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Reversal on Carbs: Scientists now blame carbohydrates for America's ills

71 points by cwan 16y ago

yesimahuman 16y ago
Bodybuilders have known this for a long, long time.
- dmix 16y ago
  It's also well known among diabetics. Managing carbs has been an essential part of treating diabetes since the 90s. It's also a good strategy for preventing diabetes...
  - commandar 16y ago
    The irony is that I've had a number of times where I've been discussing limiting carbohydrate intake with somebody and they repeat the claim they heard that ketosis somehow puts the body into "diabetic shock." I'm not even hardcore about it and don't go to the extent of maintaining ketosis, but I've definitely noticed that I feel my best and control my eating easiest if I limit carbs to about 30% of my caloric intake.
- jerf 16y ago
  As Taubes documented, a lot of people have known this for centuries. It's not like it's that hard of an experiment to run, even in prior centuries. If this fully pans out, as I think it will, nutritionists of the past fifty years or so are going to have the unenviable task of being used as an example of how an entire discipline with billions of dollars in funding and the best possible science apparatus can get it horribly, horribly wrong for a very, very long time.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    What will be the most interesting to watch about this is the social reprogramming that will go on. If history is a guide, within 30 years school textbooks will read as if this was just a logical conclusion and was easily reached -- instead of the brutal infighting and confusion that it actually was. One of the weirdest things I learned as an adult was that science does not progress linearly like they teach in school. Instead people get emotionally attached to ideas, and miracle of miracles, the evidence shows they are correct. Until the evidence shows they are not. Then it's this long struggle for changing gears, finally ending up in a spot where nobody ever talks about what went on before. I think the human part of science is at least as interesting as the science itself. Lots of complexity and randomness, yet parts are very predictable. Neat.
    - jeangenie 16y ago
      agreed. science has never offered any simple narrative, it's a sprawling, incomprehensible, fascinating mess. it's a human story just like everything else.
      - Stwerner 16y ago
        That's definitely what I got out of reading bill bryson's brief history of nearly everything. The people involved in most of our scientific discoveries are incredibly fascinating
  - nradov 16y ago
    It reminds of how the cure for scurvy was discovered and then "lost" years later due to bad science. http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm (That article was previously discussed here.)
  - narkee 16y ago
    I think everyone would do well to remember that nutritionists are nuts, and do not belong to any sort of regulatory body. You, me and my pet monkey can all start calling ourselves nutritionists tomorrow, and charge money for ridiculous dietary advice. Dietitians, on the other hand, are certified professionals and actually say things worth listening to. Any time I read anything quoting a nutritionist, I stop reading immediately, as all credibility is lost.
  - narkee 16y ago
    I think everyone would do well to remember that nutritionists are nuts, and do not belong to any sort of regulatory body. You, me and my pet monkey can all start calling ourselves nutritionists tomorrow, and charge money for ridiculous dietary advice. Dietitians, on the other hand, are certified professionals and actually say things worth listening to. Any time I read anything quoting a nutritionist, I stop reading immediately, as all credibility is lost.
ghshephard 16y ago
This upsets me to no end. When I was growing up in the 70s, we had a food pyramid that was based on carbohydrates, created by no less than the USDA - not the surgeon general. Then, in the late 90s, the establishment totally came down on the Atkins/Zone type diets as being inappropriate and foolish. How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense? I also find it annoying that we continue to discuss a universal "Diet", when, in fact, different people react very differently to different types of food. I sometimes think we're still in the dark ages in terms of certain fields of endeavors.
- tel 16y ago
  How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense? Politics is only distantly interested in truth and widely interested in lobby parties.
  - yeahsure 16y ago
    Like they say, Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story...
- tjic 16y ago
  > How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense? The government was involved?
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  The US government does not have your best interests as a priority.
  - scotje 16y ago
    Especially the USDA who's mission is to promote our agricultural industries. For some reason, we have the agency charged with supporting the producers of food setting the official recommendations for what and how much you should be eating.
Toucan 16y ago
This isn't a reversal, at least not on the part of scientists. Reporting like this just reinforces the public's idea of "Why should I do what doctor's say? They just change their mind. First it was eggs..." and so on. Seriously, ask your mum. Scientists have known about insulin sensitivity and why and how weight gain/loss happens for a long time. Bodybuilders and other sportsmen and women listen. http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=139058 http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=139058 is an interesting article on what actually happened. In contrast with the "oh those silly scientists, always changing their mind" headline, that article states 'scientists have known what makes us fat for almost half a century'.
