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Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

143 points by terio 15y ago

PagingCraig 15y ago
Neither should be demonized.
- terio 15y ago
  Of course. If it wasn't for wheat, potato, rice, and other grains and tubercles, most of humanity would starve. Simple carbs are cheap.
  - jnorthrop 15y ago
    The point of the article wasn't to discuss the opportunity cost of keeping or eliminating carbs. It was a discussion of what is optimal for our health.
jseifer 15y ago
So many of these articles do not distinguish between simple and complex carbs and lump them all together. There is a difference between 20g of carbs from a piece of fruit vs 20g carbs from, say, pasta.
- babblefrog 15y ago
  I'm not sure the difference is that big. Amylase in your saliva starts breaking down starches to glucose even before you swallow. Non-digestible carbs (fiber), protein and fat can slow down the process, however.
endtime 15y ago
I've found the fat hypothesis - 'fat makes you fat' - to be false, or at least not to apply to me. I am not exactly anti-carb - I eat potatoes, and a little rice - but I have been eating a diet that I guess you could call 'Paleo 2.0' for the last 7 months or so. The basic goal is to minimize my intake of grains, fructose, and legumes, and maximize that of saturated fats. I also happen to be vegetarian, so for me this means a diet of mostly dairy and vegetables (and limited fruit). I eat a lot of full fat Greek yogurt (Fage brand, typically), butter, cheese, eggs, very dark chocolate (85+%), potatoes, etc. I eat until I'm full and I never count calories. I probably cheat 1-2 times a week on average, usually by eating something rice- or corn-based (Chipotle, corn chips, an Indian meal with rice, etc.). I didn't do this to lose weight - I wasn't exactly a big guy - but there were some surprisingly quick effects. After about 5-6 months I'd dropped from around 155 lbs to 135 (+/-2), and I've been stable there for a couple months. My waist went from 33" to 30" and my body fat went from around 21% to 12%. Had a checkup a few weeks ago and, other than very low vitamin D, the doc said I was pretty much in perfect health. http://archevore.com http://archevore.com is probably a good resource, if you want to know more about the diet itself.
- hnhg 15y ago
  I've resisted the paleo diet as a fad, but reading what you've written has made me realise it's what I've taken up instinctively as something based on what I feel are the healthier aspects of the Mediterranean diet I grew up with. I don't eat much meat though, and I do have bread now and again in small amounts. The results have been similar to yours.
- zwieback 15y ago
  Fage, butter, cheese, eggs, chocolate. Sounds yummy! Not exactly cheap, though.
  - pyre 15y ago
    I somehow don't think that 'cavemen' were eating cheese. :P
    - endtime 15y ago
      The point isn't to eat what cavemen ate, it's to look at what their bodies were optimized for and eat things with similar components. Dairy is a very good source of saturated fat, especially for a vegetarian like me.
      - o_nate 15y ago
        And the average life expectancy of a caveman was what, maybe 20 years? Cavemen perished too soon to have to worry about the diet-related health problems that we deal with today.
        endtime 15y ago
        Ancient life expectancy numbers are misleading because of very high infant mortality. And even if that weren't the case, your reasoning is faulty. I have more or less the same gut as a caveman, so it makes sense to eat what they were optimized for. The fact that we have surgery and antibiotics and aren't at significant risk of being eaten by saber-toothed tigers isn't relevant to diet.
andrewcooke 15y ago
Well, my guess would be: Because "evangelists" on both sides use words like "worse" to reduce complex issues to sound bites.
- jobu 15y ago
  I just wish the "evangelists" would stress "for some people" when they talk about these diets. Some people stay healthy and trim on a low-fat diet. Some people do much better on a low-carb diet. Some people are physically harmed by eating meat (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/gout-diet/MY01137 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/gout-diet/MY01137). Unfortunately we just need to experiment a little as individuals to find what works best - and hope for a day when we doctors/scientists can recommend diets based on genetic traits.
deleted 15y ago
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weego 15y ago
God I remember when everywhere (even in school) was hooked on the "you are killing your kids with butter, eat margarine" line. Of course, then they banned it most sensible places because of the hydrogenated/trans fats. Shocking that something made by chemical process by companies with large sums of money will be heavily advertised and pushed to people over, say, something that can't be patented by any one body. Similarly, carb laden foods are cheap to produce and will last even if stored badly, you just have to try going out to dinner to an "average place" and try not to eat something where the dish is not mostly potato, noodles, rice, or flour based (pasta, bread, pizza base) to see why industry wouldn't think it was great if carbs came with health warnings. Having said that, It strikes me from experiences in the past that everyone reacts differently to the mix of carbs and fats in their diet, but everyone seems to react to good amounts of protein, so while I'm not sure either should be demonised, clean sources of protein should be made more important.
- hvs 15y ago
  You just used the words "potato", "noodles", "rice", and "flour" in a distinctly negative tone. Those are some of my favorite foods, preferable doused in butter. And I'm 6'1", 170 lbs.
  - lsb 15y ago
    The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
    - pyre 15y ago
      Though "carbs are evil" implies that it affects everyone.
    - hvs 15y ago
      I agree. I guess I didn't make it clear that I was saying that those foods aren't necessarily bad just because they are carbs. My personal data is irrelevant (and largely due to the fact that my metabolism seems to be on par with a smelting furnace).
  - 15y ago
leftnode 15y ago
Because people say, "I am getting so fat!", not, "I am getting so carbed!" So they equate calories from fat being converted directly to adipose tissue.
forensic 15y ago
The "fat is evil" thing that happened in the latter half of the 20th century is going to go down as the biggest scientific fuck up ever. The very people who were given all the authority and trust, and who were supposed to protect human life, actively killed people by pushing carbs as healthy and fats as unhealthy. They directly caused spiking obesity, the #1 medical issue in our society. Repeat after me: The biggest health issue in our society was directly caused by the health authorities. This means doctors, medical researchers, and governments. Heart disease, cancer, and obesity are all linked to carbs now. Millions and millions of people have died because they followed the advice of the scientific authorities. When the general public figures out how wrong the scientific and medical authorities were for SO LONG and SO LOUDLY... public trust in science is going to be maimed for generations. If you can't trust them on the #1 public health issue - the #1 killer of humans - what can you trust them on?
- lukifer 15y ago
  > Repeat after me: The biggest [] issue in our society was directly caused by the [] authorities. I know you're just turning a phrase, but the irony here amused me more than a little. ;)
- sebilasse 15y ago
  Watch out not to fall for the "Carbs is evil" thing that happens right now. :P
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- hnhg 15y ago
  I think it's more to do with our idea of a balanced diet being out of kilter. I've met plenty of people who are now replacing carbs with meat, which to me doesn't feel like the right way to go about things. One day perhaps we'll realise for a start that we don't need to eat so many calories in each sitting. Then with any luck we'll realise that vegetables (not potatoes) should form the base of the 'food pyramid'.
joshklein 15y ago
I think there are a number of issues: 1 - People relate fat the nutrient to fat the body type because they share the word "fat". Not much to do there. In high school I was taught that carbohydrates were "energy" and fat was "waste". People should probably be taught the right way our biological systems operate. 2 - Medical authorities have worked with the best science they had available at the time, and are almost always managed by bureaucrats, not physicians. This isn't limited to the governmental level; hospitals, medical organizations, medical schools... the people in charge often have administrative training, not medical training. As a subpoint; sure, medical authorities have led us astray with nutrition information, but let's not jump to the conclusion that they have done something intentionally evil here. 3 - It's hard to prove any one way is the right way because of so many variables, including genetics, activity level, co-morbidities, and so on. More importantly, when something is right for 95% of people, that also means it is wrong for 5% of people. In the absence of easily testable datum, those anecdotes get a lot of attention. And even if it were easily testable, 5% of the time it would be wrong. To me, the key is two-fold: 1 - People need to be educated about the facts of how their biological systems function. They need to know how calories work, insulin and blood sugar regulate, and gain a general appreciation of the science of their bodies. 2 - People need to be willing to "listen to their bodies" and experiment. That's the only way to know what really works for you, because you ARE different than everyone else. A healthy diet isn't just about finding mathematically optimal foods, it's about finding stuff you like to eat, that fills you up, that you can eat in moderation, that is easy to make. You need to be willing to mix health and convenience, taste and availability, etc... and that takes a bit of time to figure out.
- terio 15y ago
