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The big problem I have with the Keto diet is twofold: 1. People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet - they go from a lot of process

The big problem I have with the Keto diet is twofold: 1. People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet - they go from a lot of processed crap to mostly non processed stuff on the outside of the grocery store and then see huge benefits. But I suspect if they just switched to a Real Food diet in the first place they would see most of the same benefits. 2. It completely leaves out almost all legumes and many root vegetables and gourds which are both hugely beneficial and also some of the cheapest / most sustainable calories out there. There is a reason humans domesticated gourds early on - they are easy as hell to grow, tasty, healthy, balanced, and the shells often also provide other benefits. On top of that the three above food groups are the main sources of high quality prebiotics (not probiotics) which are essential to our gut health and producing both essential fatty acids and Vitamin K2. The FDA just assumes that people meet an RDA value for EFA and K2 based on gut fermentation but this relies on people consuming quality fiber and most importantly specific prebiotics like long chain inulin and resistant starch (which are very different than simple starch and normal inulin). EFA and K2 are intricately involved in immune modulation, gut inflammation, inflammation in general, and all kinds of other processes. I think we all know that the average person in the west is likely not eating nearly enough of these prebiotics and in addition many have other digestion issues as well. There is a reason scientists call them ESSENTIAL fatty acids and not "kinda sorta important" fatty acids.