- jerf 16y ago
  That's an article by Taubes partially explaining how the consensus that fat makes you fat came about and why that was a departure from the mainstream up to that point, but, uh, you are aware that Taubes has been just about crucified for those opinions? The article you cite is itself a non-mainstream article, you can't cite it as an example that the mainstream scientists have "always known" this. No, in fact mainstream scientists all over the place have been insisting that Taubes and Atkins and everybody else claiming it's actually carbs are not just wrong but evil for saying so. If this shift is actually made (which is still not a done deal), it will in fact be a consensus shift, one where the evidence has been available for centuries that the consensus was wrong, but a consensus was manufactured anyhow.
  - ghshephard 16y ago
    Agreed. I was on the Zone Diet for about four years, and I recall doing a ton of reading in 99-2003 on the topic. The whole idea of limiting your dietary intake to being no more than 40% carbohydrates was seen as being "fringe" dietary advice - and it only got play in the "alternative" arena of dietary advice. Atkins was seen as an outright kook. Basically, Fats and Cholesterol were the only components that seemed to get mainstream attention - there was almost no establishment focus on carbohydrates as being problematic at the time - to say otherwise is revisionist.
  - Toucan 16y ago
cageface 16y ago
So how is it that Asians eat tons of white rice but don't suffer from obesity, heart disease, diabetes and hypertension at anything close to Western rates?
- commandar 16y ago
  It's not just carbohydrates so much as refined carbohydrates. The sugar and white flour that make up so much of the typical American diet have a very high glycemic index, which causes the body's blood sugar to spike pretty heavily. What makes this really fun is that the constant blood sugar spikes make you hungrier and you tend to eat more as a result. White rice still isn't great in this regard, but it's not as bad as comparable American staples.
  - cageface 16y ago
    That makes sense but my experience of travelling in Asia is that a lot of people eat tons of white rice every day. Portions weren't significantly smaller than those I see in the U.S. either. Is white rice really that much better than white bread or is there more to the equation?
    - potatolicious 16y ago
      I don't know about the numbers, but as an Asian I can assure you that heart disease, hypertension, etc etc are all very common in Asia still, particularly in wealthy, developed areas. Many health-conscious Asians have moved to brown rice, much like how many Western folk have moved off white bread. My general impression is that refined carbs are simply not great for you.
    - commandar 16y ago
      It depends a lot of the exact type of rice and preparation. Parboiled long grain rice can have a GI as low as the 40s while instant white rice can have a GI in the 90s. White bread generally has a GI of 70 or up. Glucose sits at the top at 100.
- msluyter 16y ago
presidentender 16y ago
I think our best bet is to let our own bodies figure out what's good for us. The problem with that is that "food" these days includes many nutritive substances which simply didn't exist in modern quantities during the evolutionary development of our appetites, most notably this abundance of fructose (HFCS, anyone?). The act of consuming food usually prompts one's body to produce insulin in order to assimilate the carbs in the food, and this insulin acts as an appetite suppressant. The problem is that fructose is so simple that no insulin needs be produced in order to assimilate it, so the appetite goes unsuppressed after the consumption of calorie-dense food, and the subject continues to feed. This leads to a positive feedback loop, because the stored calories require maintenance (heavier people must eat more to maintain their bodies, regardless of whether that weight comes from muscle or fat). This feedback loop causes all sorts of other problems, too. That's not even getting into the ancillary effects of the other stuff that we get from grain.
- commandar 16y ago
  >(HFCS, anyone?) I'm not a big fan of singling out HFCS because it misses the forest for the trees. Any refined carbohydrate is going to cause a strong insulin response. White bread is pretty awful for similar reasons, for example.
  - presidentender 16y ago
    I do not disagree on any point.
  - richcollins 16y ago
    There are considerations other than insulin response (other parts of liver metabolism): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
- kragen 16y ago
  Your post is full of errors. Fructose was quite common in our ancestral diets, fructose is not any simpler than glucose, it's more difficult to assimilate than glucose, and heavier people do not generally eat more. There may be other errors I'm not even noticing, because I'm no expert in the field. Look it up.
msluyter 16y ago
As someone who's been on a low carb, no-grain diet (mostly) over the past year, this is gratifying to read. In that time I lost (with little effort) about 30 pounds, and while I find the diet occasionally difficult to maintain (mostly due to boredom), it's easier than a low fat diet, in which I was always starving.
