4 ms·

To curb calories, he avoided meat, whole grains and fruits. Hmm, confounding. There's a lot of crazy stuff in meat, stuff that might well have something to do

by mrj 16y ago

To curb calories, he avoided meat, whole grains and fruits. Hmm, confounding. There's a lot of crazy stuff in meat, stuff that might well have something to do with obesity rates rising. There are many studies that show that the vegetarian diet is the most healthy. His results may have less to do with Twinkies than with the meat he avoided. Edit: Not sure why I'm getting down voted to oblivion? I eat meat... I have no agenda here, just pointing out a deficiency in the article's reasoning.

a1k0n 16y ago
I would wager this is almost certainly why his cholesterol dropped and explains many of the effects. This is basically the central premise of the book The China Study, which is what convinced me to go vegetarian myself about a year ago (I dropped 30 lbs without even trying in about three months and now I weigh less than I did in high school). Still, he's eating a lot of refined sugar, so I'm pretty surprised. Then again, so am I (thanks Halloween!).
- niels_olson 16y ago
  >I would wager this is almost certainly why his cholesterol dropped and explains many of the effects. His cholesterol dropped because he went from a consuming more calories than he burned to a diet where he was burning more calories than he ate. The excess calories were converted into fat and transported in LDL-labeled packets to the adipocytes. Once he started losing weight, adipocytes started releasing fat in smaller HDL-labeled packets for the liver to convert to glucose to meet his energy needs.
  - esponapule 16y ago
    Not all excessive calories are converted into fat. It all depends on blood glucose level, and liver/muscle glycogen storage levels and the level of activity after the meals.
    - niels_olson 16y ago
      Glycogen isn't excess. There's a fairly fixed upper bound to your glycogen stores. In fact there's a whole class of glycogen storage diseases which are very life-limiting, all due to excess storage (inadequate storage would be lethal in utero). Calories burned through activity are by definition not excess. I suppose you could argue that in diabetics with blood sugar above 200, then yes, the sugars become an osmotic diuretic and they literally pee out the calories, but otherwise, excess calories go to fat. Fat is the ultimate, infinite sink in this equilibrium equation.
- Evgeny 16y ago
  This is basically the central premise of the book The China Study, which is what convinced me to go vegetarian myself You may also be interested to read the impressive critique of the China Study, which is based on Colin Campbell's own data: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/ http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal... which is what convinced me that my diet, which contains a fair amount of meat, poultry, eggs and seafood is the way to go.
esponapule 16y ago
As a vegetarian, I can attest to the health aspect of it. I am more healthy than anyone I know (all meat/dairy/egg eaters). Whenever I get a checkup they always ask if i am an athlete or some weird health nut, I just say , "no I just don't eat animals." My last cholesterol test was 113 total.
- fleitz 16y ago
  You can be unhealthy and be a vegetarian as well. I know plenty of overweight vegetarians. I also know a tonne of VERY healthy vegetarians. Mostly, vegetarians are just more interested in healthy eating than the average person. There is nothing inherently more healthy about a vegetarian diet than a non-vegetarian diet. How do you think they fatten up animals before slaughter? By feeding them meat? No, by feeding them grain.
  - dejb 16y ago
    > There is nothing inherently more healthy about a vegetarian diet than a non-vegetarian diet. Can you provide a reference for this totally unsupported assertion? There is a wealth of evidence that contradicts this statement. Here is a link to one highly respected and large study - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study > How do you think they fatten up animals before slaughter? By feeding them meat? No, by feeding them grain. What? This comment is stupid on so many levels I don't know where to start. Here's a short list - These animals are 'by definition' different to humans. You can't extend results beyond species. - The animals are mostly dedicated herbivores. Feeding them meat would make them sick and very unhealthy to consume. - Meat is a lot more expensive to produce than grain. It takes about 10 calories of plant material to produce 1 calorie of meat. Using meat to produce meat would be uneconomical and ultimately unsustainable. - I'm not sure about the 'species BMI' they aim for but I would have thought that meat from 'obese' cows wouldn't be all the popular. I thought consumers generally tried to avoid the obvious fat.
- jules 16y ago
  Do you sport or have physical activity in another way? I've found that there is a huge difference between sporting 30 minutes a week and no high intensity physical activity at all.
ceejayoz 16y ago
I think you're getting downvoted because it doesn't matter what he cut out - it matters that he was eating a caloric number conducive to weight loss. He could've eaten 1800 calories of steak, grains, and fruits each day and lost weight, too. It's just a lot easier to count calories for junk food, as the amounts are right there on the package. This diet was by no means healthy. It was simply a weight losing diet. Long-term, it'd be hell on your body, but it's an interesting approach to quickly bringing weight down (after which one'd hope he'd switch to a nice healthy diet).
- techiferous 16y ago
  "I think you're getting downvoted because it doesn't matter what he cut out..." I agree that this is probably why mrj got downvoted. However, mrj's comments are valuable and further the discussion, so I really wish people didn't downvote. Furthermore, mrj could be right and the article's point--that cutting calories is all you need to focus on--could be wrong. That's the point of science: to form a hypothesis and then test it with multiple trials and multiple studies. If he got back up to 201 lbs and then did the same diet again but with fruits and vegetables instead of junk food, maybe he would've lost weight faster? Who knows until you do it?
- mrj 16y ago
  Well, that's why I called it confounding, if he maintained the same diet and cut calories, that would be a much better experiment. Instead, he both cut calories and massively altered his diet, so there's no telling why he lost weight. I mentioned cutting meat as confounding his results, but the other alterations count just as much, too. Both the article and the diet are sloppy. Yes, he lost weight but even the nutritionist can't explain why, or even if it's a good idea to eat Twinkies for meals.
  - tbrownaw 16y ago
    > there's no telling why he lost weight Fat has about 3500 kCal/lb. If you consume fewer calories than you use, you will lose weight based on that ratio and your calorie deficit. Doing it wrong just means that your body tries to work against you (makes you hungry, makes you tired, makes you want to put on a sweater, etc) and you feel like shit, but for as long as you manage to stick to it you will lose weight.