  My strategy is simple: in general I avoid food that a hunter-gatherer would not be able to find. I said "in general" because I eat cheese, some hams and preserved meats and sausages, and I also drink wine. After a short learning curve it became very easy. In terms of convenience, I still find a sandwich and a canned juice pretty convenient, but I avoid them anyway. I have not had the need for other "convenient" foods like cereals, rice, noodles, and so on.
  - 15y ago
matwood 15y ago
I resist the idea that carbs (and HFCS for matter) need to be demonized. The article mentions peoples tendencies, but one tendency the anti-carb crowd relies on is how people want to find a smoking gun or silver bullet solution. The article doesn't really do much to prove anything since rarely did the elite eat the same thing as the peasants. Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasants. This would include more meat, alcohol, spices, sugar, etc...
- mentat 15y ago
  "Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasants." Those terms post date this by thousands of years. Please cite research that supports this statement.
  - matwood 15y ago
    The article says "Mummy Says Princess Had Coronary Disease." This leads me to believe they are talking about Egyptian royalty, even if they were not called kings and queens.
Feynmanist 15y ago
On a relevant note, I think Gluten is the main culprit in carbohydrate related health problems. http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-s...
- terio 15y ago
  Although grains don't seem to be very healthy, don't forget about sugar.
DuqE 15y ago
Blame the media, they portray fat for the reason people are fat, the do not educate these people with the truth behind complex carbs and simple carbs and how the body responses to these. Some fats are good for you such as olive oils contain mono saturated fats which is great for your body and those can be found naturally in meats. But trans and saturated fats are hard for the body to respond to. It comes down to educating people of what they are eating.
fanboy123 15y ago
I think the real answer is because it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people. It is interesting to see comments on this forum that involve the strategy of reasoning with the public to get them to accept their idea. Next time you see somebody drinking a soda explain to them what fructose does metabolically to their bodies. Your message is a lot less effective than seeing a polar bear mommy drinking a coke on a wintery day or seeing kobe bryant dunk a basketball and popping open a bottle of sprite.
- patrickk 15y ago
  "...it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people." Apart from the cheap, unhealthy ingredients and slick marketing, modern processed food is also engineered to be appealing; and for the want of a better word, addictive. Prehistoric man would have to do a lot of hunting and gathering before he would consume the equivalent amount of carbs, sugar and salt that one could quickly and easily consume in a single meal from a fast-food restaurant. Humans never evolved to be able to cope with the amount of crap in modern food. We also evolved to hunt or farm our food before we could eat. Now with the internet, you can order your groceries with the barest physical exertion - the click of a mouse.
  - fanboy123 15y ago
    While all of that is true I think the real story is one of economics. It is VERY easy for me to eat as much swine as I feel like nowadays. If we assume that saturated fat/protein isn't bad for you then the fact that I can, in modern times, acquire the pig with less effort than my ancestors doesn't appear to harm me very much. It is tasty pretty much right out of the farm. I imagine it is difficult to make the margins on livestock very high. Carbs have brands. They have business moats. They have high margins and great psychological keys that make selling them a great business (helps to be addictive). So they push and we buy. Anyways my thought was that the obesity epidemic has less to do with how we are more sedentary than before but rather the peddlers of PROFITABLE products just got better at their jobs over time.
- 15y ago
jradakov 15y ago
That's funny. There are many studies showing that vegetarians live longer, more healthy lives than omnivores.
- terio 15y ago
  Many vegetarians eat some food from animal sources, like eggs, milk, yogurt, etc. On the other hand, I have heard cases of people that tried to be pure vegan and had serious health problems.
  - jinushaun 15y ago
    Veganism isn't a diet. It's a lifestyle. And a poor one at that. It's the anti-paleo diet, because you can't be vegan without modern technology and supplements. There are just too many gaps in nutrition.
- chollida1 15y ago
  Many vegetables are low in Carbs. They are the staple of the ketogenic diet, a diet which is high fat and protein and very low carb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
Gupie 15y ago
Simple advise - don't over-eat
- sudonim 15y ago
  That's simplistic advice. Food additives like High Fructose Corn Syrup cause you to crave more food even though you're calorically fine. If you listen to what your body says while eating poorly, you will over eat. http://www.wellnessresources.com/weight/articles/high_fructose_corn_syrup_makes_your_brain_crave_food/ http://www.wellnessresources.com/weight/articles/high_fructo...
  - afterburner 15y ago
    Did you implicitly define overeating as eating past the point where you stop being hungry? Because that's not necessarily what the parent comment meant. They could have meant eating too much for your activity level.
DavidBishop 15y ago
People resist the idea because the answer is too simple. "Fats" are better than "Carbs". So lard is better than a banana? Ugh. It's not the broad category of "Fats" vs "Carbs". It's the TYPE of food. Eat good food. Period. Not something made in a factory. Twinkies: out. Soda: out. Standard pizza with refined grains and loads of cheese: out. Eat healthy food: the right meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lots of water. Don't eat crap. Exercise. It really isn't rocket science, but when we make one food group "bad" and the other one "good" just so we have another excuse to eat junk, we lose.
- matwood 15y ago
  I totally agree, the problem is that it's harder for people to eat healthy than simply pick a single thing and demonize it. Plus, telling people to eat healthy doesn't sell a lot of books.
  - jdminhbg 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure Michael Pollan's bank account disagrees with your second sentence.
    - DavidBishop 15y ago
      True, but I think the sentiment is correct at least in selling food. It's hard to get rich selling spinach, but it's easy to get rich selling Sugar-Frosted Excitement Pops - now made with whole grain-like substances!
    - matwood 15y ago
      Fad books sell to a lot of people over and over. Of course you can get rich helping people to just eat healthy, but it's harder and you likely don't get the repeat buyers. But write a book saying x is evil or fat is not your fault because y is evil and you'll get tons of buyers.
  - nickh 15y ago
    On top of that, phrases like "eat healthy", "eat healthy fats", "eat cleanly", etc are ambiguous, and not helpful. This is because each person's definition of "healthy" and "clean" is different. We need to be very specific when describing what to eat.
acron0 15y ago
I did quite a bit of research into carbs after being diagnosed Type One diabetic and I wholeheartedly agree with this article. Turns out, carbs weren't a staple part of our diet until the agricultural revolution (17th century?) and then only really caught on because it was cheap and easy to farm, compared to fruit and meat. So there you go. Capitalism has been fucking us for centuries.
deleted 15y ago
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wisty 15y ago
Correlation != causation. Let me guess the root cause of this "fat is evil" meme. People who love fat are often gluttons. They eat what they want, in large quantities, and don't care about the consequences. They also consume huge quantities of processed sugar, which is now found to be "bad", and don't eat their greens. Health freaks avoid fats and sugar, living on lean meat, veggies, and grains. This may not be optimal, but it's better than Big Macs, Cola, and fries.
guelo 15y ago
I guess I haven't been paying attention but I thought the Atkins diet from a few years ago had been discounted as an unhealthy fad diet. But now I'm reading that it has been scientifically proven to be the healthiest diet. Is that right? Are carb-filled fruits and vegetables supposed to be less healthy than for example fried bacon?
- jinushaun 15y ago
  Wrong. The problem is that people think low-carb equals bacon grease and no vegetables. It really just means little to no bread, grains, rice or potatoes. A low carb diet is predominantly fruits and vegetables, but for some reason, people really like to focus on the meat and fat aspect.
  - Afton 15y ago
    Speak for yourself. :) I've been on a high-fat, moderate protein diet for almost a year now. I eat occasional small servings of vegetables because it's easier than arguing with my wife, but my diet is probably 95-98% meat/eggs/(dairy). "Low-carb" means 'low carb'. There are lots of ways of doing it, and frankly, we have no idea which way is right for most people (let alone for outliers). Meta point on this whole discussion (and I don't mean to single you out). There are a lot of posts of the sort "come on people, this is easy"+(some simple dietary advice). But it isn't easy, and nobody really has a clue right now. The evidence is contradictory and poor. What we need is more individuals engaged in personal experimentation, and more methodologically sound research. It's a hard, complex problem.
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    > A low carb diet is predominantly fruits and vegetables Aren't fruits (and fruit juices) verboten for most low-carb diets? Fruit is mostly water and fructose.
paganel 15y ago
I eat lots and lots of bread (what you would call "carbs") but basically no meat, and I'm quite skinny nevertheless. I do no sports (I've only recently started to ride my bicycle after a 10-year pause), nor am I on any diet or anything similar. So, yeah, I don't see how carbs are worse than fat.
