. So long as I stick to low-carb, I don't have to worry about what I eat... just eat as much as I feel like, whenever I feel like - but low carb.
My typical day I eat 3-4 eggs, half avocado, 1/2lb of red meat/chicken/fish, 2 servings of greens, 1 serving of vegetables, 2-3 servings of cheese.
Never felt better. It is frustrating because people never believe me and just tell me that I have a fast metabolism.
Are 2 little sweetener pills in my coffee really worse than two cubes of sugar?
As for can it be harmful, maybe so:
"A Duke University study[35] funded by the Sugar Association found evidence that doses of Splenda of between 100 and 1000 mg/kg, containing sucralose at 1.1 to 11 mg/kg (compare to the FDA Acceptable Daily Intake of 5 mg/kg), reduced the amount of fecal microflora in rats by up to 50%, increased the pH level in the intestines, contributed to increases in body weight, and increased levels of P-glycoprotein (P-gp).[36] These effects have not been reported in humans."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose#Other_potential_effec...
On serious note, evidence is there it's time to at least tell people they have a choice. Low carb did wonders to my family members (fat whole life, skinny and feeling great now) and when I keep at it (instead of succumbing to sugar addiction) I fell way better as well. It's safe, many (maybe even most) people function much better while eating this way and there is no way you get fat on it.
Show 895 The Great Cholesterol Myth
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2013/03/09/895-the-great-chol...
Further recent discussion on Wisconsin Public Radio:
http://www.wpr.org/shows/peoples-pharmacy-special-pledge-dri...
I have a daily intake of 400g of carbohydrates. According to you I'd be overwheight and dying of diabetes, cancer, metabolic syndrome and whatnot.
Exercise daily, provide adequate protein intake and watch out the calories. That's it. No need to blame food but yourselves.
Nope, not sure where you get that idea from.
> Exercise daily, provide adequate protein intake and watch out the calories. That's it.
So I can eat a few chicken breasts a day, and then 1,500 kcal of mars bars? Sounds great!
Alternatively if you're trying to lose weight, you can simply cut out the sugar. Exercise is of course important for a host of reasons, but for weight loss it's probably just about the hardest way to do it. I'm in despair when my severely overweight friend relays the advice from her doctor and nutritionist:
"Eat less calories, and get on the treadmill".
Doesn't sound fun, or easy at all. There are other ways.
Doesn't it?
The only issue with sugars are the null effect on satiety and promotion of binge eating. The reason some folks work so well on lowcarb diets is because sugars make it easy to overeat, but that's just a way to create a caloric deficit for them.
Now, I bet most folks here on HN are much more quantitative oriented than the average person, so why limiting yourself to a small set of foods (paleo, keto), when you can free yourself and get away eating pretty much whatever you want, as long as you track the calorie intake?
You'd think, with the title of this webpage, that most would be interested in ways of elegantly and easily solving problems that are important to themselves. But it seems that the constant chanting of no pain no gain has left a lot of people with the conviction that, when it comes to health, things should not be easy nor simple.
The P90X diet program is based on this idea, with 3 phases of the diet with very low carbs in the first phase, medium carbs in the second phase, and more carbs in the third phase.
So maybe you're both right...
> Exercise daily, provide adequate protein intake and watch out the calories. That's it. No need to blame food but yourselves.
That sounds like a nice middle ground, but there's no reason to take a middle ground if something more radical works better for you.
There is way more hyperbole behind these diets than science as far as I've seen.
[1] http://www.kostdoktorn.se/aftonbladet-varnar-for-lchf-cancer
[2] http://www.metro.se/nyheter/lakare-varnar-for-lchf-cancer/EV...
Not being snarky; just legitimately curious. I would love to see some hard science and longitudinal studies behind the ostensible benefits of a vegan diet, or the drawbacks of a diet high -- but not overly high -- in animal protein.
I realize cooked animal protein and preserved/processed animal protein contains carcinogens, and that too much protein (regardless of source) can cause a variety of problems ranging from kidney impairment to gout. But plant-based sources have their costs as well (phytoestrogens, antinutrients, oxalates, etc.).
I've never felt better in my life, and my various lab stats have never looked better, than when I went on a Paleo-esque high fat, low carb diet that was quite rich in animal sources, but which also contained a healthful amount of vegetables (and no fruit). I took the diet as far as ketosis, and after breaking through the ramp-up hurdles, I settled into it and got into fantastic shape.
Anecdotal, yes. But I've struggled with "skinny-fatness" for much of my life, and this particular combination made a remarkable improvement on my physique without any changes in my exercise routine. Maybe my caloric consumption shifted a bit, but if anything, it probably shifted north.