- sitmack 16y ago
  Could you give examples of the kinds of meals you eat?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- sudont 16y ago
  Definitely. The importance of dark green and fibrous vegetables is is extremely downplayed in any official dietary guidelines, and they really should be at the base of the food pyramid, at least for most of the year. Carbohydrates are, however, fairly useful in terms of overloading the body's metabolism. (That's why you lost the 30 lbs.) Back in college, I used to burn protein pretty badly, and my performance in the gym was severely hampered. I had a meeting with the S&C coach, where he imparted the need to carbo-load after a workout to prevent metabolism from using protein as quick energy. (At the time I was eating around 6-7k calories a day while losing weight, this helped me drop to a manageable diet.) Since carbohydrates are largely energy stores much in the same way as fat is, but without the added benefit of fat-soluble vitamins, they should be the first thing to cut down on. Well, probably fatty meat as well.
  - staktrace 16y ago
    More recent low-carb advice (e.g. the Paleo Diet for Athletes) recommends eating carbs before a workout/training session, and protein + some carbs after for replenishing. I've been doing that and it works out pretty well.
- jerf 16y ago
  I've been toying off and on with low carb diets, and my body has made it clear that if I want to continue with high carb diets it intends to make me one of the guys having heart attacks at 40 or 50, so it's now permanently "on". (I'm 31 right now.) For a while I've been playing with spices, in all the good senses of "play", and I've been upping my culinary game. Even more recently I've started to get into sort of "gourmet" cooking; I'm scare quoting it because I'm not really in it for the attitude, but just the flavor. I have a small collection of vinegars, cooking wines, various extracts and oils (you can pry my sesame oil out of my cold dead fingers), and have been experimenting with a variety of cheeses. My wife, who isn't quite as into this yet, has also become hooked; she's discovered she really likes Balsamic Vinegar in a couple of recipes. (We buy the, ahem, "fake" stuff that doesn't take decades to create and only costs slightly more than other vinegars in the store; I'm sure it's not as good but it's good enough.) And lo, it turns out that there are entire culinary traditions around the world that have centuries of history working with these ingredients, and it is good. My "boredom" level has plummeted in the past six months as I've opened these doors, and lately I'm getting to the point where I couldn't go back. It isn't that hard, and it isn't actually that expensive. It does take some experimentation, though; you can follow recipes but I've found that my tastes and the tastes of those who are really "into" the culinary thing diverge quite strongly, even as we agree on ingredients. These are expensive ingredients relative to other foods in the store, yes, but typically you only use them in very small quantities; per use they are monetarily insignificant. Example: I like hamburgers. For other reasons, I have to eat them without a bun, but I now wouldn't eat them with a bun anyhow. I do not know what it is exactly, but I find that adding one drop of sesame oil to a pound of hamburger can really change things. Don't forget to salt the meat. Toss in some dried onions for even more fun. Mix it all together, then form the patties. This is not a normal burger. I say "I don't know what it is" because something is really opening up the sesame oil, usually one drop does not have such an effect on a meal, but don't dribble much more in or you will actually ruin it. (Unless you really like sesame flavor.) And this is just one example. It really isn't surprising (in hindsight, remember I've been there) that trying to take a typical American diet and subtract the bad stuff, which also happens to be where all the flavor is, has a boring result. But there are other traditions and ways of cooking that are as good or better; after all, the recommended American diet is a local aberration, not what we've been eating for centuries.
chopsueyar 16y ago
http://veganbodybuilding.com/?page=bio_avi http://veganbodybuilding.com/?page=bio_avi
anamax 16y ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yCeFmn_e2c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yCeFmn_e2c How about there's more in it for them if they find something new?
loca 16y ago
"What If It’s All Been A Big Fat Lie?" by Gary Taubes http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?scp=1&sq=what%20if%20its%20all%20been%20a%20big%20fat%20lie?&st=cse http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-... Tom Naughton's "Fat Head" is now available on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/fat-head http://www.hulu.com/fat-head
mootothemax 16y ago
When I cycled 25 miles a day, Monday to Friday, I could eat /anything/ in huge quantities without a problem. It makes sense, but not when you add up the calories; I was putting in way more than the most optimistic calculators said I was spending. Then I moved closer to work, and had a total of maybe 20 minutes on my bike every day - but this being a cheaper bike I could leave it locked up outside (with a decent lock, natch) so it was my primary form of transport for everything - going to the shops, commuting to work or meeting friends out and about in town. I was still eating whatever I wanted albeit in slightly smaller portions without putting on a pound. Whilst it's interesting and valuable science to discover quite what on earth goes on when we eat things, if your biggest concern is not putting on weight, why not do exercise that makes you sweat for 20 or 30 minutes 5 days a week? Seems much easier to me - and satisfying because you don't have to deny yourself anything!