tokenadult 15y ago
What's more radically different between people who are healthy and people who are not is how much they exercise rather than what they eat. There is much more worldwide cultural variation in what people eat, and much more individual variation within each culture, among healthy people than there is variation in the exercise level of healthy people. But seeking to change diet to change health sounds easier than getting more exercise, so that's what gets in the news (and on HN, over and over and over). Doing serious scientific research http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html with controlled experiments and careful observation and follow-up on human nutrition is extremely hard. I recall a local television news documentary about a dietary study from the 1970s in which experimental subjects were confined 24/7 in a lab for many weeks (they must have been compensated handsomely to agree to participate in this experiment) and fed EXACT portions of food that were weighed with extreme precision. Oddly, I don't recall particularly what hypothesis that study was set up to test, but I do recall that it was described as the first experiment that relied on feeding subjects exactly measured portions of known foods (and excluding subjects from access to foods they chose for themselves) while involving lengthy (weeks of time) follow-up. It's still exceedingly rare for studies of human nutrition to have careful experimental designs. (And even at that, I suppose most of the subjects of that experiment are still alive, but I don't know if anyone is doing follow-up observations of those subjects in any manner.) Instead, we get inferences from Egyptian mummies (as in the submitted article) or from other uncontrolled case studies that never even had careful observation to begin with. That really isn't science; http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html that is trading anecdotes, and third- or fourth-hand anecdotes at that.
- ohyes 15y ago
  What compounds this is that 'healthy' is a particularly ill-defined catchall term. If you are, for example, morbidly obese or horribly malnourished, you probably do need to change your diet. If you get winded going up a flight of stairs, or maybe worried about general physical fitness, you probably want exercise. What is our ideal for a healthy person? An underwear model? someone who lives to 93? I don't know.
  - 15y ago
ajscherer 15y ago
I'm always surprised at the theories people are willing to believe about obesity, particularly people on hn. It really sounds reasonable to so many of you that the cause of the obesity epidemic is people actually listening to nutrition advice from the medical establishment and following the food pyramid? My view of what has happened is this: technologies and ingredients were invented by food manufacturers over the past half century. Foods manufactured using these technologies have the following advantages: cheap, high mouth appeal, non-perishable, convenient. They also have the following disadvantages: calorie dense, difficult to metabolize, addictive for some people. For most peopele not explicitly making food decisions with a mind to control their weight, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. At the same time as this was happening, most of the reasons for people to expend calories vanished. As far as I can think of, the only reasons left to burn calories are pleasure and weight control. In this sort of context most normal, perfectly rational people will end up getting fat. The only people who won't are: athletes, people with strong metabolism (this usually goes away with age), and people who dedicate themselves to not being fat.
- david_p 15y ago
  While I have to agree with you, your theory fails to explain why people in Europe (who have the same access to calorie dense and convenient food) are less obese (in proportion) than North Americans. I believe that culinary customs AND some additives used in industrial food play an important role. Just check out High Fructose Corn Syrup : this is in very product in the USA and is (almost) never used in Europe.
  - ljf 15y ago
    Agreed - though in Europe (though maybe not the UK these day) food isn't marketed as agressively, people eat main when they are hungry not for something to do, and home cooking is a way of life and is held in high esteem.
    - icefox 15y ago
      Also more of Europe is plain old walkable or bikeable. When I lived in Oslo I didn't even own a car. In the states there are very few spots you can get by without a car. Even if I wanted to bike from my house to some places there flat out are not sidewalks in a lot of places. Walking is looked down at. There are plenty of blog entries of guys that go without a car even though they could afford it and find dating near impossible not because they live in a city, but because it is such a powerful signal here.
tsuipen 15y ago
Argh. This is what I don't like about non-tech, -IT, and -CS articles posted on HN: people go off on tangents with so little (useless) information. I'm sorry to say this article is poor on information. Let's stick to the facts. Complex carbs (brown rice, whole wheat bread, bagels, whole wheat pasta, beans - the list of delicious, healthy complex carbs is long) in moderation does not hinder your health. In fact, your body needs them because it is stored energy. Other sources of energy are used up quicker, such as protein. That's not to say carbs are better than protein. Your body needs both! Now, refined SIMPLE carbs (table sugar, fruit juice, "packaged" cereals, chocolate bars, etc.) are not good for you, and only certain types of bodies with certain physical activity should consume them (e.g., if you are a bodybuilder or if you lift weights a few times a week, etc.). It is still absolutely tantamount that you consume unrefined simple carbs such as strawberries, raspberries, oranges, apples, plum, pear, a long etc., and the number one fruit because of its flavanoid content: blueberries!). Put simply, fruits and complex carbs help you convert what you eat in slow-releasing energy that has less content that is turned into fat (as opposed to refined simple carbs). This steady release of energy is part of "moderation is key". If you have your body working too hard, your heart fluttering/palpitations and overworking it are not healthy, neither is when your body processes everything too slow. The biggest factor when consuming carbs (both simple and complex) is the glycemic levels in your blood. You can't have this fluctuate so much, especially if you're pre-disposed to it, otherwise you throw it out of kilter and it may cause diabetes. I'll keep the fat part short. We need fat, too! Let me be less "headliney". We need polyunsaturated fatty acids; in part, to keep our metabolism going. Foods like avocado, fish, flax seed, leafy vegetables, soybeans, walnuts (nuts), and shellfish. Sure, saturated fats may not be the major cause of heart disease, but lessening it while consuming a healthy amount of polyunsaturated fat and complex carbs might. You can read an article on that here (it's better than the OP's article, but still has its flaws): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/rethinking-saturated-fat-its-not-your-hearts-enemy/article1462757/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/rethinking-satura... (By the way, this article was published over a year ago.) Having said all that, each body is different. You should tailor your diet to what your body reacts positively to. For example, flax seed is healthy for you, but I know people who get diarrhea from it. Obviously, don't force yourself to eat something your body doesn't like. Listen to your body, because, unfortunately, the science doesn't fully understand all body types. I'm not a fan of fallacies from defective induction, so I shall refrain from an argumentum ad verecundiam on this, but on a separate note, I will say my friend studied nutrition and she has expressed a keen dislike toward the "Food guide pyramid".
Goladus 15y ago
There are many reasons why people resist the idea that carbs are worse that fat. For one thing, no one has proved that "carbs are worse than fat." It's a silly, over-simplified assertion. Also, fats are the most calorie-dense macro-nutrient. If your calorie intake is greater than your calorie expenditure you will gain weight. You could easily supplement your diet with a 300 calorie bar of chocolate twice a day and your daily calorie intake skyrockets from 2,000 to 2,600. Over time this will lead to obesity if your activity level doesn't rise or if muscles don't grow. Each tablespoon of oil adds 100+ calories a the dish. 2 slices of bread: 160 calories, 60g of peanut butter: 350 calories. Carbs are good. You need carbs. Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage. Too many carbs at once leads to unstable blood sugar and insulin levels. The consequences of this are poorly understood, especially in healthy, active people. But intuitively, daily large spikes in blood sugar and insulin response are probably not a good thing. The good news is that eating high GI carbs with fiber, protein, fats, and sugars mitigates the spikes. While not as calorie-dense as fatty foods, lots of high carb foods are low fiber, low protein, and low moisture with minimal micronutrients and still have very high calorie/weight ratios. (Calories-in > Calories-out) in a sedentary lifestyle leads to increased body fat and weight gain which leads to cellular stress inflammation causing insulin resistance, which leads to more weight gain and more severe metabolic problems. The whole carb vs. fat debate is a waste of time.
- mortehu 15y ago
  It is possible for a person who is unaware that insulin promotes glycogenesis and lipogenesis to write what you just did. However, I'm not convinced that a person who IS aware could do so. Can you help me out?
- eco 15y ago
  > Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage. This only happens in the case of ketoacidosis which is caused by things like type 1 diabetes and alcoholism. A ketogenic diet isn't inherently unhealthy (they use it very successfully to treat epilepsy in children).
jdq 15y ago
Because they are so dang delicious...mmmMMMmmm donuts.
krakensden 15y ago
