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USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

• throwaway98797 4y ago
  the best diet is the one that works for you. for some it’s low carb, for others it’s vegan. what’s key is to focus on what you eat, that’s probably 80% of the battle.
  • TeeMassive 4y ago
    Euh no, while diets must be adapted to individuals, there are objective and well established principles about what works or not.
    • lghh 4y ago
      A prerequisite for "works for you" is "works at all". A less efficient diet that you stick with is better than a more efficient one that you don't stick with.
    • andreareina 4y ago
      The problem isn't finding a diet that works: anything that reduces calories below maintenance does it. The problem is what a person will stick to. Different people find different diets to be easier to stick to. If they're luck they find one that leads to a spontaneous reduction of calories consumed and don't need to count.
      • recyclelater 4y ago
        Not anything, you could run a five hundred calorie deficit and only eat table sugar. You’d lose weight and gain serious metabolic disease. This is an extreme, but obviously there’s better and worse things. Maybe it’s pretty comparable in the reasonable middle, but let’s not kid ourselves and say anything can work if we are talking whole body health not just weight loss.
        • andreareina 4y ago
          Given Professor Twinkie's experience I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't. We're finding more and more that for overweight people losing weight (and keeping it off, hence "what works for you") is the single best intervention they can do for better health. ETA: obviously I'm not advocating eating only sugar or twinkies. The point is that adherence is an crucial factor, more so than is often given credit.
          • recyclelater 4y ago
            Taking off my pedantic hat, I think we agree. Meaning in the pragmatic real world, if you can keep weight off it’s better than having the weight on, and no one is doing that in the real world with an all sugar diet. With that being said, metabolic disease produces lots of skinny diabetics, and that will definitely shorten your life span.
            • andreareina 4y ago
              Definitely getting OT and deep into the weeds here, I wonder how many of those skinny diabetics are due to LADA and not insulin resistance.
              • gumby 4y ago
                When you present with DM as an adult the immediate presumption is DM II not LADA and the insurance companies (and their actuaries) are uninterested in investigating otherwise. Thus endocrinologists are disincented to look as the hospital admin gets very upset when insurance companies deny reimbursement. The ADA training the insurance companies recommend is weird too. It says, for example, that it’s fine to have a slice of cake, just have half. I assume this is because too large a change will lead to negligible compliance. I was at first shocked, but then wondered what kind of baseline recommendation would actually be effective.
        • 411111111111111 4y ago
          And yet there was that girl which went on a chocolate diet and lived just fine. It was a publicity stunt, but does kinda show that depending on your body, it might not matter anyway.
      • bandrami 4y ago
        The "calories-in" approach sets minima and maxima, nothing else. For one thing we still are very bad at determining how much energy an individual will actually extract from a given food. We still get calorie counts from setting food on fire.
        • andreareina 4y ago
          That's mostly only an issue with an open cycle approach. If intake is titrated according to how the scale moves[1] individual variation in digestive efficiency, activity levels etc is handled. [1] on an appropriate timeframe to reduce noise
          • bandrami 4y ago
            Granted, with the caveat that "noise" includes most of what people intend as weight loss
  • themitigating 4y ago
    "The best treatment for cancer is the one that works for you" "The best way to change your oil is the one that works for your car" Come on.
    • andreareina 4y ago
      The difference is that for weight loss they basically all work (to the extent that they reduce calories). So "what works for you" translates to "what lets you consume X calories with less mental effort".
    • StanislavPetrov 4y ago
      Both of the above statements are true, which anyone who is an expert in the field of cancer treatment or automotives will be happy to explain. Cancers, like automobiles (and most everything else), vary widely, and have different optimal courses of treatment for the ideal outcome.
    • mhh__ 4y ago
      The best knife sharpening method is the one you actually do. This isn't about efficacy but rather sticking to it. A diet you hate is, just that, a diet not a change in lifestyle.
      • caminante 4y ago
        I don't think the parent would disagree with your qualification of "best." The point is that the GP left out the nuance you raised regarding "better [than nothing]" as "good enough".
    • heywoodlh 4y ago
      Are you implying that there isn't nuance in diet from person to person? i.e. low-carb diets works for everyone? Oil in cars and cancer treatments you don't really have choices but there are many choices for diets. On top of that, in my experience some people's bodies have different affinities or intolerances (i.e. lactose intolerance). I feel like I agree with the original sentiment that diets can vary from person to person. Am I wrong, though?
  • diffeomorphism 4y ago
    No, "ignore everything and do whatever you like" is terrible and dangerous advice.
    • oifjsidjf 4y ago
      OP's point was that different people require different extreme diets (at least temporaril) to heal themselves. This is not dangerous advice: this is exprimentaion, beacuse modern medicine has obviously failed them.
      • derbOac 4y ago
        It's also consistent with personalized nutrition studies: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-019-0256-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-019-0256-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-019-0256-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-019-0256-8
      • diffeomorphism 4y ago
        Nope, it wasn't.
    • bruce511 4y ago
      You are right, that would be terrible advice. On the other hand that's not what he posted (although you can certainly read it that way if you want to.) I read it more as "there's no one true diet" which seems to gel with my personal observation. The best exercise is any exercise you actually do - the best diet for you is one that is both healthy, and that you can adapt to. Small adjustments are more likely to "stick", and doing something small can be beneficial. For example, I'm not going to entertain "go vegan". That's too big a jump. But cutting down on meat is achievable. I'm not going carb free overnight, but I can start to reduce sugar (no sugar in coffee for example), eat more nuts for snacks, and less chips, and so on. I can do a "carb free month", I can reduce portion sizes. Ultimately my balance will be different to the next person's.