- aantix 16y ago
  You're giving exercise way too much credit. Even the most rigorous regiment (which most couldn't even do) can maybe burn a 1,000 calories an hour. But considering how it easy it is to ingest 1,000 calories, it's easier to make changes at the dietary level than to correct excess calories by burning them off.
  - mootothemax 16y ago
    Rather, I'm doubting that our understanding of calories and how they're burned off/turned into fat is wrong. I'm proof, as is anyone else who does 30 mins sweaty exercise a day. Otherwise, given the amount of Big Macs inbetween meals, the maths doesn't add up.
- nova 16y ago
  why not do exercise that makes you sweat for 20 or 30 minutes 5 days a week? Mainly because getting fat is not the only thing that happens to us when we eat thing we didn't evolve to eat.
attila 16y ago
There are plenty of good points in the article. However, I find the sloppy use of the word 'carbs' unforgivable and misleading. Fruits and vegetables are mostly carbs (...as dietary fiber is a form of carbohydrate too). The majority of the latter are, of course, healthy. The casual reader may get the impression from the article that all carbs are bad, and turn to a high protein diet.
mey 16y ago
After having a bought of pancreatitis recently, I've been looking at my own food choices very closely to find the things that will keep my healthy, out of the hospital, and off long term drugs. My anecdotal experience is that, lean meats, veggies, fruits are expensive, but are the best things for me personally. It is astounding how much sugar, carbs and fat is in the products I used to be eating. Obviously you need calories to survive, but I've been aiming to consume more calories that are slow burning (lean protein) and mix in "healthy" fats (omega 3 etc) with veggies fiber and vitamins. I've been loosing weight, feeling better, and managed to cut my bad cholesterol by more then half, all without taking any medication to do so. I consider this a success of information and personal experimentation to find what works for me. Prior to this health condition, I never put a high value the quality of the food I was eating. I cared about what food would keep me awake, revved, and burning the midnight oil, rather then what was good for my long term health. After encountering all the sugar in our (US) food supply, I'm very much for removing the corn subsidies the federal government provides. It would remove the supply of cheap sugar that seems to permeates everything we eat.
- riledhel 16y ago
  Human body has a great capability for adaptation. So change in what you eat is just another form of adaptation. A couple of months with a new diet and you won't miss the "old stuff". (let's forget about obsessive patterns for the sake of the argument)
Semiapies 16y ago
Thanks for catching up on the last 10+ years of nutritional debate, LA Times. Perhaps the real problem is seizing on one simplistic explanation for a complicated problems ("Meats!" "Fats!" "Sugars!" "Carbs!") and beating on it endlessly, then when that doesn't solve the problem, switching to another simplistic explanation.
davidedicillo 16y ago
I come from a country built on carbs: Italy. I think I hate at least a plate of pasta a per for 30 years and guess what, I'm not overweight. America, do you want to see you problem? Don't look further than your car. The one you drive to go grocery shopping 1 mile from home. Just walk, I'm actually thinking to not renew my car lease when it will expire in 2 months, and we'll keep only one car for the family. Do you both need to commute to work? Fine, get to car, but use them if you need to go further than 1-2 miles. Otherwise walk. You'd be amaze to find out how many things there are in a two miles radius.
- jdminhbg 16y ago
  The number of things within a 2-mi radius of home varies a lot depending on where you live; Italy is a far more compact country than the US is. Also, I'm not so sure that even an Italian-sized dinner portion of pasta compares in sheer carbs per person to the typical castigated lower-class American diet. White bread and soda alone provide a mind-boggling amount.
- staktrace 16y ago
  It's all about balancing the two. If you eat lots of carbs but don't burn them off in the right way, they're going to result in disease. If you exercise regularly, some (but not all) of the negative effects of carbs are counteracted. For instance, eating carbs will still increase the acidity of your system, which leads to calcium leaking off your bones and osteoporosis.
- enjo 16y ago
  I lived in Italy for a few years (Northern). Generally the portions of pasta that you ate were relatively small. You also ate a lot of fish, stews, and vegetables. In regions of Italy that DO eat mostly carb loaded diets (like Sicily) there has been a relatively long running obesity issue. Walking is important, and it's a great thing. But even walking several miles a day does little to combat obesity when you're offsetting it with thousands of calories of carb-loaded food every day.
  - davidedicillo 16y ago
noarchy 16y ago
Carbs are fine if you're active, and even necessary if you are very active (cyclists, for example, understand this pretty well). But this is the problem, I guess. We are expected to build diets on which sedentary people can get by.