dawnerd 5y ago
When I go on keto I eat a TON of processed foods and take supplements. Keto diets help people, end of story. I wouldn't have been able to lose weight otherwise, I've tried. Keto for me was almost cheating. There's some pretty great products out there with a low GI or net zero carbs but they're all pretty highly processed.
- kcplate 5y ago
  It’s certainly possible to go this route and I will admit to the occasional indulgence (generally it’s them damed keto ice cream bars). But I found I ate less processed food to prior to keto since my main focus was meat, eggs, and cruciferous veggies.
_0w8t 5y ago
And then the whole claim that keto was a diet of ancient people before the agricalture looked more like a fantasy. Modern hunter-gatherets in Africa get at least 50% percent of their calories from starchy vegetables and honey with latter supplying at least 10% of calories. This became apparent after scientists measured it rather than guessing based on earlier observations.
- lfuller 5y ago
  Keto was originally developed as an anti-epilepsy diet until it was picked up as a weight loss diet - it's not claimed to be any kind of historical diet. I believe you're thinking of the paleo ("paleolithic") diet.
- JPKab 5y ago
  Modern hunter-gatherers in AFRICA. Do you think the Inuit, or hunter-gatherers in northern Europe or Asia were getting 50% of their calories from non-animal sources? You know the answer is absolutely not. I don't want to get into an annoying, repetitive ideological flame war here. What I can tell you is that depending on the climate and the length of the winters, as well as the soil, tribes had vastly different diet compositions. There are numerous studies on this.
  - _0w8t 5y ago
    Ancestors of Inuits came to polar regions less then 10 thousand years ago. Yet even during this short from evolutionary perspective time frame they got a mutation that inhibited ketosis. Even outside the polar regions to places where fruits and vegetables where not available or were very limited people came relatively recently. For example, in Mongolia it happened about 20 thousands years ago. Moreover, human population there in any substantial numbers appeared less than 10K years after domestication of animals and access to their milk. In Mongolia people living in traditional ways drink a lot of fermented horse and camel milk getting enough calories from carbohydrates to avoid a permanent keto state. So a permanent keto state from evolutionary perspective was never sustainable.
- rkk3 5y ago
kcplate 5y ago
People are different, and due to individual needs and desired outcomes, one size fits all dieting isn’t the best thing. I have type 2 diabetes. For the first 7 years after my diagnosis I stuck to the ADA diet I was told to follow and to use insulin to manage my blood glucose. My insulin requirements increased every year…10-15%. My weight stayed the same, trying to lose was difficult to maintain for a long period, and when you have a lot of weight to lose…you need to maintain caloric restriction for a long period. 5 years ago I switched to keto. Within 4 months I was off all diabetes meds and have been off since. I have lost 170lbs. Does the diet alone give me all the nutrition I need? Nope. So I take a supplement or two to get what I need. That is better for me and my blood sugar maintenance than consuming beans and root vegetables. Keto enabled the change I needed to make, because one thing the diet does well is create satiety, which ultimately leads to caloric restriction which led to weight loss which led to the glucose control I needed to stop damaging my body. Here is the main thing though. Eating the ADA diet and using insulin to control my blood glucose was ultimately a losing game. My life expectancy was likely lower eating that ADA diet than eating keto, thanks to all the keto created benefits. Diabetes might have killed me at 65, keto might kill me at 75. I’ll take the 10 years and whatever issues keto decides to deal to me. This is just my individual story.
- Byteflux 5y ago
  Your anecdote is supported by clinical evidence. Virta Health has been conducting clinical studies over the past few years on treating T2D with nutritional ketosis with a high rate of success in putting T2D into remission leading to many patients coming off of their meds and insulin entirely. The ADA has quietly acknowledged these studies in their Standard of Care and more recently has adopted a position of endorsing low-carb, but they're still ignoring keto despite the clinical evidence. As you said, the ADA's guidelines are focused on managing T2D as a progressive disease which inevitably leads to increased medical requirements over time. Although T2D remains incurable, there's enough clinical evidence to conclude that for many people it's treatable with nutritional ketosis. I like to think I'm a rational person and don't subscribe to conspiracy theories in general, but something about the ADA and their relationship with pharmaceutical companies just rubs me wrong. To my knowledge, their largest financial sponsor is Eli Lilly which also happens to be one of the world's largest manufacturers of diabetes drugs, including insulin.
rkk3 5y ago
> 1. People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet Most people in the US aren't eating a "Real food" diet, which is actually where a lot of studies benefits come from because the baseline is so unhealthy - it's about what you're not/stop eating as much as it is about what you are eating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQtq4YTPso&ab_channel=StanfordCenterforClinicalResearch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQtq4YTPso&ab_channel=Stanf... > 2. It completely leaves out almost all legumes and many root vegetables and gourds which are both hugely beneficial and also some of the cheapest / most sustainable calories out there. There is a reason humans domesticated gourds early on - they are easy as hell to grow, tasty, healthy, balanced, and the shells often also provide other benefits. Like the article says many people are on keto diet for cancer or neuro-degenerative conditions that potentially benefit from being in a state of ketosis & you can't do that even eating healthy nutrient carb sources like legumes and root vegetables.
everybodyknows 5y ago
> long chain inulin and resistant starch Any references to suggest on these?
- melissalobos 5y ago
  For resistant starch, you can look up the "Potato Hack" or other similar things for popular information. There have been a large number of articles you can find on Google Scholar about cooking potatoes/rice/other things and cooling them to produce RS(resistant starch). https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2006.tb00076.x https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1541-4... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/092422449290153N https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/092422... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0963996910000621 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09639... etc. there are alot more. You can access them through sci-hub or your institution.
DiabloD3 5y ago
Lemme throw in my experience on this: I am 6'0" and used to weigh 340 pounds. I now do not and hit 168 at my skinniest. I switched to Paleo because Keto did _not_ at the time feature a "real food" aspect (as in, chugging Canola oil was fine because oil is fat; this is dangerously nonsensical from a nutritional and oxidizing fat perspective). After I went strictly Paleo, lost most of the weight, I needed to improve my fat loss a little more, and starting trading healthy carbs for healthy fats. Thus, I took up Paleo Keto, and often do days on 20-30g of carbs. I absolutely agree with everything here because if I had done Keto first, it would have been a failure, and I could have even injured myself due to how early Keto was obsessed with macro counting, but not obsessed with where their macros came from. The modern scientific diet movement is basically something on the Paleo Keto spectrum, the benefits of inexpensive foods with low or no processing that are full of nutrients combined with the benefits of a low carb/high fat diet with sufficient protein. Also, given my Keto-leaning Paleo diet, I actually eat a surprisingly large number of sweet potatoes. You know why? FDA says they're basically pure carbs, but if you actually look into the science, its mostly "slow carbs", can be cooked in ways that produce ridiculous amounts of RS (and if you don't do that, still have an amazing amount of it), and are low in enough in certain fructans that people on a FODMAP diet can either eat them (as they do not personally react to them at all) or eat small amounts of them (like a half of a medium sized sweet potato) for a serving and not react.
toolcombinator 5y ago
The thing is that there are a lot of people out there who don’t particularly like fruits and vegetables (gourds or not), who can’t be bothered to spend hours every day on cooking “Real food” and/or who can’t afford “real food”.
sleepingadmin 5y ago
>People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet - they go from a lot of processed crap to mostly non processed stuff on the outside of the grocery store and then see huge benefits. But I suspect if they just switched to a Real Food diet in the first place they would see most of the same benefits. Keto is a very wide category that really only means restricting your carbs to 30g/day or so. You can be real-food keto and real-food not-keto. You can be keto vegan, you can be keto carnivore. Well, all carnivores are keto. In fact the studies in the last couple years, tend to all show that effectively being keto is what matters. The jury is still out on why it works. As you said, we've been eating tubers for eons. So why suddenly in the last ~75 years or less has it become such a problem? Perservatives, glyphosate, GMOs? Everyone seems pretty clear that our food has become toxic in some way. Lots of different approaches that eliminate grains and seed oils and drastically improve your situation. We haven't figured out what exactly is doing it. >I think we all know that the average person in the west is likely not eating nearly enough of these prebiotics and in addition many have other digestion issues as well. There is a reason scientists call them ESSENTIAL fatty acids and not "kinda sorta important" fatty acids. The funny thing to me, we have people effectively going 'real food' afterall a carnivore is also 'real food' but vegans are doing the same thing, but different direction on 1 spectrum and seeing the benefits as well. The huge problem... economies collapse if we fix whatever it is. If you go to your local grocery store and throw out everything that isn't 'real food'. The grocery store becomes empty. Fast food places shut down. That's a pretty significant portion of our society who no longer work or anything. What are they to do? We can't fix the problem.