    • xkbarkar 4y ago
      I disagree. When it comes to your eating habits listen to your body and ignore well meant but oftesn outright dangerous comments like this. Especially from anyone that has a “miracle” cure just for you. I have never eaten breakfast, always hated eating before lunch. Having had this exact comment thrown in my face for 30 years. Turns out ignoring everything and doing whatever fit me was not only healthy but has strong scientific basis. Aka intermittent fasting. Do not give bad advice or scold people for listening to their bodies and follow what works for them.
  • Semaphor 4y ago
    > what’s key is to focus on what you eat, that’s probably 80% of the battle. As someone close to 10 years on keto, that’s something I’ve always been saying. Focus on what you eat, and find something you can stick with (well, and don’t eat crap :D)
  • stefantalpalaru 4y ago
• sillypuddy 4y ago
  We'll have a colony on Mars before we agree on what constitutes a healthy diet.
• readthenotes1 4y ago
  I'll know they're serious about health when they put a tax on added sugar and an additional tax on high fructose corn syrup. Until then, they're just actors on a stage
  • Madmallard 4y ago
    Do you mean taxes on the producers for using it because it is addictive? Because taxes on the consumer makes zero sense.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • tjohns 4y ago
      A big part of the reason why we have an epidemic of obesity is because it's cheaper (and easier) to eat junk food than to eat healthy. Here in the Bay Area, I can buy a McDonalds value menu hamburger and a soda for $2, or I can buy a healthy salad at SweetGreen/Panera/Mendocino for $15-20. If healthy food was on a level playing field, many people would choose to eat healthier. (Now, this doesn't address the problem about rising food costs, and the macroeconomic implications hare are beyond my expertise... but surely forcing those with a low income to have to eat junk food isn't what we want as a society.)
    • ilikehurdles 4y ago
      It makes no difference. Goods aren’t produced in a vacuum, and a tax on one is eventually a tax on the other because prices changes are transitive.
    • tylersmith 4y ago
      Consumers pay the cost of production, taxes and all. Otherwise the business is losing money.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • gnicholas 4y ago
• mertd 4y ago
  I imagine if the headline news declared that we should reduce the carbs in our diets, most Americans would up the meat intake and not vegetables, and that would reduce fiber in their diet even more.
  • eru 4y ago
    Perhaps remove the government from these recommendations altogether? Don't they have more important things to do?
    • Bilal_io 4y ago
      > Don't they have more important things to do? Like caring about the well being of the citizens?
      • landemva 4y ago
        How has that government caring worked out over the past five decades of ballooning BMI and heart disease? Should we double down on government caring for us, or admit defeat and defund government food recommendations?
      • eru 4y ago
        Causal connection between that and writing recommendations is rather weak..
      • odiroot 4y ago
        They would be banning sugary drinks altogether, if they actually cared.
      • eldenwrong 4y ago
    • thebigspacefuck 4y ago
      It could change which crops are subsidized. Imagine if broccoli were subsidized as much as corn.
• joshgroban 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • O__________O 4y ago
    To be fair, low-carb and keto diets are not the same thing.
• imglorp 4y ago
  The USDA only protects and represents producers: full corporate capture. They run interference for Puppy mills [1], organic food mislabeling [2], misdirected trade aid to large operations instead of family farms [3], and germane to OP, all kinds of lobbying and gigabuck price supports for dairy products which shouldn't even be recommended daily diet. Etc. 1, https://www.aspca.org/news/usda-letting-puppy-mills-operate-without-inspections https://www.aspca.org/news/usda-letting-puppy-mills-operate-... 2. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/15/the-great-organic-food-fraud https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/15/the-great-orga... 3. https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/newsroom/dem/press/release/senate-democrats-unveil-new-report-detailing-how-trump-administration-mismanaged-payments-to-farmers-for-trade-damages https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/newsroom/dem/press/releas... 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#Contr...
  • mlindner 4y ago
    Organic food itself is a fraud as it doesn't actually mean anything. If anything they should just ban the label entirely.
    • darzu 4y ago
      Citations needed. I worked on an organic vineyard for a summer and I can tell you it took a lot of work to get that label. Non-organic vineyards in our area had barren earth or gravel under the stalks as they used weedkillers regularly. In contrast, we practiced “turf flipping” where we would, with clever machine and hard work, turn the soil over to smother weeds. The soil was alive and rich with the longest earthworms I’ve ever seen. This took incomparably more time than spraying chemicals but we believed in the mission. And the extra money from labeling it organic didn’t come close to covering the extra effort. In some cases at least, the label means something.
      • mlindner 4y ago
        Just because you're forced into extra "make work" activities to get the label, doesn't make it any less of a fraud.