71 points by cwan 16y ago

yesimahuman 16y ago

Bodybuilders have known this for a long, long time.

dmix 16y ago
It's also well known among diabetics. Managing carbs has been an essential part of treating diabetes since the 90s. It's also a good strategy for preventing diabetes...
- commandar 16y ago
  The irony is that I've had a number of times where I've been discussing limiting carbohydrate intake with somebody and they repeat the claim they heard that ketosis somehow puts the body into "diabetic shock." I'm not even hardcore about it and don't go to the extent of maintaining ketosis, but I've definitely noticed that I feel my best and control my eating easiest if I limit carbs to about 30% of my caloric intake.
jerf 16y ago
As Taubes documented, a lot of people have known this for centuries. It's not like it's that hard of an experiment to run, even in prior centuries. If this fully pans out, as I think it will, nutritionists of the past fifty years or so are going to have the unenviable task of being used as an example of how an entire discipline with billions of dollars in funding and the best possible science apparatus can get it horribly, horribly wrong for a very, very long time.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  What will be the most interesting to watch about this is the social reprogramming that will go on. If history is a guide, within 30 years school textbooks will read as if this was just a logical conclusion and was easily reached -- instead of the brutal infighting and confusion that it actually was. One of the weirdest things I learned as an adult was that science does not progress linearly like they teach in school. Instead people get emotionally attached to ideas, and miracle of miracles, the evidence shows they are correct. Until the evidence shows they are not. Then it's this long struggle for changing gears, finally ending up in a spot where nobody ever talks about what went on before. I think the human part of science is at least as interesting as the science itself. Lots of complexity and randomness, yet parts are very predictable. Neat.
  - jeangenie 16y ago
    agreed. science has never offered any simple narrative, it's a sprawling, incomprehensible, fascinating mess. it's a human story just like everything else.
    - Stwerner 16y ago
      That's definitely what I got out of reading bill bryson's brief history of nearly everything. The people involved in most of our scientific discoveries are incredibly fascinating
- nradov 16y ago
  It reminds of how the cure for scurvy was discovered and then "lost" years later due to bad science. http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm (That article was previously discussed here.)
- narkee 16y ago
  I think everyone would do well to remember that nutritionists are nuts, and do not belong to any sort of regulatory body. You, me and my pet monkey can all start calling ourselves nutritionists tomorrow, and charge money for ridiculous dietary advice. Dietitians, on the other hand, are certified professionals and actually say things worth listening to. Any time I read anything quoting a nutritionist, I stop reading immediately, as all credibility is lost.
- narkee 16y ago
  I think everyone would do well to remember that nutritionists are nuts, and do not belong to any sort of regulatory body. You, me and my pet monkey can all start calling ourselves nutritionists tomorrow, and charge money for ridiculous dietary advice. Dietitians, on the other hand, are certified professionals and actually say things worth listening to. Any time I read anything quoting a nutritionist, I stop reading immediately, as all credibility is lost.

ghshephard 16y ago

This upsets me to no end. When I was growing up in the 70s, we had a food pyramid that was based on carbohydrates, created by no less than the USDA - not the surgeon general. Then, in the late 90s, the establishment totally came down on the Atkins/Zone type diets as being inappropriate and foolish. How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense? I also find it annoying that we continue to discuss a universal "Diet", when, in fact, different people react very differently to different types of food. I sometimes think we're still in the dark ages in terms of certain fields of endeavors.

tel 16y ago
How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense? Politics is only distantly interested in truth and widely interested in lobby parties.
- yeahsure 16y ago
  Like they say, Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story...
tjic 16y ago
> How is it that we went through at least 40 years of incorrect diet advice without controlled studies giving us accurate and science based broad understanding of what actually made sense? The government was involved?
chopsueyar 16y ago
The US government does not have your best interests as a priority.
- scotje 16y ago
  Especially the USDA who's mission is to promote our agricultural industries. For some reason, we have the agency charged with supporting the producers of food setting the official recommendations for what and how much you should be eating.