Because you told them fat was the source of all evil for at least twenty years?
dkarl 15y ago
My reading led me to believe that sugars and grains in my diet were the culprit and, sure enough, once I cut those out and increased the amount of animal fats in my diet, I lost 50 pounds. (I always had and continued to eat a lot of vegetables, too.) I have never felt more energetic or clear-headed. So, yes, my personal experience tells me Taubes is correct, just as Horgan’s experience tells him Taubes is incorrect. But, importantly, I would not have had my experience if I had not read the nutrition literature with an open mind. The last sentence is unjustified and probably incorrect. A lot of people get fed up with their weight, resolve to make a change, and then lose a bunch. Adopting an exciting new idea and making a change is the crucial part, not the validity of the idea. I lost a lot of weight as a vegan (over thirty pounds), got into the best shape of my life, relaxed my rules, and gained a little bit back. Did I gain that little bit back because veganism was the answer and I failed to be faithful to it? No, it was because the initial novelty and enthusiasm wore off. It's the same pattern no matter what the actual composition of the diet is. Low-carb diets' biggest contribution to weight loss has been to provide a psychologically viable option for meat-and-potatoes people who felt unsatisfied or alienated by the "hippie" food that low-fat diets would have had them eating. the health effects of a high-carbohydrate diet often are not visible as weight gain—that Egyptian princess, no doubt thin as a rail (have you ever seen a fat mummy?), had a level of atherosclerosis that today would have doctors scrambling for a bypass operation Now, this part is actually interesting and I await more information concerning the heart health of people who exercise and maintain a healthy weight on different kinds of diets.
ljf 15y ago
Since moving to only /expressly/ eating carbs once a week (as in the 4 hour body book) I've lost a stone and gone from 24% body fat to 17% - all in about 8 weeks. Plus my /gut/ feels a hell of a lot better now I'm not eating bread, and when/if I do I get a pretty rough stomach. People don't realise just how bad processed carbs are. We didn't them for centuries and only do now as they are sold to us cheaply.
narrator 15y ago
A more subtle reason for the pro-carb bias is it provides justification for vegetarianism since most vegetarian diets are much higher in carbs than fat. Vegetarians, animal rights advocates, and people who may eat meat but nevertheless are against promoting it because of their concern for the environment want to believe that their more moral diet is also healthier. The easy way to do that is by lending their confirmation bias to any scientific study that maligns high fat diets and thus meat eating and to ignore contrary research findings that does not confirm their bias.
- MikeCapone 15y ago
  I'm afraid this might be true, and I say this as someone who was a vegetarian for almost 3 years partly for environmental and moral reasons. I started eating meat again after reading Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories". I still agree that it's better for the environment and for the animals to have a vegetarian diet, but I couldn't find a way to stick to it without eating way more carbs than I felt was good for me. I'll be the first in line when 'grown' meat that doesn't come from an animal with a central nervous system that can feel pain/stress/anguish/etc comes on the market, though...
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    How did you reintroduce meat into your vegetarian diet? Was it a gradual process? Do you eat the same meat diet (dishes and frequency) as before you were a vegetarian? I've been a (ovo-lacto) vegetarian for 12 years for the reasons you describe. After reading Gary Taubes, I am conflicted. Taubes has little advice for vegetarians or vegans except "eat some cheese and eggs".
sophacles 15y ago
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that studies and/or those who do them are not very trustworthy? I have watched studies conclusively prove that eating chicken eggs will: kill you sooner, make you live longer, have no measurable effect, cure cancer, cause cancer, and defeat communisms (joke) Similar cycles for other types of food. Similar cycles various types of activity. Having watched this for so long, am I really going to suddenly believe that carbs are evil, that I should found a new moral system (and a new diet) on the latest studies which, in my experience are going to be shown wrong in a few years anyway. Or should I just go ahead an eat the way I've observed the people who live to be old eat? Related: look up the story of the boy who cried wolf.
Florin_Andrei 15y ago
"Fat is worse than carbs" is a very successful meme because it passes a superficial "evidence-checking": it's fat, so it's gotta make me more fat, right? A mechanistic, false-newtonian, 17th century understanding of biology. A fallacy of common sense. Plus, it's been touted all over the place for decades. Of course it catches on. Keep calories in general low, paying special attention to carbs. Don't forget to lift some weights. Feel free to do other types of exercise if you wish. Voila, instant fat management.
tfinniga 15y ago
These anecdotal arguments back and forth are interesting, but they're not science. I mean, where's the details on the methodology? Where are the data? Why do we listen to/argue about the various experts, instead of digging into the actual research that's been done? If you're looking for studies on the topic, check out these two videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-847196066367535747 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-847196066367535747 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1719204869171202407 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1719204869171202407 It's basically a survey paper in video form, presented by one of the researchers. It has actual graphs! With error bars! The corresponding book is pretty good too, it's called the China study. Personally, I trust statisticians on health much more than biologists. It's nice that there's a biological basis for the conclusion, but trying to argue diet based on the metabolic process seems like a stretch, especially when it conflicts with what's observed.
ironparlance 15y ago
The agriculture industrial complex is invested deeply in corn/soy/wheat processed foods and chemicals. Mega billions are at stake. The options for "low effort" and "low price" food are virtually all unhealthy from a diet standpoint. Yet, these foods have been engineered to be nearly addictive. That is why there is rampant obesity. Any diet that largely avoids these foods and maintains reasonable variety is going to be vastly more healthy.
bproper 15y ago
We are predisposed by our Victorian ancestors to assume that anything which gives us great pleasure must also be bad for us. Hence fat is believed to be worse than carbs.
- terio 15y ago
  Following that logic, people with different tastes would conclude that carbs are worse than fat.
mixmastamyk 15y ago
They are not worse, just different. People are desperate for a single villain to blame for their fat asses. Maintain a balanced diet, keep the total calories down, stay away from cheap processed food, get exercise. It's very simple, but unfortunately there is not a single villain, so people resist.
NIL8 15y ago
There's money in carbs and not in fat. This answer may sound glib, but not if we consider the facts surrounding the issue. - The propaganda for carbs and against fat has been overwhelming over the years. Most people are not likely to believe anything other than what they've been taught. - Our economy relies heavily on what we can generally call "the carb industry." If people are being harmed by too many carbs, they'll take medicine (like they're trained to) and that builds another industry. Why would anybody (politicians, industry leaders, corporate science) want to change that? - Besides, carbs are beautifully packaged, cheap, and readily available. Why would anyone want to re-think that?
racketeer 15y ago
Better question - Why are people always trying to subtract something from they're diet? Wouldn't it be better to just eat a well balanced plate?
kstenerud 15y ago
My beef is that nutritional "experts" tend to reverse their "advice" every 5-10 years. - X is bad - No, actually X is good. - No, it turns out X is actually bad after all. - No, actually it's Y that's causing all our problems. - Wait, no, it's Z. And then along comes the marketing blitz. "No salt", "Sugar free" "glucose free" "gluten free" "made with cane syrup" "cholesterol free" "fat free" "no saturated fat" "no trans fat" and now "carb free", no doubt. And then the vitamin supplement and herbal crowd come out to flog their latest crackpot diets and exercise regimens and trans-yogic-meta-druidic-ninjutsu-meditation. Yes, I rage much :P
bborud 15y ago
why is everyone suddenly a nutrition expert? I know a lot of people who have opinions on what is good for you and what isn't in terms of food. none of them are doctors, of course. in fact, most of them have never taken any science subjects at all, and wouldn't know their ass from a redox equation even if you threw a shelf-full of chemistry books at them.
mannicken 15y ago
Over-consumption of everything is bad. Cake is great, cake is fun, but if you eat it everyday you'll probably get fat because it has a lot of calories. And hey, a lot of calories isn't bad, it's just if you eat more calories than burn you'll gain fat. And that's OK, until you start to get so fat that it decreases your quality of life. Body like a loosely tied ballon, if push air into it -- it'll get big, but on itself it'll lose weight. On another topic, I'm usually pro-legalization of every drug that's out there. But there's a lot of people out there who just put random shit into their bodies in unreasonable quantities without understanding of what they are doing, making stupid excuses. AND IT'S JUST FUCKING FOOD. If heroin or coke become legal, we'll probably see a lot of people overdose. Which I'm fine with, technically. I just now start to understand why some drugs are illegal.