dawnerd 5y ago

When I go on keto I eat a TON of processed foods and take supplements. Keto diets help people, end of story. I wouldn't have been able to lose weight otherwise, I've tried. Keto for me was almost cheating. There's some pretty great products out there with a low GI or net zero carbs but they're all pretty highly processed.

kcplate 5y ago
It’s certainly possible to go this route and I will admit to the occasional indulgence (generally it’s them damed keto ice cream bars). But I found I ate less processed food to prior to keto since my main focus was meat, eggs, and cruciferous veggies.

_0w8t 5y ago

And then the whole claim that keto was a diet of ancient people before the agricalture looked more like a fantasy. Modern hunter-gatherets in Africa get at least 50% percent of their calories from starchy vegetables and honey with latter supplying at least 10% of calories. This became apparent after scientists measured it rather than guessing based on earlier observations.

lfuller 5y ago
Keto was originally developed as an anti-epilepsy diet until it was picked up as a weight loss diet - it's not claimed to be any kind of historical diet. I believe you're thinking of the paleo ("paleolithic") diet.
JPKab 5y ago
Modern hunter-gatherers in AFRICA. Do you think the Inuit, or hunter-gatherers in northern Europe or Asia were getting 50% of their calories from non-animal sources? You know the answer is absolutely not. I don't want to get into an annoying, repetitive ideological flame war here. What I can tell you is that depending on the climate and the length of the winters, as well as the soil, tribes had vastly different diet compositions. There are numerous studies on this.
- _0w8t 5y ago
  Ancestors of Inuits came to polar regions less then 10 thousand years ago. Yet even during this short from evolutionary perspective time frame they got a mutation that inhibited ketosis. Even outside the polar regions to places where fruits and vegetables where not available or were very limited people came relatively recently. For example, in Mongolia it happened about 20 thousands years ago. Moreover, human population there in any substantial numbers appeared less than 10K years after domestication of animals and access to their milk. In Mongolia people living in traditional ways drink a lot of fermented horse and camel milk getting enough calories from carbohydrates to avoid a permanent keto state. So a permanent keto state from evolutionary perspective was never sustainable.
rkk3 5y ago

kcplate 5y ago

People are different, and due to individual needs and desired outcomes, one size fits all dieting isn’t the best thing. I have type 2 diabetes. For the first 7 years after my diagnosis I stuck to the ADA diet I was told to follow and to use insulin to manage my blood glucose. My insulin requirements increased every year…10-15%. My weight stayed the same, trying to lose was difficult to maintain for a long period, and when you have a lot of weight to lose…you need to maintain caloric restriction for a long period. 5 years ago I switched to keto. Within 4 months I was off all diabetes meds and have been off since. I have lost 170lbs. Does the diet alone give me all the nutrition I need? Nope. So I take a supplement or two to get what I need. That is better for me and my blood sugar maintenance than consuming beans and root vegetables. Keto enabled the change I needed to make, because one thing the diet does well is create satiety, which ultimately leads to caloric restriction which led to weight loss which led to the glucose control I needed to stop damaging my body. Here is the main thing though. Eating the ADA diet and using insulin to control my blood glucose was ultimately a losing game. My life expectancy was likely lower eating that ADA diet than eating keto, thanks to all the keto created benefits. Diabetes might have killed me at 65, keto might kill me at 75. I’ll take the 10 years and whatever issues keto decides to deal to me. This is just my individual story.