• tbrownaw 4y ago
  Interesting name for a new blog. And, the author's apparently had accuracy issues before: https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6061 https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6061
• Spivak 4y ago
  I wish the article was framed in terms of what the author really wants instead of burying it. The author is framing the issue as something mostly non-political, simply acknowledging the existing body of research, but actually wants something very political which is changing the USDA guidelines (which have far reaching effects) to recommend low-carb as essentially the go to default diet. So while the aim is noble the author doesn’t really care about the science except as a useful tool to drive a particular political outcome. And same with the accusation of ignoring science except as a way to make the board look bad because the author would clearly not be satisfied with “we each read in full literally every paper on the subject of low-carb diets but as a group remain unconvinced in its merits for a general recommendation.” tl;dr the author is probably right about low-carb diets but made sure to frame it in such a way that makes enemies out of the people with actual power who now can’t actually do what she wants without making themselves look uneducated. Shame has never made people dig their heels in /j
  • shkkmo 4y ago
    > but actually wants something very political which is changing the USDA guidelines (which have far reaching effects) to recommend low-carb as essentially the go to default diet. That seems like an uncharitable and inaccurate assumption on your part and goes against what the author explicitly stated. The author summarizes their argument at the end of the article: "But the only way to create change is if the Dietary Guidelines considers low-carb as an option. Not a prescription, just an option." > the accusation of ignoring science except as a way to make the board look bad because the author would clearly not be satisfied with “we each read in full literally every paper on the subject of low-carb diets but as a group remain unconvinced in its merits for a general recommendation.” The author laid out a pretty clear case for the claim. Instead of engaging with that case, you instead choose to speculate that the author has unreachable standards. That is not how you engage in good faith discussion.
• thelittleone 4y ago
  Even without the science... for me personally at 47 and a life long sugar addict (used to eat tablespoons of white sugar from pantry), a low carb (keto) diet has been a complete game changer. I kept my weight in check by doing 6 days of exercise a week, but I was on an energetic roller coaster. 3 months in, no sugar, no cravings (I crave oils sometimes) and damn I just feel well in a way I haven't for long before I can remember. My habits formed when young and when my body was more capable of handling high sugar. But after aging, insulin sensitivity declines, sugars have a more adverse effect, and feels like high sugar levels have just been feeding an imbalance in the GI tract. Reading into the peculiar new science of poop transplants it's been interesting to observe my body as a factory process and the quality of the output (poop) is an important great indicator of system health. Obvious to many, but was not to me for years. In parallel to improved gut health my focus and productivity are more predictable. I thought I'd never kick my addiction to sugar. After making the switch and viewing from a different perspective I'm shocked how where I live 95% of everything in the grocery store has sugar added.
  • ciconia 4y ago
    Good for you. Strictly speaking, poop is not your body's output, it's your body's waste, and as such is indeed a good indicator of your body's efficiency in pulling out what it needs from the input. I guess your body's output is energy?
    • thelittleone 4y ago
      Good point. Similar to a car. Fuel is necessary to create power (output) and the exhaust is the waste. Putting bad fuel in reduces power and bad exhaust can be a symptom.
      • cwillu 4y ago
        It's not the exhaust, that's what you exhale. It's more like disposable packaging. There isn't really a good analogy to fueling up a car; being fed by IV maybe?
    • 4y ago
• landemva 4y ago
  A good start would be to remove food from FDA and task the USDA with inspections. Remove making of food consumption guidelines altogether.
• Moldoteck 4y ago
  For me time restricted eating with high protein intake from beans and tofu and a lot of vegetables+seeds did the thing. I guess there are more ways to achieve the same goal. Some diets are healthier some are not, but i don't think there should be only one approved by fda or any other organization
  • wintermutestwin 4y ago
    >high protein intake from beans and tofu and a lot of vegetables+seeds Saying "high" protein implies that the protein:carb and/or protein:fat ratio is high. Beans have a much higher carb to protein ratio and tofu/seeds have high fat to protein ratios. It is close to impossible to eat a high protein diet that is vegan. The only way to do so requires large quantities of highly processed foods (saitan, etc...)
    • eurleif 4y ago
      "Processed" isn't a well-defined term to begin with, but it's strange that you seem to implying that seitan, but not tofu, is highly processed. The steps from soybeans to tofu are: 1) dry soybeans, 2) soak soybeans, 3) puree soybeans, 4) boil soybeans, 5) separate pulp (okara), 6) coagulate with a coagulant compound, 7) press into block. The steps from wheat to seitan are: 1) mill wheat into flour, 2) wash flour to remove starch, 3) knead glutenous dough, 4) boil. That's fewer steps of "processing" for the latter. You can quibble a bit (in particular, if one buys vital wheat gluten powder, rather than making seitan directly from flour, add a drying step and a rehydrating step after step 3), but at the least, they're in the same league. Moreover, tofu production requires a somewhat exotic ingredient (the coagulant), whereas anyone can make seitan at home from a pantry staple. Also, it's a logical leap from "requires large quantities of highly processed food" to "close to impossible". Whether seitan is "highly processed" or not, it's tasty, and eating a lot of it isn't close to impossible.
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        "Processed" from a public health standpoint means "stripped the fiber out of". It is what distinguishes real food from the toxic sludge packaged and sold (principally) to Americans and other former UK colonies, and what is killing us at an increasing rate.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ricq1 4y ago
• rafaelero 4y ago
  If you want to convince regulators, perhaps you should first try to convince serious nutritionists. Because very few of them really buy this keto narrative.
  • oifjsidjf 4y ago
    And yet there are thousands of people who posted their successful weight loss or bloating and autoimmune issues online which were solved by keto or carnivore. The term "modern serious nutritionist" is a joke anyway: a true nutritionist is one who heals himself with a diet, and many people on keto do. Science advances one funeral at the time. Remember: ~150 years ago people were making fun of the guy and outsted him because he recommended that doctors should wash their hands before surgery! Now that is accepted and is known to be a prerequisite for a safe surgery. Modern "serious nutritionist" are those kind of people: they are too arrogant and egoistic to see that thousands of people have given successful testemonies online. Here is a list of them: (NOTE THE PAGINATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE: THERE ARE 86 PAGES OF TESTEMONIALS!) https://carnivore.diet/category/success-stories/ https://carnivore.diet/category/success-stories/
    • gherkinnn 4y ago
      Extensive fasting is also known to heal anything. As does veganism, raw food, paleo, and eating only boiled potatoes. Interesting how any diet that contains no processed food is good for you. Even more interesting how people who follow these extreme diets make for boring company.