143 points by terio 15y ago

PagingCraig 15y ago

Neither should be demonized.

terio 15y ago
Of course. If it wasn't for wheat, potato, rice, and other grains and tubercles, most of humanity would starve. Simple carbs are cheap.
- jnorthrop 15y ago
  The point of the article wasn't to discuss the opportunity cost of keeping or eliminating carbs. It was a discussion of what is optimal for our health.

jseifer 15y ago

So many of these articles do not distinguish between simple and complex carbs and lump them all together. There is a difference between 20g of carbs from a piece of fruit vs 20g carbs from, say, pasta.

babblefrog 15y ago
I'm not sure the difference is that big. Amylase in your saliva starts breaking down starches to glucose even before you swallow. Non-digestible carbs (fiber), protein and fat can slow down the process, however.

endtime 15y ago

I've found the fat hypothesis - 'fat makes you fat' - to be false, or at least not to apply to me. I am not exactly anti-carb - I eat potatoes, and a little rice - but I have been eating a diet that I guess you could call 'Paleo 2.0' for the last 7 months or so. The basic goal is to minimize my intake of grains, fructose, and legumes, and maximize that of saturated fats. I also happen to be vegetarian, so for me this means a diet of mostly dairy and vegetables (and limited fruit). I eat a lot of full fat Greek yogurt (Fage brand, typically), butter, cheese, eggs, very dark chocolate (85+%), potatoes, etc. I eat until I'm full and I never count calories. I probably cheat 1-2 times a week on average, usually by eating something rice- or corn-based (Chipotle, corn chips, an Indian meal with rice, etc.). I didn't do this to lose weight - I wasn't exactly a big guy - but there were some surprisingly quick effects. After about 5-6 months I'd dropped from around 155 lbs to 135 (+/-2), and I've been stable there for a couple months. My waist went from 33" to 30" and my body fat went from around 21% to 12%. Had a checkup a few weeks ago and, other than very low vitamin D, the doc said I was pretty much in perfect health. http://archevore.com http://archevore.com is probably a good resource, if you want to know more about the diet itself.

hnhg 15y ago
I've resisted the paleo diet as a fad, but reading what you've written has made me realise it's what I've taken up instinctively as something based on what I feel are the healthier aspects of the Mediterranean diet I grew up with. I don't eat much meat though, and I do have bread now and again in small amounts. The results have been similar to yours.
zwieback 15y ago
Fage, butter, cheese, eggs, chocolate. Sounds yummy! Not exactly cheap, though.
- pyre 15y ago
  I somehow don't think that 'cavemen' were eating cheese. :P
  - endtime 15y ago
    The point isn't to eat what cavemen ate, it's to look at what their bodies were optimized for and eat things with similar components. Dairy is a very good source of saturated fat, especially for a vegetarian like me.
    - o_nate 15y ago
      And the average life expectancy of a caveman was what, maybe 20 years? Cavemen perished too soon to have to worry about the diet-related health problems that we deal with today.
      - endtime 15y ago
        Ancient life expectancy numbers are misleading because of very high infant mortality. And even if that weren't the case, your reasoning is faulty. I have more or less the same gut as a caveman, so it makes sense to eat what they were optimized for. The fact that we have surgery and antibiotics and aren't at significant risk of being eaten by saber-toothed tigers isn't relevant to diet.

andrewcooke 15y ago

Well, my guess would be: Because "evangelists" on both sides use words like "worse" to reduce complex issues to sound bites.

jobu 15y ago
I just wish the "evangelists" would stress "for some people" when they talk about these diets. Some people stay healthy and trim on a low-fat diet. Some people do much better on a low-carb diet. Some people are physically harmed by eating meat (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/gout-diet/MY01137 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/gout-diet/MY01137). Unfortunately we just need to experiment a little as individuals to find what works best - and hope for a day when we doctors/scientists can recommend diets based on genetic traits.

deleted 15y ago

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weego 15y ago

God I remember when everywhere (even in school) was hooked on the "you are killing your kids with butter, eat margarine" line. Of course, then they banned it most sensible places because of the hydrogenated/trans fats. Shocking that something made by chemical process by companies with large sums of money will be heavily advertised and pushed to people over, say, something that can't be patented by any one body. Similarly, carb laden foods are cheap to produce and will last even if stored badly, you just have to try going out to dinner to an "average place" and try not to eat something where the dish is not mostly potato, noodles, rice, or flour based (pasta, bread, pizza base) to see why industry wouldn't think it was great if carbs came with health warnings. Having said that, It strikes me from experiences in the past that everyone reacts differently to the mix of carbs and fats in their diet, but everyone seems to react to good amounts of protein, so while I'm not sure either should be demonised, clean sources of protein should be made more important.

hvs 15y ago
You just used the words "potato", "noodles", "rice", and "flour" in a distinctly negative tone. Those are some of my favorite foods, preferable doused in butter. And I'm 6'1", 170 lbs.
- lsb 15y ago
  The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
  - pyre 15y ago
    Though "carbs are evil" implies that it affects everyone.
  - hvs 15y ago
    I agree. I guess I didn't make it clear that I was saying that those foods aren't necessarily bad just because they are carbs. My personal data is irrelevant (and largely due to the fact that my metabolism seems to be on par with a smelting furnace).
- 15y ago

leftnode 15y ago

Because people say, "I am getting so fat!", not, "I am getting so carbed!" So they equate calories from fat being converted directly to adipose tissue.

forensic 15y ago

The "fat is evil" thing that happened in the latter half of the 20th century is going to go down as the biggest scientific fuck up ever. The very people who were given all the authority and trust, and who were supposed to protect human life, actively killed people by pushing carbs as healthy and fats as unhealthy. They directly caused spiking obesity, the #1 medical issue in our society. Repeat after me: The biggest health issue in our society was directly caused by the health authorities. This means doctors, medical researchers, and governments. Heart disease, cancer, and obesity are all linked to carbs now. Millions and millions of people have died because they followed the advice of the scientific authorities. When the general public figures out how wrong the scientific and medical authorities were for SO LONG and SO LOUDLY... public trust in science is going to be maimed for generations. If you can't trust them on the #1 public health issue - the #1 killer of humans - what can you trust them on?

lukifer 15y ago
> Repeat after me: The biggest [] issue in our society was directly caused by the [] authorities. I know you're just turning a phrase, but the irony here amused me more than a little. ;)
sebilasse 15y ago
Watch out not to fall for the "Carbs is evil" thing that happens right now. :P
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
hnhg 15y ago
I think it's more to do with our idea of a balanced diet being out of kilter. I've met plenty of people who are now replacing carbs with meat, which to me doesn't feel like the right way to go about things. One day perhaps we'll realise for a start that we don't need to eat so many calories in each sitting. Then with any luck we'll realise that vegetables (not potatoes) should form the base of the 'food pyramid'.

joshklein 15y ago

I think there are a number of issues: 1 - People relate fat the nutrient to fat the body type because they share the word "fat". Not much to do there. In high school I was taught that carbohydrates were "energy" and fat was "waste". People should probably be taught the right way our biological systems operate. 2 - Medical authorities have worked with the best science they had available at the time, and are almost always managed by bureaucrats, not physicians. This isn't limited to the governmental level; hospitals, medical organizations, medical schools... the people in charge often have administrative training, not medical training. As a subpoint; sure, medical authorities have led us astray with nutrition information, but let's not jump to the conclusion that they have done something intentionally evil here. 3 - It's hard to prove any one way is the right way because of so many variables, including genetics, activity level, co-morbidities, and so on. More importantly, when something is right for 95% of people, that also means it is wrong for 5% of people. In the absence of easily testable datum, those anecdotes get a lot of attention. And even if it were easily testable, 5% of the time it would be wrong. To me, the key is two-fold: 1 - People need to be educated about the facts of how their biological systems function. They need to know how calories work, insulin and blood sugar regulate, and gain a general appreciation of the science of their bodies. 2 - People need to be willing to "listen to their bodies" and experiment. That's the only way to know what really works for you, because you ARE different than everyone else. A healthy diet isn't just about finding mathematically optimal foods, it's about finding stuff you like to eat, that fills you up, that you can eat in moderation, that is easy to make. You need to be willing to mix health and convenience, taste and availability, etc... and that takes a bit of time to figure out.

terio 15y ago
My strategy is simple: in general I avoid food that a hunter-gatherer would not be able to find. I said "in general" because I eat cheese, some hams and preserved meats and sausages, and I also drink wine. After a short learning curve it became very easy. In terms of convenience, I still find a sandwich and a canned juice pretty convenient, but I avoid them anyway. I have not had the need for other "convenient" foods like cereals, rice, noodles, and so on.
- 15y ago

matwood 15y ago

I resist the idea that carbs (and HFCS for matter) need to be demonized. The article mentions peoples tendencies, but one tendency the anti-carb crowd relies on is how people want to find a smoking gun or silver bullet solution. The article doesn't really do much to prove anything since rarely did the elite eat the same thing as the peasants. Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasants. This would include more meat, alcohol, spices, sugar, etc...

mentat 15y ago
"Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasants." Those terms post date this by thousands of years. Please cite research that supports this statement.
- matwood 15y ago
  The article says "Mummy Says Princess Had Coronary Disease." This leads me to believe they are talking about Egyptian royalty, even if they were not called kings and queens.