Byteflux 5y ago
Your anecdote is supported by clinical evidence. Virta Health has been conducting clinical studies over the past few years on treating T2D with nutritional ketosis with a high rate of success in putting T2D into remission leading to many patients coming off of their meds and insulin entirely. The ADA has quietly acknowledged these studies in their Standard of Care and more recently has adopted a position of endorsing low-carb, but they're still ignoring keto despite the clinical evidence. As you said, the ADA's guidelines are focused on managing T2D as a progressive disease which inevitably leads to increased medical requirements over time. Although T2D remains incurable, there's enough clinical evidence to conclude that for many people it's treatable with nutritional ketosis. I like to think I'm a rational person and don't subscribe to conspiracy theories in general, but something about the ADA and their relationship with pharmaceutical companies just rubs me wrong. To my knowledge, their largest financial sponsor is Eli Lilly which also happens to be one of the world's largest manufacturers of diabetes drugs, including insulin.

rkk3 5y ago

> 1. People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet Most people in the US aren't eating a "Real food" diet, which is actually where a lot of studies benefits come from because the baseline is so unhealthy - it's about what you're not/stop eating as much as it is about what you are eating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQtq4YTPso&ab_channel=StanfordCenterforClinicalResearch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQtq4YTPso&ab_channel=Stanf... > 2. It completely leaves out almost all legumes and many root vegetables and gourds which are both hugely beneficial and also some of the cheapest / most sustainable calories out there. There is a reason humans domesticated gourds early on - they are easy as hell to grow, tasty, healthy, balanced, and the shells often also provide other benefits. Like the article says many people are on keto diet for cancer or neuro-degenerative conditions that potentially benefit from being in a state of ketosis & you can't do that even eating healthy nutrient carb sources like legumes and root vegetables.

everybodyknows 5y ago

> long chain inulin and resistant starch Any references to suggest on these?

melissalobos 5y ago
For resistant starch, you can look up the "Potato Hack" or other similar things for popular information. There have been a large number of articles you can find on Google Scholar about cooking potatoes/rice/other things and cooling them to produce RS(resistant starch). https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2006.tb00076.x https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1541-4... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/092422449290153N https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/092422... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0963996910000621 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09639... etc. there are alot more. You can access them through sci-hub or your institution.

DiabloD3 5y ago

Lemme throw in my experience on this: I am 6'0" and used to weigh 340 pounds. I now do not and hit 168 at my skinniest. I switched to Paleo because Keto did _not_ at the time feature a "real food" aspect (as in, chugging Canola oil was fine because oil is fat; this is dangerously nonsensical from a nutritional and oxidizing fat perspective). After I went strictly Paleo, lost most of the weight, I needed to improve my fat loss a little more, and starting trading healthy carbs for healthy fats. Thus, I took up Paleo Keto, and often do days on 20-30g of carbs. I absolutely agree with everything here because if I had done Keto first, it would have been a failure, and I could have even injured myself due to how early Keto was obsessed with macro counting, but not obsessed with where their macros came from. The modern scientific diet movement is basically something on the Paleo Keto spectrum, the benefits of inexpensive foods with low or no processing that are full of nutrients combined with the benefits of a low carb/high fat diet with sufficient protein. Also, given my Keto-leaning Paleo diet, I actually eat a surprisingly large number of sweet potatoes. You know why? FDA says they're basically pure carbs, but if you actually look into the science, its mostly "slow carbs", can be cooked in ways that produce ridiculous amounts of RS (and if you don't do that, still have an amazing amount of it), and are low in enough in certain fructans that people on a FODMAP diet can either eat them (as they do not personally react to them at all) or eat small amounts of them (like a half of a medium sized sweet potato) for a serving and not react.

toolcombinator 5y ago

The thing is that there are a lot of people out there who don’t particularly like fruits and vegetables (gourds or not), who can’t be bothered to spend hours every day on cooking “Real food” and/or who can’t afford “real food”.

sleepingadmin 5y ago

>People rarely compare it directly to something like a "Real Food" diet - they go from a lot of processed crap to mostly non processed stuff on the outside of the grocery store and then see huge benefits. But I suspect if they just switched to a Real Food diet in the first place they would see most of the same benefits. Keto is a very wide category that really only means restricting your carbs to 30g/day or so. You can be real-food keto and real-food not-keto. You can be keto vegan, you can be keto carnivore. Well, all carnivores are keto. In fact the studies in the last couple years, tend to all show that effectively being keto is what matters. The jury is still out on why it works. As you said, we've been eating tubers for eons. So why suddenly in the last ~75 years or less has it become such a problem? Perservatives, glyphosate, GMOs? Everyone seems pretty clear that our food has become toxic in some way. Lots of different approaches that eliminate grains and seed oils and drastically improve your situation. We haven't figured out what exactly is doing it. >I think we all know that the average person in the west is likely not eating nearly enough of these prebiotics and in addition many have other digestion issues as well. There is a reason scientists call them ESSENTIAL fatty acids and not "kinda sorta important" fatty acids. The funny thing to me, we have people effectively going 'real food' afterall a carnivore is also 'real food' but vegans are doing the same thing, but different direction on 1 spectrum and seeing the benefits as well. The huge problem... economies collapse if we fix whatever it is. If you go to your local grocery store and throw out everything that isn't 'real food'. The grocery store becomes empty. Fast food places shut down. That's a pretty significant portion of our society who no longer work or anything. What are they to do? We can't fix the problem.