    • tpush 4y ago
      > And yet there are thousands of people who posted their successful weight loss or bloating and autoimmune issues online which were solved by keto or carnivore. There are success anecdotes for every diet imaginable; that isn't any kind of high bar for suitability. > Modern "serious nutritionist" are those kind of people: they are too arrogant and egoistic to see that thousands of people have given successful testemonies online. Absolute nonsense. Fad diets come and go, and I hope nobody here gets their nutrition advice by shady grifters on blogs/twitter instead of the actual science.
• rayiner 4y ago
  If you haven't tried a low-carb diet, you should and see how it works for you. I never felt better than I did when I was eating pretty much just Chipotle salads (chicken+salad+guac) and doing a bit of weightlifting three times a week (https://stronglifts.com/5x5 https://stronglifts.com/5x5). Of course, I was in my mid-20s and had three fewer kids, so there's that... I'll add--free office snacks are the devil's work.
  • bamboozled 4y ago
    Yeah but what’s the point of living till 100 without some wine, pasta and pizza in there occasionally ?
    • meowkit 4y ago
      The biggest mistake in basic nutrition is false dichotomies like the one presented here. You can have a baseline healthy diet, and on occassion have a heavy pasta meal, have a pizza, order a steak, drink some alcohol, eat a sweet. The trick is these things are still good, but are not nearly as attractive when you acclimate to a diet that makes you feel great everyday.
      • sph 4y ago
        That's true, though when your body is used to low carb, having a heavy pasta meal means going into carb coma for a couple hours. It's not fun. Ease yourself into it, if you really have to. Or better yet, indulge in more natural sugary stuff, like fruit. Eating a pasta meal is like eating refined sugar, a massive shock if you're not used to it and are older than 20. But I agree on your general point. It doesn't have to be a life of restriction. Nothing's better than pairing a glass of nice red wine and fancy European cheese with your steak and salad, once in a while.
    • ddorian43 4y ago
      It's not about living to 100, but quality of life (to me personally). The gains in QoL are bigger than pizza/pasta.
  • 4y ago
• GeekyBear 4y ago
  Getting rid of the sugar and refined carbohydrates in my diet (as well as learning to cook my food from scratch) was the big lifestyle change that has kept the weight off of me for the past decade and a half. I do eat a lot of legumes, which still have carbs, just not refined carbs. Previously, I would yo-yo up and down.
• ricq1 4y ago
• jokethrowaway 4y ago
  Another case of "trust the experts" and a corrupt centralised entity. Of course it makes perfect sense: when you buy meat you're not buying highly processed, expensive, vegetarian/vegan food. The meat and dairy industry vs vegetarian food. Guess who can lobby more?
  • tpush 4y ago
    I don't know if this is sarcasm, but the answer is wholeheartedly the meat and dairy industry.
    • eldenwrong 4y ago
      Imagine people still believing that veggie industry is small and not a gigantic player. Every major organization/gov wants to make people eat more veggies and less meat
      • simias 4y ago
        I don't think that makes a lot of sense but beyond that I don't get why the high-carb vs. low-carb discussion turns into a meat vs. plant-based debate in many places here. Most people these days de-facto have a high-carb, high-meat diet. Conversely it's perfectly possible to have a low-meat, low-carb diet (I'm currently doing a vegetarian keto). To me it sounds just like yet another excuse to dunk on the silly hippy vegoonz.
      • goodpoint 4y ago
        What is the "veggie industry"? Industrial agriculture? Industrial agriculture benefits a lot from animal farming given that 67% of crops are sold as livestock feed. Or is there a secret society of leek producers controlling the world?
      • wbsss4412 4y ago
        You write like the government is literally force feeding people vegetables… Name one vegetable producer that makes the kind of profit that meat and feedstock producers do.
• martingoodson 4y ago
  The BMJ has had to issue several corrections about this author’s work. For example: This Feature (BMJ 2015;351:h4962, doi:10.1136/bmj.h4962) by Nina Teicholz stated that when the guidelines advisory committee started its work in 2012 there had been several prominent papers, including a meta-analysis and two major reviews (one systematic), that failed to confirm an association between saturated fats and heart disease. This statement did not aptly reflect the findings of the more authoritative of these reviews, by Hooper et al (Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2012;5:CD002137), which found that saturated fats had an effect on cardiovascular events but failed to confirm an effect on cardiovascular mortality. https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h5686 https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h5686
• strken 4y ago
  I'm not convinced by some of the common beliefs about low-carb diets either. They seem to be good for weight loss[0] but bad for all-cause mortality[1]. If you're making dietary recommendations, it's hard to justify choosing a diet that makes the people who eat it skinnier and less diabetic but also kills some of them. I'm also not convinced that "low-carb" in the literature means you can draw conclusions about ketogenic diets, especially ones that actually send you into ketosis. Some low-carb diets from that first meta-analysis had 35% carbs by energy! My impression of the available evidence is that if you want to lose weight, calorie restriction and high-satiety foods matter more than macros. [0] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/12/3774/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/12/3774/htm [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0055030 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
  • namdnay 4y ago
    yeah, obviously nutrition is far from being the only factor for their longevity and health in old age, but if you take the japanese diet, rice is a pretty major component in their calorie input...