Feynmanist 15y ago

On a relevant note, I think Gluten is the main culprit in carbohydrate related health problems. http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-s...

terio 15y ago
Although grains don't seem to be very healthy, don't forget about sugar.

DuqE 15y ago

Blame the media, they portray fat for the reason people are fat, the do not educate these people with the truth behind complex carbs and simple carbs and how the body responses to these. Some fats are good for you such as olive oils contain mono saturated fats which is great for your body and those can be found naturally in meats. But trans and saturated fats are hard for the body to respond to. It comes down to educating people of what they are eating.

fanboy123 15y ago

I think the real answer is because it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people. It is interesting to see comments on this forum that involve the strategy of reasoning with the public to get them to accept their idea. Next time you see somebody drinking a soda explain to them what fructose does metabolically to their bodies. Your message is a lot less effective than seeing a polar bear mommy drinking a coke on a wintery day or seeing kobe bryant dunk a basketball and popping open a bottle of sprite.

patrickk 15y ago
"...it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people." Apart from the cheap, unhealthy ingredients and slick marketing, modern processed food is also engineered to be appealing; and for the want of a better word, addictive. Prehistoric man would have to do a lot of hunting and gathering before he would consume the equivalent amount of carbs, sugar and salt that one could quickly and easily consume in a single meal from a fast-food restaurant. Humans never evolved to be able to cope with the amount of crap in modern food. We also evolved to hunt or farm our food before we could eat. Now with the internet, you can order your groceries with the barest physical exertion - the click of a mouse.
- fanboy123 15y ago
  While all of that is true I think the real story is one of economics. It is VERY easy for me to eat as much swine as I feel like nowadays. If we assume that saturated fat/protein isn't bad for you then the fact that I can, in modern times, acquire the pig with less effort than my ancestors doesn't appear to harm me very much. It is tasty pretty much right out of the farm. I imagine it is difficult to make the margins on livestock very high. Carbs have brands. They have business moats. They have high margins and great psychological keys that make selling them a great business (helps to be addictive). So they push and we buy. Anyways my thought was that the obesity epidemic has less to do with how we are more sedentary than before but rather the peddlers of PROFITABLE products just got better at their jobs over time.
15y ago

jradakov 15y ago

That's funny. There are many studies showing that vegetarians live longer, more healthy lives than omnivores.

terio 15y ago
Many vegetarians eat some food from animal sources, like eggs, milk, yogurt, etc. On the other hand, I have heard cases of people that tried to be pure vegan and had serious health problems.
- jinushaun 15y ago
  Veganism isn't a diet. It's a lifestyle. And a poor one at that. It's the anti-paleo diet, because you can't be vegan without modern technology and supplements. There are just too many gaps in nutrition.
chollida1 15y ago
Many vegetables are low in Carbs. They are the staple of the ketogenic diet, a diet which is high fat and protein and very low carb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet

Gupie 15y ago

Simple advise - don't over-eat

sudonim 15y ago
That's simplistic advice. Food additives like High Fructose Corn Syrup cause you to crave more food even though you're calorically fine. If you listen to what your body says while eating poorly, you will over eat. http://www.wellnessresources.com/weight/articles/high_fructose_corn_syrup_makes_your_brain_crave_food/ http://www.wellnessresources.com/weight/articles/high_fructo...
- afterburner 15y ago
  Did you implicitly define overeating as eating past the point where you stop being hungry? Because that's not necessarily what the parent comment meant. They could have meant eating too much for your activity level.

DavidBishop 15y ago

People resist the idea because the answer is too simple. "Fats" are better than "Carbs". So lard is better than a banana? Ugh. It's not the broad category of "Fats" vs "Carbs". It's the TYPE of food. Eat good food. Period. Not something made in a factory. Twinkies: out. Soda: out. Standard pizza with refined grains and loads of cheese: out. Eat healthy food: the right meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lots of water. Don't eat crap. Exercise. It really isn't rocket science, but when we make one food group "bad" and the other one "good" just so we have another excuse to eat junk, we lose.

matwood 15y ago
I totally agree, the problem is that it's harder for people to eat healthy than simply pick a single thing and demonize it. Plus, telling people to eat healthy doesn't sell a lot of books.
- jdminhbg 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure Michael Pollan's bank account disagrees with your second sentence.
  - DavidBishop 15y ago
    True, but I think the sentiment is correct at least in selling food. It's hard to get rich selling spinach, but it's easy to get rich selling Sugar-Frosted Excitement Pops - now made with whole grain-like substances!
  - matwood 15y ago
    Fad books sell to a lot of people over and over. Of course you can get rich helping people to just eat healthy, but it's harder and you likely don't get the repeat buyers. But write a book saying x is evil or fat is not your fault because y is evil and you'll get tons of buyers.
- nickh 15y ago
  On top of that, phrases like "eat healthy", "eat healthy fats", "eat cleanly", etc are ambiguous, and not helpful. This is because each person's definition of "healthy" and "clean" is different. We need to be very specific when describing what to eat.

acron0 15y ago

I did quite a bit of research into carbs after being diagnosed Type One diabetic and I wholeheartedly agree with this article. Turns out, carbs weren't a staple part of our diet until the agricultural revolution (17th century?) and then only really caught on because it was cheap and easy to farm, compared to fruit and meat. So there you go. Capitalism has been fucking us for centuries.

deleted 15y ago

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wisty 15y ago

Correlation != causation. Let me guess the root cause of this "fat is evil" meme. People who love fat are often gluttons. They eat what they want, in large quantities, and don't care about the consequences. They also consume huge quantities of processed sugar, which is now found to be "bad", and don't eat their greens. Health freaks avoid fats and sugar, living on lean meat, veggies, and grains. This may not be optimal, but it's better than Big Macs, Cola, and fries.

guelo 15y ago

I guess I haven't been paying attention but I thought the Atkins diet from a few years ago had been discounted as an unhealthy fad diet. But now I'm reading that it has been scientifically proven to be the healthiest diet. Is that right? Are carb-filled fruits and vegetables supposed to be less healthy than for example fried bacon?

jinushaun 15y ago
Wrong. The problem is that people think low-carb equals bacon grease and no vegetables. It really just means little to no bread, grains, rice or potatoes. A low carb diet is predominantly fruits and vegetables, but for some reason, people really like to focus on the meat and fat aspect.
- Afton 15y ago
  Speak for yourself. :) I've been on a high-fat, moderate protein diet for almost a year now. I eat occasional small servings of vegetables because it's easier than arguing with my wife, but my diet is probably 95-98% meat/eggs/(dairy). "Low-carb" means 'low carb'. There are lots of ways of doing it, and frankly, we have no idea which way is right for most people (let alone for outliers). Meta point on this whole discussion (and I don't mean to single you out). There are a lot of posts of the sort "come on people, this is easy"+(some simple dietary advice). But it isn't easy, and nobody really has a clue right now. The evidence is contradictory and poor. What we need is more individuals engaged in personal experimentation, and more methodologically sound research. It's a hard, complex problem.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  > A low carb diet is predominantly fruits and vegetables Aren't fruits (and fruit juices) verboten for most low-carb diets? Fruit is mostly water and fructose.