Toucan 16y ago

This isn't a reversal, at least not on the part of scientists. Reporting like this just reinforces the public's idea of "Why should I do what doctor's say? They just change their mind. First it was eggs..." and so on. Seriously, ask your mum. Scientists have known about insulin sensitivity and why and how weight gain/loss happens for a long time. Bodybuilders and other sportsmen and women listen. http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=139058 http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=139058 is an interesting article on what actually happened. In contrast with the "oh those silly scientists, always changing their mind" headline, that article states 'scientists have known what makes us fat for almost half a century'.

jerf 16y ago
That's an article by Taubes partially explaining how the consensus that fat makes you fat came about and why that was a departure from the mainstream up to that point, but, uh, you are aware that Taubes has been just about crucified for those opinions? The article you cite is itself a non-mainstream article, you can't cite it as an example that the mainstream scientists have "always known" this. No, in fact mainstream scientists all over the place have been insisting that Taubes and Atkins and everybody else claiming it's actually carbs are not just wrong but evil for saying so. If this shift is actually made (which is still not a done deal), it will in fact be a consensus shift, one where the evidence has been available for centuries that the consensus was wrong, but a consensus was manufactured anyhow.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  Agreed. I was on the Zone Diet for about four years, and I recall doing a ton of reading in 99-2003 on the topic. The whole idea of limiting your dietary intake to being no more than 40% carbohydrates was seen as being "fringe" dietary advice - and it only got play in the "alternative" arena of dietary advice. Atkins was seen as an outright kook. Basically, Fats and Cholesterol were the only components that seemed to get mainstream attention - there was almost no establishment focus on carbohydrates as being problematic at the time - to say otherwise is revisionist.
- Toucan 16y ago

cageface 16y ago

So how is it that Asians eat tons of white rice but don't suffer from obesity, heart disease, diabetes and hypertension at anything close to Western rates?

commandar 16y ago
It's not just carbohydrates so much as refined carbohydrates. The sugar and white flour that make up so much of the typical American diet have a very high glycemic index, which causes the body's blood sugar to spike pretty heavily. What makes this really fun is that the constant blood sugar spikes make you hungrier and you tend to eat more as a result. White rice still isn't great in this regard, but it's not as bad as comparable American staples.
- cageface 16y ago
  That makes sense but my experience of travelling in Asia is that a lot of people eat tons of white rice every day. Portions weren't significantly smaller than those I see in the U.S. either. Is white rice really that much better than white bread or is there more to the equation?
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    I don't know about the numbers, but as an Asian I can assure you that heart disease, hypertension, etc etc are all very common in Asia still, particularly in wealthy, developed areas. Many health-conscious Asians have moved to brown rice, much like how many Western folk have moved off white bread. My general impression is that refined carbs are simply not great for you.
  - commandar 16y ago
    It depends a lot of the exact type of rice and preparation. Parboiled long grain rice can have a GI as low as the 40s while instant white rice can have a GI in the 90s. White bread generally has a GI of 70 or up. Glucose sits at the top at 100.
msluyter 16y ago

presidentender 16y ago

I think our best bet is to let our own bodies figure out what's good for us. The problem with that is that "food" these days includes many nutritive substances which simply didn't exist in modern quantities during the evolutionary development of our appetites, most notably this abundance of fructose (HFCS, anyone?). The act of consuming food usually prompts one's body to produce insulin in order to assimilate the carbs in the food, and this insulin acts as an appetite suppressant. The problem is that fructose is so simple that no insulin needs be produced in order to assimilate it, so the appetite goes unsuppressed after the consumption of calorie-dense food, and the subject continues to feed. This leads to a positive feedback loop, because the stored calories require maintenance (heavier people must eat more to maintain their bodies, regardless of whether that weight comes from muscle or fat). This feedback loop causes all sorts of other problems, too. That's not even getting into the ancillary effects of the other stuff that we get from grain.

commandar 16y ago
>(HFCS, anyone?) I'm not a big fan of singling out HFCS because it misses the forest for the trees. Any refined carbohydrate is going to cause a strong insulin response. White bread is pretty awful for similar reasons, for example.
- presidentender 16y ago
  I do not disagree on any point.
- richcollins 16y ago
  There are considerations other than insulin response (other parts of liver metabolism): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
kragen 16y ago
Your post is full of errors. Fructose was quite common in our ancestral diets, fructose is not any simpler than glucose, it's more difficult to assimilate than glucose, and heavier people do not generally eat more. There may be other errors I'm not even noticing, because I'm no expert in the field. Look it up.

msluyter 16y ago

As someone who's been on a low carb, no-grain diet (mostly) over the past year, this is gratifying to read. In that time I lost (with little effort) about 30 pounds, and while I find the diet occasionally difficult to maintain (mostly due to boredom), it's easier than a low fat diet, in which I was always starving.