    • phpisthebest 4y ago
      The Japanese diet contains small portions of rice, which may translate into a major component of total calories because it is calorie dense Like with most things food, portion control seems to be the biggest problem in the American Diet
  • sph 4y ago
    "Our meta-analysis supported long-term harm and no cardiovascular protection with low-carbohydrate diets. However, the observational studies were limited and moderately heterogeneous. Our findings underscore the imminent need for large-scale trials on the complex interactions between low-carbohydrate diets and long-term outcomes." From your second link. Also not a surprise when many research about low carb diets is refined carbohydrates + unspecified oils. "Low carb" studies are as interesting as "high carb" studies. High carb is a Mediterranean diet or is the Twinkie diet, just like keto can be meat and vegs or low carb pizza and processed meat. Lumping everything under one very generic name is not very good science. The whole dietary world is made of bad science and repeated by bad journalists. The scientific jury is still out, as your very source stated, yet every HN thread the top voted comment is "low carb kills some people." Seriously? I am still waiting for someone to show me a long-term study based on low carb meat, nuts, fruit and vegetables, unrefined oils and fats diet. Even an observational one. Oh wait, there's none!
• acje 4y ago
  In the western world the default is a high-carb diet. Moving away from that i probably beneficial to most people. My personal journey has been from a rather normal western diet towards more vegetarian, but i still don't mind a little bit of bacon on top. The effect was OK, but not spectacular. Now in my mid-40 (25ish BMI) I started walking 2-3 times weekly about two years ago and have advanced to running about as often. Now a few weeks ago started running interval 1-2 times a week. The weight loss is really good with interval training. It doesn't take long to do the exercise, and the body keeps burning fat for hours afterwards. Or so it appears on my bathroom weight and on my garmin watch (forrunner 745, nice and not too expensive). So I save a lot of time doing interval vs walking for hours. That said walking alone in the forest is magic for solving problems, and prepares the untrained body for harder workouts. Also I realized I had a lot of time. I spent 15 years not maintaining this body properly, I can spend 5 years getting back to where I want to be. There is no rush, there is just life.
  • triyambakam 4y ago
    Carb is too broad of a term. Though it generally seems to mean "processed wheat with added refined sugar and oils". Yeah, processed foods aren't healthy. But fruits and vegetables are, and they have carbs (mostly simple, i.e. sugars)
    • kif 4y ago
      Eating fruits is actually good for preventing type 2 diabetes [1]. In my personal experience, I've found that following a keto-ish approach for my diet by decreasing processed carbs, as well as increasing fruit intake, has had a positive impact on my weight/fasting blood sugar. [1]: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/eating-whole-fruits-linked-to-lower-risk-of-type-2-diabetes/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/eating-whol...
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        Just so long as you are getting whole fruit, not juice...
    • 4y ago
• mreiner 4y ago
  Interesting reports of individuals turning their life upside down. Just don't understand how they account for confounders and seem to make carbs responsible for everything that went wrong before their transition. But since sometimes it's those individual reports that get people to take action, I don't judge, happy for everyone taking charge of their health. There are many factors driving weigth loss or gain, the macronutrients per se seem to be irrelevant in the long term though: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19246357/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19246357/ There are health risks involved in low/no carb diets and the article mentions none of those.
  • api 4y ago
    Too much carbohydrate creates issues, but I think the real culprit is sugar. The science is pretty solid there. Refined sugar can border on toxic. Close behind sugar would be heavily processed carbohydrates like white bleached flour, etc., which are not that much better. But there are of course confounding factors. There are people who eat more of this stuff and are healthy, but they seem to get a lot of exercise. That probably helps in multiple ways including burning up extra sugar quickly. I'd hypothesize that high carb and especially high sugar diets are really unhealthy when coupled with a more sedentary lifestyle.
• ncmncm 4y ago
  I would be satisfied if the USDA recognized fructose as a toxin, and required labels to say how much fructose is in everything. We might then start seeing the things pumped full of sugar having glucose/dextrose instead. And, the greatest health crisis the UK and its former colonies has ever seen might then start winding down. If we can institute emergency measures for COVID-19, it seems like we ought to be able to do a little something about a cause of overwhelmingly worse mortality.
  • jasonhansel 4y ago
    So...fruit would now be considered toxic? Fructose is naturally occurring.
    • nradov 4y ago
      The dose makes the poison. Metabolically healthy people can consume small amounts of fructose with no harmful effects, but too much causes problems. https://peterattiamd.com/is-natural-sugar-from-fruit-just-as-bad-as-added-sugar/ https://peterattiamd.com/is-natural-sugar-from-fruit-just-as...
    • ncmncm 4y ago
      Fructose in absence of fiber is not naturally occurring, with a few exceptions. (Principally honey and, oddly, grapes.)
• swalsh 4y ago
  My main issue with low carb is that humans have been eating carbs for thousands of years. The obesity epidemic is only decades old. I've seen enough evidence that low carb is working for people, so it would seem like something in the carbs we eat in particular is causing the problem... not carbs in general. We should significantly increase the science in this area in my opinion.
  • chrisco255 4y ago
    Your ancestors spent hundreds of calories a day farming those carbs in the fields. They didn't order it straight to their door via Uber Eats.
    • poisonarena 4y ago
      i mean even in the 70s and 80s people werent ham planets like they are now
      • ryathal 4y ago
        Fats were far more prevalent in the 70s and 80s though. Many recipes called for lard, shortening, butter, or tallow. Food was also far less processed, featuring less added sugars or other carbs that have been added for appearance or shelf stability reasons.
  • gjvnq 4y ago
    The big issue is probably the "hidden carbs" in snacks and the vast amounts of sugar on everything.