paganel 15y ago

I eat lots and lots of bread (what you would call "carbs") but basically no meat, and I'm quite skinny nevertheless. I do no sports (I've only recently started to ride my bicycle after a 10-year pause), nor am I on any diet or anything similar. So, yeah, I don't see how carbs are worse than fat.

tokenadult 15y ago

What's more radically different between people who are healthy and people who are not is how much they exercise rather than what they eat. There is much more worldwide cultural variation in what people eat, and much more individual variation within each culture, among healthy people than there is variation in the exercise level of healthy people. But seeking to change diet to change health sounds easier than getting more exercise, so that's what gets in the news (and on HN, over and over and over). Doing serious scientific research http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html with controlled experiments and careful observation and follow-up on human nutrition is extremely hard. I recall a local television news documentary about a dietary study from the 1970s in which experimental subjects were confined 24/7 in a lab for many weeks (they must have been compensated handsomely to agree to participate in this experiment) and fed EXACT portions of food that were weighed with extreme precision. Oddly, I don't recall particularly what hypothesis that study was set up to test, but I do recall that it was described as the first experiment that relied on feeding subjects exactly measured portions of known foods (and excluding subjects from access to foods they chose for themselves) while involving lengthy (weeks of time) follow-up. It's still exceedingly rare for studies of human nutrition to have careful experimental designs. (And even at that, I suppose most of the subjects of that experiment are still alive, but I don't know if anyone is doing follow-up observations of those subjects in any manner.) Instead, we get inferences from Egyptian mummies (as in the submitted article) or from other uncontrolled case studies that never even had careful observation to begin with. That really isn't science; http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html that is trading anecdotes, and third- or fourth-hand anecdotes at that.

ohyes 15y ago
What compounds this is that 'healthy' is a particularly ill-defined catchall term. If you are, for example, morbidly obese or horribly malnourished, you probably do need to change your diet. If you get winded going up a flight of stairs, or maybe worried about general physical fitness, you probably want exercise. What is our ideal for a healthy person? An underwear model? someone who lives to 93? I don't know.
- 15y ago

ajscherer 15y ago

I'm always surprised at the theories people are willing to believe about obesity, particularly people on hn. It really sounds reasonable to so many of you that the cause of the obesity epidemic is people actually listening to nutrition advice from the medical establishment and following the food pyramid? My view of what has happened is this: technologies and ingredients were invented by food manufacturers over the past half century. Foods manufactured using these technologies have the following advantages: cheap, high mouth appeal, non-perishable, convenient. They also have the following disadvantages: calorie dense, difficult to metabolize, addictive for some people. For most peopele not explicitly making food decisions with a mind to control their weight, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. At the same time as this was happening, most of the reasons for people to expend calories vanished. As far as I can think of, the only reasons left to burn calories are pleasure and weight control. In this sort of context most normal, perfectly rational people will end up getting fat. The only people who won't are: athletes, people with strong metabolism (this usually goes away with age), and people who dedicate themselves to not being fat.

david_p 15y ago
While I have to agree with you, your theory fails to explain why people in Europe (who have the same access to calorie dense and convenient food) are less obese (in proportion) than North Americans. I believe that culinary customs AND some additives used in industrial food play an important role. Just check out High Fructose Corn Syrup : this is in very product in the USA and is (almost) never used in Europe.
- ljf 15y ago
  Agreed - though in Europe (though maybe not the UK these day) food isn't marketed as agressively, people eat main when they are hungry not for something to do, and home cooking is a way of life and is held in high esteem.
  - icefox 15y ago
    Also more of Europe is plain old walkable or bikeable. When I lived in Oslo I didn't even own a car. In the states there are very few spots you can get by without a car. Even if I wanted to bike from my house to some places there flat out are not sidewalks in a lot of places. Walking is looked down at. There are plenty of blog entries of guys that go without a car even though they could afford it and find dating near impossible not because they live in a city, but because it is such a powerful signal here.

tsuipen 15y ago

Argh. This is what I don't like about non-tech, -IT, and -CS articles posted on HN: people go off on tangents with so little (useless) information. I'm sorry to say this article is poor on information. Let's stick to the facts. Complex carbs (brown rice, whole wheat bread, bagels, whole wheat pasta, beans - the list of delicious, healthy complex carbs is long) in moderation does not hinder your health. In fact, your body needs them because it is stored energy. Other sources of energy are used up quicker, such as protein. That's not to say carbs are better than protein. Your body needs both! Now, refined SIMPLE carbs (table sugar, fruit juice, "packaged" cereals, chocolate bars, etc.) are not good for you, and only certain types of bodies with certain physical activity should consume them (e.g., if you are a bodybuilder or if you lift weights a few times a week, etc.). It is still absolutely tantamount that you consume unrefined simple carbs such as strawberries, raspberries, oranges, apples, plum, pear, a long etc., and the number one fruit because of its flavanoid content: blueberries!). Put simply, fruits and complex carbs help you convert what you eat in slow-releasing energy that has less content that is turned into fat (as opposed to refined simple carbs). This steady release of energy is part of "moderation is key". If you have your body working too hard, your heart fluttering/palpitations and overworking it are not healthy, neither is when your body processes everything too slow. The biggest factor when consuming carbs (both simple and complex) is the glycemic levels in your blood. You can't have this fluctuate so much, especially if you're pre-disposed to it, otherwise you throw it out of kilter and it may cause diabetes. I'll keep the fat part short. We need fat, too! Let me be less "headliney". We need polyunsaturated fatty acids; in part, to keep our metabolism going. Foods like avocado, fish, flax seed, leafy vegetables, soybeans, walnuts (nuts), and shellfish. Sure, saturated fats may not be the major cause of heart disease, but lessening it while consuming a healthy amount of polyunsaturated fat and complex carbs might. You can read an article on that here (it's better than the OP's article, but still has its flaws): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/rethinking-saturated-fat-its-not-your-hearts-enemy/article1462757/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/rethinking-satura... (By the way, this article was published over a year ago.) Having said all that, each body is different. You should tailor your diet to what your body reacts positively to. For example, flax seed is healthy for you, but I know people who get diarrhea from it. Obviously, don't force yourself to eat something your body doesn't like. Listen to your body, because, unfortunately, the science doesn't fully understand all body types. I'm not a fan of fallacies from defective induction, so I shall refrain from an argumentum ad verecundiam on this, but on a separate note, I will say my friend studied nutrition and she has expressed a keen dislike toward the "Food guide pyramid".

Goladus 15y ago

There are many reasons why people resist the idea that carbs are worse that fat. For one thing, no one has proved that "carbs are worse than fat." It's a silly, over-simplified assertion. Also, fats are the most calorie-dense macro-nutrient. If your calorie intake is greater than your calorie expenditure you will gain weight. You could easily supplement your diet with a 300 calorie bar of chocolate twice a day and your daily calorie intake skyrockets from 2,000 to 2,600. Over time this will lead to obesity if your activity level doesn't rise or if muscles don't grow. Each tablespoon of oil adds 100+ calories a the dish. 2 slices of bread: 160 calories, 60g of peanut butter: 350 calories. Carbs are good. You need carbs. Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage. Too many carbs at once leads to unstable blood sugar and insulin levels. The consequences of this are poorly understood, especially in healthy, active people. But intuitively, daily large spikes in blood sugar and insulin response are probably not a good thing. The good news is that eating high GI carbs with fiber, protein, fats, and sugars mitigates the spikes. While not as calorie-dense as fatty foods, lots of high carb foods are low fiber, low protein, and low moisture with minimal micronutrients and still have very high calorie/weight ratios. (Calories-in > Calories-out) in a sedentary lifestyle leads to increased body fat and weight gain which leads to cellular stress inflammation causing insulin resistance, which leads to more weight gain and more severe metabolic problems. The whole carb vs. fat debate is a waste of time.

mortehu 15y ago
It is possible for a person who is unaware that insulin promotes glycogenesis and lipogenesis to write what you just did. However, I'm not convinced that a person who IS aware could do so. Can you help me out?
eco 15y ago
> Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage. This only happens in the case of ketoacidosis which is caused by things like type 1 diabetes and alcoholism. A ketogenic diet isn't inherently unhealthy (they use it very successfully to treat epilepsy in children).

jdq 15y ago

Because they are so dang delicious...mmmMMMmmm donuts.

krakensden 15y ago

Because you told them fat was the source of all evil for at least twenty years?