sitmack 16y ago
Could you give examples of the kinds of meals you eat?
deleted 16y ago
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sudont 16y ago
Definitely. The importance of dark green and fibrous vegetables is is extremely downplayed in any official dietary guidelines, and they really should be at the base of the food pyramid, at least for most of the year. Carbohydrates are, however, fairly useful in terms of overloading the body's metabolism. (That's why you lost the 30 lbs.) Back in college, I used to burn protein pretty badly, and my performance in the gym was severely hampered. I had a meeting with the S&C coach, where he imparted the need to carbo-load after a workout to prevent metabolism from using protein as quick energy. (At the time I was eating around 6-7k calories a day while losing weight, this helped me drop to a manageable diet.) Since carbohydrates are largely energy stores much in the same way as fat is, but without the added benefit of fat-soluble vitamins, they should be the first thing to cut down on. Well, probably fatty meat as well.
- staktrace 16y ago
  More recent low-carb advice (e.g. the Paleo Diet for Athletes) recommends eating carbs before a workout/training session, and protein + some carbs after for replenishing. I've been doing that and it works out pretty well.
jerf 16y ago
I've been toying off and on with low carb diets, and my body has made it clear that if I want to continue with high carb diets it intends to make me one of the guys having heart attacks at 40 or 50, so it's now permanently "on". (I'm 31 right now.) For a while I've been playing with spices, in all the good senses of "play", and I've been upping my culinary game. Even more recently I've started to get into sort of "gourmet" cooking; I'm scare quoting it because I'm not really in it for the attitude, but just the flavor. I have a small collection of vinegars, cooking wines, various extracts and oils (you can pry my sesame oil out of my cold dead fingers), and have been experimenting with a variety of cheeses. My wife, who isn't quite as into this yet, has also become hooked; she's discovered she really likes Balsamic Vinegar in a couple of recipes. (We buy the, ahem, "fake" stuff that doesn't take decades to create and only costs slightly more than other vinegars in the store; I'm sure it's not as good but it's good enough.) And lo, it turns out that there are entire culinary traditions around the world that have centuries of history working with these ingredients, and it is good. My "boredom" level has plummeted in the past six months as I've opened these doors, and lately I'm getting to the point where I couldn't go back. It isn't that hard, and it isn't actually that expensive. It does take some experimentation, though; you can follow recipes but I've found that my tastes and the tastes of those who are really "into" the culinary thing diverge quite strongly, even as we agree on ingredients. These are expensive ingredients relative to other foods in the store, yes, but typically you only use them in very small quantities; per use they are monetarily insignificant. Example: I like hamburgers. For other reasons, I have to eat them without a bun, but I now wouldn't eat them with a bun anyhow. I do not know what it is exactly, but I find that adding one drop of sesame oil to a pound of hamburger can really change things. Don't forget to salt the meat. Toss in some dried onions for even more fun. Mix it all together, then form the patties. This is not a normal burger. I say "I don't know what it is" because something is really opening up the sesame oil, usually one drop does not have such an effect on a meal, but don't dribble much more in or you will actually ruin it. (Unless you really like sesame flavor.) And this is just one example. It really isn't surprising (in hindsight, remember I've been there) that trying to take a typical American diet and subtract the bad stuff, which also happens to be where all the flavor is, has a boring result. But there are other traditions and ways of cooking that are as good or better; after all, the recommended American diet is a local aberration, not what we've been eating for centuries.

chopsueyar 16y ago

http://veganbodybuilding.com/?page=bio_avi http://veganbodybuilding.com/?page=bio_avi

anamax 16y ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yCeFmn_e2c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yCeFmn_e2c How about there's more in it for them if they find something new?

loca 16y ago

"What If It’s All Been A Big Fat Lie?" by Gary Taubes http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?scp=1&sq=what%20if%20its%20all%20been%20a%20big%20fat%20lie?&st=cse http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-... Tom Naughton's "Fat Head" is now available on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/fat-head http://www.hulu.com/fat-head

mootothemax 16y ago

When I cycled 25 miles a day, Monday to Friday, I could eat /anything/ in huge quantities without a problem. It makes sense, but not when you add up the calories; I was putting in way more than the most optimistic calculators said I was spending. Then I moved closer to work, and had a total of maybe 20 minutes on my bike every day - but this being a cheaper bike I could leave it locked up outside (with a decent lock, natch) so it was my primary form of transport for everything - going to the shops, commuting to work or meeting friends out and about in town. I was still eating whatever I wanted albeit in slightly smaller portions without putting on a pound. Whilst it's interesting and valuable science to discover quite what on earth goes on when we eat things, if your biggest concern is not putting on weight, why not do exercise that makes you sweat for 20 or 30 minutes 5 days a week? Seems much easier to me - and satisfying because you don't have to deny yourself anything!