    • ryathal 4y ago
      It's not just sugar. Shredded cheese has potato starch added to prevent clumping, which adds about 1-2 carbs per serving.
  • goodpoint 4y ago
    Correct. Yet demonizing carbohydrates is more dramatic that just eating the right amount. Fad diets are driven by hot takes and propelled by psychological biases. Also, radical changes in diet often lead to temporary improvements in mood and energy levels. People often ascribe the improvement to the new diet rather than the change and think they found the holy grail. Edit: "keto" as "prescribed by reddit" is a fad. If you are referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet it's a therapeutic diet to be prescribed by specialists to ameliorate epilepsy. """The ketogenic diet is not considered a benign, holistic, or all-natural treatment. As with any serious medical therapy, it may result in complications, although these are generally less severe and less frequent than with anticonvulsant medication or surgery"""
• jrochkind1 4y ago
  > This amount of carbohydrates may seem quite low to the average person, but remember that for the most part, people turn to this way of eating because they’ve been diagnosed with a serious health problem, such as diabetes, which usually means that they can no longer tolerate high levels of sugars or starches. This is disingenuous, right?
  • jrochkind1 4y ago
    (The folks downvoting me... are saying that most people they know on low-carb diets have been diagnosed with a serious health problem such as diabetes?)
• jasonhansel 4y ago
  A reminder to those who demonize carbs: as Stephan Guyenet points out, restricting your consumption of any category of food--whether you're avoiding carbs, or fat, or meat, or plants--will reliably cause weight loss by removing some highly rewarding/palatable foods from your diet. So we shouldn't be surprised that both low-carb and vegetarian diets can produce weight loss, and that many people have had success with each method.
  • bluGill 4y ago
    Particularly the first time when you don't know how to make low carb brownies, and other high calories things that otherwise fit into your diet.
  • spaetzleesser 4y ago
    That's my theory too. Almost any diet will work because people will have a more controlled and thoughtful approach to eating vs the average diet where people eat all kinds of crap and too much.
  • joobus 4y ago
    You're missing a very key point of this work: > Carbohydrate restriction is currently the only whole-foods approach that can reverse a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Carbohydrates break down to glucose in the bloodstream, the same as pure sugar. For a large and growing number of people, low-carb diets are not simply a means of weight loss.
    • nradov 4y ago
      Right. Virta Health has shown success in reversing type-2 diabetes with nutritional ketosis. https://www.virtahealth.com/research https://www.virtahealth.com/research
      • Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
        Anecdata here, but keto reversed my type-2 diabetes. Went from an A1C of 6.5 to 5.4 in ~4 months.
• zahma 4y ago
  We have forgotten how to eat. The trope is eat a well-rounded diet, which includes carbs, but being mindful that anything processed is likely going to put you over the limit of sugar intake for that day. That's because carbs are an easy substitute for a meal -- pasta, pizza, bread... then add on a few beers or a glass of wine, some candy, fruit, and not to mention sugar put into everything processed to stabilize it or make it more palatable. They fill us up but don't add a lot of nutrition. Our bodies just aren't meant to digest this much sugar. It's starting to transcend food groups too. I swear certain meat products are replete with carbs because large-scale hog and cattle operations are feeding their animals almost exclusively with corn or other grains, and I'm not sure they can digest all those carbs either, so it is passed on via bioaccumulation to us when we eat it. (I might be totally off the mark here.) The cynical part of me isn't surprised that the USDA doesn't care. Sugar is a huge business for American farms. To the extent that we subsidize billions of dollars in corn, wheat, and beets, it's not surprising that the cycle continues because the economy relies on the energy these staples condense into processed and cheap foods. It's an externality that we're taking out on our bodies and has profound implications for underserved communities.
• cameron_b 4y ago
  Important to note here is that the diet guidelines are largely used to underscore the USDA's funding for production guidelines. Carb-heavy diets are tied to grain-heavy cultivation. You might be able to think of a company or two that might be significantly interested in slowing that turn for as long as possible. Initially there was a DoD influenced posture for ensuring that the country's diet and fields were appropriately aligned. I haven't been able to find any recent documentation of those conversations, but they're understandably difficult to track. The guidelines here aren't a micro-service, and they're too tightly coupled to all the other fingers in the pot.
  • kuhewa 4y ago
    > Carb-heavy diets are tied to grain-heavy cultivation. Not as grain-heavy, at a national level, as if grains in the diet were replaced with animal products. A calorie of beef was required quite a few calories of grain.