by mrj 16y ago

a1k0n 16y ago

I would wager this is almost certainly why his cholesterol dropped and explains many of the effects. This is basically the central premise of the book The China Study, which is what convinced me to go vegetarian myself about a year ago (I dropped 30 lbs without even trying in about three months and now I weigh less than I did in high school). Still, he's eating a lot of refined sugar, so I'm pretty surprised. Then again, so am I (thanks Halloween!).

niels_olson 16y ago
>I would wager this is almost certainly why his cholesterol dropped and explains many of the effects. His cholesterol dropped because he went from a consuming more calories than he burned to a diet where he was burning more calories than he ate. The excess calories were converted into fat and transported in LDL-labeled packets to the adipocytes. Once he started losing weight, adipocytes started releasing fat in smaller HDL-labeled packets for the liver to convert to glucose to meet his energy needs.
- esponapule 16y ago
  Not all excessive calories are converted into fat. It all depends on blood glucose level, and liver/muscle glycogen storage levels and the level of activity after the meals.
  - niels_olson 16y ago
    Glycogen isn't excess. There's a fairly fixed upper bound to your glycogen stores. In fact there's a whole class of glycogen storage diseases which are very life-limiting, all due to excess storage (inadequate storage would be lethal in utero). Calories burned through activity are by definition not excess. I suppose you could argue that in diabetics with blood sugar above 200, then yes, the sugars become an osmotic diuretic and they literally pee out the calories, but otherwise, excess calories go to fat. Fat is the ultimate, infinite sink in this equilibrium equation.
Evgeny 16y ago
This is basically the central premise of the book The China Study, which is what convinced me to go vegetarian myself You may also be interested to read the impressive critique of the China Study, which is based on Colin Campbell's own data: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/ http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal... which is what convinced me that my diet, which contains a fair amount of meat, poultry, eggs and seafood is the way to go.