aantix 16y ago
You're giving exercise way too much credit. Even the most rigorous regiment (which most couldn't even do) can maybe burn a 1,000 calories an hour. But considering how it easy it is to ingest 1,000 calories, it's easier to make changes at the dietary level than to correct excess calories by burning them off.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Rather, I'm doubting that our understanding of calories and how they're burned off/turned into fat is wrong. I'm proof, as is anyone else who does 30 mins sweaty exercise a day. Otherwise, given the amount of Big Macs inbetween meals, the maths doesn't add up.
nova 16y ago
why not do exercise that makes you sweat for 20 or 30 minutes 5 days a week? Mainly because getting fat is not the only thing that happens to us when we eat thing we didn't evolve to eat.

attila 16y ago

There are plenty of good points in the article. However, I find the sloppy use of the word 'carbs' unforgivable and misleading. Fruits and vegetables are mostly carbs (...as dietary fiber is a form of carbohydrate too). The majority of the latter are, of course, healthy. The casual reader may get the impression from the article that all carbs are bad, and turn to a high protein diet.

mey 16y ago

After having a bought of pancreatitis recently, I've been looking at my own food choices very closely to find the things that will keep my healthy, out of the hospital, and off long term drugs. My anecdotal experience is that, lean meats, veggies, fruits are expensive, but are the best things for me personally. It is astounding how much sugar, carbs and fat is in the products I used to be eating. Obviously you need calories to survive, but I've been aiming to consume more calories that are slow burning (lean protein) and mix in "healthy" fats (omega 3 etc) with veggies fiber and vitamins. I've been loosing weight, feeling better, and managed to cut my bad cholesterol by more then half, all without taking any medication to do so. I consider this a success of information and personal experimentation to find what works for me. Prior to this health condition, I never put a high value the quality of the food I was eating. I cared about what food would keep me awake, revved, and burning the midnight oil, rather then what was good for my long term health. After encountering all the sugar in our (US) food supply, I'm very much for removing the corn subsidies the federal government provides. It would remove the supply of cheap sugar that seems to permeates everything we eat.

riledhel 16y ago
Human body has a great capability for adaptation. So change in what you eat is just another form of adaptation. A couple of months with a new diet and you won't miss the "old stuff". (let's forget about obsessive patterns for the sake of the argument)

Semiapies 16y ago

Thanks for catching up on the last 10+ years of nutritional debate, LA Times. Perhaps the real problem is seizing on one simplistic explanation for a complicated problems ("Meats!" "Fats!" "Sugars!" "Carbs!") and beating on it endlessly, then when that doesn't solve the problem, switching to another simplistic explanation.

davidedicillo 16y ago

I come from a country built on carbs: Italy. I think I hate at least a plate of pasta a per for 30 years and guess what, I'm not overweight. America, do you want to see you problem? Don't look further than your car. The one you drive to go grocery shopping 1 mile from home. Just walk, I'm actually thinking to not renew my car lease when it will expire in 2 months, and we'll keep only one car for the family. Do you both need to commute to work? Fine, get to car, but use them if you need to go further than 1-2 miles. Otherwise walk. You'd be amaze to find out how many things there are in a two miles radius.

jdminhbg 16y ago
The number of things within a 2-mi radius of home varies a lot depending on where you live; Italy is a far more compact country than the US is. Also, I'm not so sure that even an Italian-sized dinner portion of pasta compares in sheer carbs per person to the typical castigated lower-class American diet. White bread and soda alone provide a mind-boggling amount.
staktrace 16y ago
It's all about balancing the two. If you eat lots of carbs but don't burn them off in the right way, they're going to result in disease. If you exercise regularly, some (but not all) of the negative effects of carbs are counteracted. For instance, eating carbs will still increase the acidity of your system, which leads to calcium leaking off your bones and osteoporosis.
enjo 16y ago
I lived in Italy for a few years (Northern). Generally the portions of pasta that you ate were relatively small. You also ate a lot of fish, stews, and vegetables. In regions of Italy that DO eat mostly carb loaded diets (like Sicily) there has been a relatively long running obesity issue. Walking is important, and it's a great thing. But even walking several miles a day does little to combat obesity when you're offsetting it with thousands of calories of carb-loaded food every day.
- davidedicillo 16y ago

noarchy 16y ago

Carbs are fine if you're active, and even necessary if you are very active (cyclists, for example, understand this pretty well). But this is the problem, I guess. We are expected to build diets on which sedentary people can get by.