• pwpw 4y ago
  A few years ago I was quite overweight. I switched to a keto diet and dropped a quarter of my weight in a year to enter a healthy weight range. I remained on a keto diet for two years and can share my personal experience. I found long-distance running and cycling rather easy but sprinting and weightlifting caused me to nearly faint. Eventually I had to stop a low-carb diet because it was interfering with my exercise. During this period I also began taking ADHD medication again because I really couldn't focus and complete tasks. What I think helped with my drastic weight loss was that I had a greater focus on the food and number of calories I was putting into my body. I also partook in intermittent fasting, which prevented me from snacking during periods when I clearly was not hungry. Further, I focused on eating satiating foods, which informed my body that it was full at a much quicker rate. Finally, I fully cut out processed foods and limited my alcohol consumption to moderately on the weekends. I am skeptical of the low-carb diet itself being the trigger that caused weight-loss. I believe it indirectly taught me good dieting habits because I grew up without those being taught in my household. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that a keto diet was not sustainable long-term. After some time, I stopped eating low-carb. As a response to the pandemic, I switched to a pescetarian diet and quickly switched to a vegetarian diet as I don't care for the taste of fish. After a year, I switched to an entirely plant-based diet, which I still follow. My doctor's visits during this process show incredibly improved blood work. I am as healthy as can be. I am able to exercise with tennis, weightlifting, and cycling without feeling like I am going to faint. I stopped taking my ADHD medication awhile back and haven't felt the need to take it at all; sometimes I exhibit classic symptoms of ADHD that leave my family scratching their heads since I still do have ADHD, but it has not interfered with getting my work done like it used to. My symptoms have been largely reduced for the first time in my life. Perhaps supplementing B12 while eating plant-based helped. All I can say is I have never felt better in my life. My ADHD is severely less pervasive, and my sleep paralysis has vanished. My level of energy is incredible and has made me a better athlete that can execute bursts of speed impossible a few years ago. I think switching to eating whole foods, getting more nutrients such as fiber in my diet, and eating more fruits and vegetables has led to a healthier life. I never made extraordinary changes overnight. I slowly transitioned from one diet to the next and ultimately arrived at plant-based after discovering how great I felt and seeing how strong my blood work was. If I could go back and tell myself something, it would be: don't skip the fruit. Carbs are fine. Focus on whole foods with nutrients you need. Eating food is an activity to fuel other activities. Not something you do purely for fun. The key to losing weight and remaining healthy is diligence. Being consistent in rejecting your family member that keeps pushing dessert on you is necessary. You have to accept that you learned to eat food incorrectly, but you can correct your bad habits. It is never too late. There may be some merit to low-carb diets, but I found I had less than stellar blood work and a scattered mind. I was also consuming meat and dairy at this time, so I never dabbled in a low-carb plant-based diet. That sounds pretty tough though. Adding carbs back into my diet resulted in stronger blood-work and better mental and physical energy. If anyone is interested in how I initially made the transition to plant-based, I found myself interested in the Mediterranean diet and somehow discovered the Greek Orthodox Lenten fasting schedule (nistisima). I decided to follow it for a few months and other than keeping oil and not eating fish, I continued to follow it full-time. I primarily eat Asian food at home, but I eat a lot of Greek food too.
• slowhand09 4y ago
  The unspoken truth here... The USDA doesn't represent the consumer. The USDA represents the agriculture industry. Source: I worked on contract there for a couple of years.
  • kgermino 4y ago
    Is it unspoken? It's literally in the name.
    • drugstorecowboy 4y ago
      United States Department of Agriculture? Just based on the name no you really can't assume anything nefarious. It's literally not in the name.
    • dragonwriter 4y ago
      By the same logic, it is there in the name that the Criminal Division of the FBI represents criminals.
  • speeder 4y ago
    This issue is really, really old. Well, the bible starts with it! Hebrews had a predominantly meat-eating culture, where at first, roaming semi-nomadic herds dominated, and later ranching was important. Of course this also means their diet was skewed toward proteins. The second "human" action in the bible (ie: not something God did), was when the first farmer, murdered the first rancher out of jealously. A lot of people remember "Cain and Abel" and whatnot and forget that detail, that is very important, in fact it was the reason for the murder (Cain was upset sacrifice of meat was accepted and vegetables weren't). The two cultures generate a lot of other political conflicts we have now. For example: when you are a rancher, if someone breaks into your property, that someone can literally walk off with your food before police arrives. Thus they are pro private guns. While if you are a vegetable farmer the way to 'steal' from someone is taking their land, thus they aren't afraid of small individuals, they are afraid of corporations and countries, thus they favor the government having the guns, to be able to retake territory if needed.
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• ellopoppit 4y ago
  After going on a low carb diet, my skin has never been healthier. Acne, dry skin, dandruff, itchiness and random hives that I've experienced as long as I can remember have all dissapeared. Also my mood and emotional balance have never been more stable. I primarily eat whole, unprocessed foods: meat/fish, veggies, nuts and seeds, and occasionally some low sugar fruit after intense exercise. It's been perhaps the most positive change Ive ever made for my mental and physical health
• datacruncher01 4y ago
  As someone who has lost significant weight on a keto diet (~80lbs) I can say it works in assisting someone who is overweight lose weight which can help with their health issues. It is easy to stall out by eating too much protein and fat, you still have to go hungry to cut down calorie intake. But it's overall a fad diet that ignores a lot of valuable nutrition that will be lacking essential healthy food. My take on the diet you need is that it should have a good fiber to carb ratio (5:1 or less) and low in added salt, fat, and sugars (ideally none added). If you start looking at foods in this category they are all the so called superfoods. Soluble fiber slows down absorption of sugar, lowers cholesterol levels and increases satiety.
  • thebigspacefuck 4y ago
    What are the essential healthy foods that are missing?
    • datacruncher01 4y ago
      The nutrients you'll be lacking typically include Folate, Thiamin(B1), Potassium, Calcium, and Manganese. You can do a healthy Keto and incorporate all of these but a lot of people stop and think I'll just eat as much bacon, steak, and chicken as I want. Also missing are legumes which are very healthy for you.