esponapule 16y ago

As a vegetarian, I can attest to the health aspect of it. I am more healthy than anyone I know (all meat/dairy/egg eaters). Whenever I get a checkup they always ask if i am an athlete or some weird health nut, I just say , "no I just don't eat animals." My last cholesterol test was 113 total.

fleitz 16y ago
You can be unhealthy and be a vegetarian as well. I know plenty of overweight vegetarians. I also know a tonne of VERY healthy vegetarians. Mostly, vegetarians are just more interested in healthy eating than the average person. There is nothing inherently more healthy about a vegetarian diet than a non-vegetarian diet. How do you think they fatten up animals before slaughter? By feeding them meat? No, by feeding them grain.
- dejb 16y ago
  > There is nothing inherently more healthy about a vegetarian diet than a non-vegetarian diet. Can you provide a reference for this totally unsupported assertion? There is a wealth of evidence that contradicts this statement. Here is a link to one highly respected and large study - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study > How do you think they fatten up animals before slaughter? By feeding them meat? No, by feeding them grain. What? This comment is stupid on so many levels I don't know where to start. Here's a short list - These animals are 'by definition' different to humans. You can't extend results beyond species. - The animals are mostly dedicated herbivores. Feeding them meat would make them sick and very unhealthy to consume. - Meat is a lot more expensive to produce than grain. It takes about 10 calories of plant material to produce 1 calorie of meat. Using meat to produce meat would be uneconomical and ultimately unsustainable. - I'm not sure about the 'species BMI' they aim for but I would have thought that meat from 'obese' cows wouldn't be all the popular. I thought consumers generally tried to avoid the obvious fat.
jules 16y ago
Do you sport or have physical activity in another way? I've found that there is a huge difference between sporting 30 minutes a week and no high intensity physical activity at all.

ceejayoz 16y ago

I think you're getting downvoted because it doesn't matter what he cut out - it matters that he was eating a caloric number conducive to weight loss. He could've eaten 1800 calories of steak, grains, and fruits each day and lost weight, too. It's just a lot easier to count calories for junk food, as the amounts are right there on the package. This diet was by no means healthy. It was simply a weight losing diet. Long-term, it'd be hell on your body, but it's an interesting approach to quickly bringing weight down (after which one'd hope he'd switch to a nice healthy diet).

techiferous 16y ago
"I think you're getting downvoted because it doesn't matter what he cut out..." I agree that this is probably why mrj got downvoted. However, mrj's comments are valuable and further the discussion, so I really wish people didn't downvote. Furthermore, mrj could be right and the article's point--that cutting calories is all you need to focus on--could be wrong. That's the point of science: to form a hypothesis and then test it with multiple trials and multiple studies. If he got back up to 201 lbs and then did the same diet again but with fruits and vegetables instead of junk food, maybe he would've lost weight faster? Who knows until you do it?
mrj 16y ago
Well, that's why I called it confounding, if he maintained the same diet and cut calories, that would be a much better experiment. Instead, he both cut calories and massively altered his diet, so there's no telling why he lost weight. I mentioned cutting meat as confounding his results, but the other alterations count just as much, too. Both the article and the diet are sloppy. Yes, he lost weight but even the nutritionist can't explain why, or even if it's a good idea to eat Twinkies for meals.
- tbrownaw 16y ago
  > there's no telling why he lost weight Fat has about 3500 kCal/lb. If you consume fewer calories than you use, you will lose weight based on that ratio and your calorie deficit. Doing it wrong just means that your body tries to work against you (makes you hungry, makes you tired, makes you want to put on a sweater, etc) and you feel like shit, but for as long as you manage to stick to it you will lose weight.