dkarl 15y ago

My reading led me to believe that sugars and grains in my diet were the culprit and, sure enough, once I cut those out and increased the amount of animal fats in my diet, I lost 50 pounds. (I always had and continued to eat a lot of vegetables, too.) I have never felt more energetic or clear-headed. So, yes, my personal experience tells me Taubes is correct, just as Horgan’s experience tells him Taubes is incorrect. But, importantly, I would not have had my experience if I had not read the nutrition literature with an open mind. The last sentence is unjustified and probably incorrect. A lot of people get fed up with their weight, resolve to make a change, and then lose a bunch. Adopting an exciting new idea and making a change is the crucial part, not the validity of the idea. I lost a lot of weight as a vegan (over thirty pounds), got into the best shape of my life, relaxed my rules, and gained a little bit back. Did I gain that little bit back because veganism was the answer and I failed to be faithful to it? No, it was because the initial novelty and enthusiasm wore off. It's the same pattern no matter what the actual composition of the diet is. Low-carb diets' biggest contribution to weight loss has been to provide a psychologically viable option for meat-and-potatoes people who felt unsatisfied or alienated by the "hippie" food that low-fat diets would have had them eating. the health effects of a high-carbohydrate diet often are not visible as weight gain—that Egyptian princess, no doubt thin as a rail (have you ever seen a fat mummy?), had a level of atherosclerosis that today would have doctors scrambling for a bypass operation Now, this part is actually interesting and I await more information concerning the heart health of people who exercise and maintain a healthy weight on different kinds of diets.

ljf 15y ago

Since moving to only /expressly/ eating carbs once a week (as in the 4 hour body book) I've lost a stone and gone from 24% body fat to 17% - all in about 8 weeks. Plus my /gut/ feels a hell of a lot better now I'm not eating bread, and when/if I do I get a pretty rough stomach. People don't realise just how bad processed carbs are. We didn't them for centuries and only do now as they are sold to us cheaply.

narrator 15y ago

A more subtle reason for the pro-carb bias is it provides justification for vegetarianism since most vegetarian diets are much higher in carbs than fat. Vegetarians, animal rights advocates, and people who may eat meat but nevertheless are against promoting it because of their concern for the environment want to believe that their more moral diet is also healthier. The easy way to do that is by lending their confirmation bias to any scientific study that maligns high fat diets and thus meat eating and to ignore contrary research findings that does not confirm their bias.

MikeCapone 15y ago
I'm afraid this might be true, and I say this as someone who was a vegetarian for almost 3 years partly for environmental and moral reasons. I started eating meat again after reading Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories". I still agree that it's better for the environment and for the animals to have a vegetarian diet, but I couldn't find a way to stick to it without eating way more carbs than I felt was good for me. I'll be the first in line when 'grown' meat that doesn't come from an animal with a central nervous system that can feel pain/stress/anguish/etc comes on the market, though...
- cpeterso 15y ago
  How did you reintroduce meat into your vegetarian diet? Was it a gradual process? Do you eat the same meat diet (dishes and frequency) as before you were a vegetarian? I've been a (ovo-lacto) vegetarian for 12 years for the reasons you describe. After reading Gary Taubes, I am conflicted. Taubes has little advice for vegetarians or vegans except "eat some cheese and eggs".

sophacles 15y ago

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that studies and/or those who do them are not very trustworthy? I have watched studies conclusively prove that eating chicken eggs will: kill you sooner, make you live longer, have no measurable effect, cure cancer, cause cancer, and defeat communisms (joke) Similar cycles for other types of food. Similar cycles various types of activity. Having watched this for so long, am I really going to suddenly believe that carbs are evil, that I should found a new moral system (and a new diet) on the latest studies which, in my experience are going to be shown wrong in a few years anyway. Or should I just go ahead an eat the way I've observed the people who live to be old eat? Related: look up the story of the boy who cried wolf.

Florin_Andrei 15y ago

"Fat is worse than carbs" is a very successful meme because it passes a superficial "evidence-checking": it's fat, so it's gotta make me more fat, right? A mechanistic, false-newtonian, 17th century understanding of biology. A fallacy of common sense. Plus, it's been touted all over the place for decades. Of course it catches on. Keep calories in general low, paying special attention to carbs. Don't forget to lift some weights. Feel free to do other types of exercise if you wish. Voila, instant fat management.

tfinniga 15y ago

These anecdotal arguments back and forth are interesting, but they're not science. I mean, where's the details on the methodology? Where are the data? Why do we listen to/argue about the various experts, instead of digging into the actual research that's been done? If you're looking for studies on the topic, check out these two videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-847196066367535747 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-847196066367535747 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1719204869171202407 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1719204869171202407 It's basically a survey paper in video form, presented by one of the researchers. It has actual graphs! With error bars! The corresponding book is pretty good too, it's called the China study. Personally, I trust statisticians on health much more than biologists. It's nice that there's a biological basis for the conclusion, but trying to argue diet based on the metabolic process seems like a stretch, especially when it conflicts with what's observed.

ironparlance 15y ago

The agriculture industrial complex is invested deeply in corn/soy/wheat processed foods and chemicals. Mega billions are at stake. The options for "low effort" and "low price" food are virtually all unhealthy from a diet standpoint. Yet, these foods have been engineered to be nearly addictive. That is why there is rampant obesity. Any diet that largely avoids these foods and maintains reasonable variety is going to be vastly more healthy.

bproper 15y ago

We are predisposed by our Victorian ancestors to assume that anything which gives us great pleasure must also be bad for us. Hence fat is believed to be worse than carbs.

terio 15y ago
Following that logic, people with different tastes would conclude that carbs are worse than fat.

mixmastamyk 15y ago

They are not worse, just different. People are desperate for a single villain to blame for their fat asses. Maintain a balanced diet, keep the total calories down, stay away from cheap processed food, get exercise. It's very simple, but unfortunately there is not a single villain, so people resist.

NIL8 15y ago

There's money in carbs and not in fat. This answer may sound glib, but not if we consider the facts surrounding the issue. - The propaganda for carbs and against fat has been overwhelming over the years. Most people are not likely to believe anything other than what they've been taught. - Our economy relies heavily on what we can generally call "the carb industry." If people are being harmed by too many carbs, they'll take medicine (like they're trained to) and that builds another industry. Why would anybody (politicians, industry leaders, corporate science) want to change that? - Besides, carbs are beautifully packaged, cheap, and readily available. Why would anyone want to re-think that?

racketeer 15y ago

Better question - Why are people always trying to subtract something from they're diet? Wouldn't it be better to just eat a well balanced plate?

kstenerud 15y ago

My beef is that nutritional "experts" tend to reverse their "advice" every 5-10 years. - X is bad - No, actually X is good. - No, it turns out X is actually bad after all. - No, actually it's Y that's causing all our problems. - Wait, no, it's Z. And then along comes the marketing blitz. "No salt", "Sugar free" "glucose free" "gluten free" "made with cane syrup" "cholesterol free" "fat free" "no saturated fat" "no trans fat" and now "carb free", no doubt. And then the vitamin supplement and herbal crowd come out to flog their latest crackpot diets and exercise regimens and trans-yogic-meta-druidic-ninjutsu-meditation. Yes, I rage much :P

bborud 15y ago

why is everyone suddenly a nutrition expert? I know a lot of people who have opinions on what is good for you and what isn't in terms of food. none of them are doctors, of course. in fact, most of them have never taken any science subjects at all, and wouldn't know their ass from a redox equation even if you threw a shelf-full of chemistry books at them.

mannicken 15y ago

Over-consumption of everything is bad. Cake is great, cake is fun, but if you eat it everyday you'll probably get fat because it has a lot of calories. And hey, a lot of calories isn't bad, it's just if you eat more calories than burn you'll gain fat. And that's OK, until you start to get so fat that it decreases your quality of life. Body like a loosely tied ballon, if push air into it -- it'll get big, but on itself it'll lose weight. On another topic, I'm usually pro-legalization of every drug that's out there. But there's a lot of people out there who just put random shit into their bodies in unreasonable quantities without understanding of what they are doing, making stupid excuses. AND IT'S JUST FUCKING FOOD. If heroin or coke become legal, we'll probably see a lot of people overdose. Which I'm fine with, technically. I just now start to understand why some drugs are illegal.