      • sph 4y ago
        Please do some research before stating some blatantly incorrect facts. Here, I've done it for you. * The biggest amount of folate per 100g can be found in chicken and calf liver, then nuts. There's some in legumes but "it is soluble in water, and so may be lost from foods boiled in water": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate#Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate#Sources * Thiamine is found in good amounts in pork and nuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine#Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine#Sources * Calcium is found in great amounts in dairy and animal bones (stock, marrow, etc.) * Potassium is found pretty much anywhere and deficiency is extremely rare. * Manganese is found in leafy green vegetables and nuts, both very low carb. In general meat is the most complete food you can ingest. Nothing else comes even close. And meat is not only filet steak, organ meat is where most of the micronutrients are. -- > missing are legumes which are very healthy for you Another wives' tale. I guess you've never heard of phytic acid, have you? The more legumes you ingest, the less minerals your body is able to absorb. "It is [...] present in many legumes, cereals, and grains. Phytic acid and phytate have a strong binding affinity to the dietary minerals, calcium, iron, and zinc, inhibiting their absorption in the small intestine". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytic_acid
• tzs 4y ago
  If you want to try low-carb, note that the health effects of lower carbs usually aren't going to be binary. That is you aren't going to have no improvement until carbs go below some threshold and then you suddenly have the full possible improvement as soon as carbs cross that threshold. In particular you don't have to go to one of the very very low carb diets like keto to get significant benefits. Much of the published research that finds benefits in low carb diets used diets of up to 30% of calories from carbs. Personally I'd suggest starting off with a target of 40% or fewer calories from carbs. I suggest 40% for three reasons. 1. It's well below both the level of the USDA recommended diets and the even higher amount of carbs that most typical Americans eat. Even if you might achieve more benefit at some even lower level, many people will be able to achieve their goals at 40%, which is an easier target. 2. The math of 40% carbs fits in well with the information on nutrition labels, because 1g of carbs is on average about 4 calories. This means that if the label says some item has C calories, then the number of grams of carbs it can have without going over 40% is C cal x 40% x 1g/4cal = C/10 grams. For example part of my breakfast today was a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant sandwich. 390 calories, 29 grams of carbs. 390/10 = 39, so this thing was under 40% calories from carbs. 3. 40% is not hard to achieve without giving up much of what you probably currently eat including fast food, pasta, bread, and sweet deserts. I think a lot of people fail at the very low carb diets because they can require major changes to what you eat and often require that you either do a lot more home cooking or eat at more expensive restaurants. If you decide to try this here are some tips for executing. (Actually they should work for other percentages besides 40%). 1. Most meals consist of more than one thing, so you probably should be looking at the meal as a whole rather than the individual items. If one some items go over 40% and some are under, but total carbs for the mean is not over 40% of total calories it should be OK. I'm not sure if that reasoning carries over to longer timeframes like days or weeks. When you eat a meal it is all going to get processed at about the same time. So a meal that consists of say one high carb item and one low carb item should be about equivalent to a meal that consists of a single item with the combined calories and carbs. If you eat a high carb breakfast, say, and try to balance it with a low carb meal so the daily numbers look good, I'm not sure that would work because the breakfast was already processes before you had dinner. Whatever harmful effects high carbs have might have already taken place. Same of weekly or longer numbers. Thus my current feeling is to aim for 40% max for every meal. Anyway, there are a couple of ways to do the math for a meal. Let's say I'm thinking of ordering a cheeseburger (300 cal, 30 g carb) and medium fries (320 cal, 39 g carb) from McDonald's for lunch. One way would be to add things up, giving 620 cal and 69 g carb. I can see that 620/10 = 62 g of carbs allowed, which is under the 69 g of carbs in the meal, so not good. A simple way I think is to do each item separately, keeping track of a running net carb allowance. So cheeseburger is 300/10 = 30 g allowed carbs and has 30 g carbs, so we are net 0 g carbs. The the fries are 32 allowed 39 g actual, so 7 g over. That brings is to a net 7 g over. 2. If the numbers aren't quite working out for a particular meal, you might be able to fix them by modifying the items. Maybe switch condiments (go from light mayo to regular mayo) or add more meat. For example, if I change my proposed McD's lunch to have a double cheeseburger (450 cal, 32 g carb) instead of a single cheeseburger, now the double cheeseburger starts us at 13 g carb below target. The fries add 7 g excess carbs, leaving us 6 g of carbs under target. This is the key to doing 40% without having to totally change how you eat. But be careful with this because those mods usually involve adding calories. Don't let that get out of hand. One way to address that is portions. For example lets say you were going to eat a whole medium pepperoni and sausage pizza but see that it is over on the carbs but doubling the pepperoni will bring it under. But then it is more calories than you want. You might drop the size down to a small, and then bring the calories up to what you want by also doubling the cheese and the sausage. You might not have to worry as much about extra calories as you might think. What I found is that adding low-carb or carb-free calories (extra meat, mayo, butter for example) to get the percent of carbs down to 40% also made the food more satisfying. I actually started the 40% carbs diet just to see what it would do to blood sugar, expecting to maybe gain some weight during the experiment, but found that I actually started losing weight because my total calories had gone down due to the food being more satisfying. But be careful if you try this. I may be a fluke and purposefully adding fat/protein calories to your food might just make you gain weight.
• maerF0x0 4y ago
  Simply put, any form of restriction diet tends to cause people to eat less. That can be restricted time or restricted options. People who eat less tend to lose weight, and some of that weight comes from fat. People who lower their bodyfat have so many kinds of improved blood markers. To make a point this guy lost 27lbs on twinkies : https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor... The only free lunch (pun intended) I think I've observed seems to be protein and unprocessed foods are harder to digest and thus cost some digestion calories (increase the out side of the equation). When someone tells you that "people lost weight on Diet X" you need to think "Did they lose more or less than on a standard diet equated for how processed it is (fiber), calories, and protein?". Source: This is all summarized well in the book Fat Loss Forever by Layne Norton and others