Nina Teicholz Reports in the British Medical Journal ~ The Conflicts & Funding

BUMP!

In working on a follow-up to The Slimey Truth About Sugar Slammers ~ Links & Background, I've received a few tweets that reminded me of this post from almost exactly a year ago.   Eventually we got answers to the questions below, and those will be discussed in the follow-up.  People are going bonkers over a pittance split between three scientists 50 years ago who published an article in a *professional* *peer-review* journal.  This was done at a time when such journals would publish articles countering and debating the findings of previous articles.  So in the intervening years it is the sugar industry that is solely responsible for confusing people?  I am not carrying water for that or any industry here, but I don't think so!

This article came before some answers were unearthed by yours truly in Nina Teicholz, The BMJ, The Nutrition Coalition and nutrition science's George Soros: The Laura and John Arnold Foundation.  Specifically that the Nutrition Coalition was finally revealed and it is not affiliated with Adele Hite's organization.  It is, however, also completely funded by the lobbying arm of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

In the end, it turns out that LJAF paid the BMJ directly for the publication of the article.   It is no surprise that the BMJ's crusading editor Fiona Godlee is of no inclination to retract it.  So we have an unprecedented action here that is going unscrutinized by those who are touting this latest JAMA piece  (written by two LJAF-funded individuals).   You have direct payment to the journal itself.  If unprecedented, it raises eyebrows as to the objectivity of that journal in its choice of people to commission for the investigation.  They didn't seek out an independent, unbiased (to the extent one can be), professional in the field.  They chose Teicholz.    So really it matters more that there are ties with Teicholz so that the LJAF paid the publishing fee for a Nina Teicholz hit piece, they didn't pay the BMJ to commission a scientific investigation.  The Nutrition Coalition has since been revealed, and no sooner than it was, its makeup began changing dramatically.  As such it no longer bears much resemblance to its initial form.   And the LJAF flagship NuSI is, well, flagging.  More to come.

Also more here:  Nina Teicholz & The Big Fat Surprise ~ Fact Check & Review

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The Slimey Truth About Sugar Slammers ~ Links & Background

This was initially going to be a monster post, but I'm still struggling to organize it all!  The things uncovered at every turn last week and continuing through this one are astounding, and the hypocrisy of those touting this as some "smoking gun" of great importance is seemingly boundless.  This was all still swirling in my head when I went on Angelo Coppola's Latest in Paleo podcast ... in retrospect not a good idea when I'm wound up!

I decided to break this in two to publish something up.  This installment will be linking to background to get something that blogging rock rolling on this.  Unless you've been living under a rock, this happened in the JAMA Internal Medicine:

Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents

Cristin E. Kearns, DDS, MBA^1,2; Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH^1,3,4; Stanton A. Glantz, PhD^1,5,6,7,8

Latest in Paleo Podcast Appearance

Last Friday (Sept. 16, 2016 for those who may stumble upon this in the future), I had the pleasure of being a guest on Angelo Coppola's Latest in Paleo podcast.

  
I had/have a post on the main topic discussed -- the *SMOKING GUN* that the sugar industry funded a study 50 years ago, and *O*M*G* -- in the works, and was not even half done by the time recording came around.  I was also trying to get in the last bit of summer.  

This link  will go live when that post is finally published (hopefully later today or tonight):  The Slimey Truth About Sugar Slammers

I have not had a chance to listen yet, so hopefully this isn't even necessary.  But, due to my passion on the topic and being mid blogging swirl, I'm sure I was quite animated at times.  It was a new format for Angelo's podcast, and for me as a guest as well.   I may well have talked over the other guest, Meredith Rhodes (a.k.a The Forward Health Coach; Forward Health Coach ; Twitter: @geomert ; Podcast: Adventures in Humaning ; Facebook: Adventures in Humaning ).   If that happened, I extend my sincere apologies to her for doing so, and to Angelo as well for making his job harder.  Let's hope I didn't do too badly!

Recent Podcast Appearance!

Hey all!  Last week I had the pleasure of being a guest on two podcasts.  Will let you know about the second one when it comes out, but for now, I was on the Revolutionary You podcast with Jason Leenaarts.  We chatted about all things carbohydrates and a bit of other stuff.  

I met Jason through the fitness peeps I hang out with on Facebook, and actually had a chance to meet him in person at his studio in the Cleveland area a few weeks back.  

Just a heads up that the part about medium chain fatty acids was edited together nicely by Jason, but sounds a bit choppy because my headset cut out in the middle of the first response.  So I wasn't sure exactly where it happened, tried to repeat some of it, and got my words mixed up.  When you consume a fat like coconut oil, with a lot of medium chain fatty acids, those dietary fats are preferentially burned as they are not usually incorporated into chylomicrons   (12C lauric is somewhat of an exception as it does make its way into body fat).   The long chain fats consumed with these MCFAs -- either from coconut oil, or say, butter in Bulletproof Coffee -- are destined to go straight into your fat tissue!  

So that said, here's your links:  Revolutionary You! #31-Before You Go Low Carb With Evelyn Carbsane

or direct links:  iTunes OR Stitcher OR iHeartRadio

Serving Sizes and Visual Schemes

A bit of a random thought post ... one I meant to make at the time, but got distracted.  I've talked a lot about the USDA Food Pyramid, and less so about My Plate, both of which are intended to "translate" dietary recommendations to a visual form.  In this regard, My Plate is a great improvement, but still lacking.   I don't wish to rehash the whole guidelines again in this post, but I believe if certain foods were "properly" classified -- e.g.  potatoes and corn grouped with the grains/starches -- the recommendations are hardly radical.  If Americans actually followed them as intended, we wouldn't be in this pickle, but we don't, and we are.

Here is the original food pyramid

The Latest Metabolic Adaptation Study

A quick post here just to get it out there, and I'm already a couple weeks behind the curve.  Oddly haven't heard too much about this, or perhaps it's because I've lost the will to deal with the community that would jump on this?  Who knows :-)

There is a new NIH funded study out of Columbia (Rosenbaum & Leibel) published this month:  Models of Energy Homeostasis in Response to Maintenance of Reduced Body Weight

I'm going to limit this post to just one of the three experiments conducted:

In 17 subjects (14 women, 3 men) weight stable energy expenditure and body composition  was determined following a period of 6-8 weeks of weight stability.  They were then put on an 800 cal/day diet until they had reduced their weight by 10% of initial weight.  This took 7-13 weeks, after which their food intake was increased to achieve weight stability at the 10% reduced weight for 6-8 weeks.  Energy expenditure and body composition were measured here.  This was repeated to achieve 20% loss, where the second weight loss phase took 8-14 weeks.

Weight Loss on a Very Low Fat High Sugar Diet

A Facebook friend recently posted a screenshot of some papers he'd been reading this past month.  Being the geek that I am, I of course scanned the titles to see if there was anything I might be interested in, and I was shocked to discover this study for the first time!  Shocked in that I'd never seen it before or seen anyone reference it.  Read on and discover that this isn't quite true ...  (As of this post, full text available HERE.)

Metabolic and behavioral effects of a high-sucrose diet during weight loss ... 1997 ← Almost two decades ago!!

How Does the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model aka TWICHOO, Explain the Obesity Epidemic?

A short post ... something I hit on again in the process of writing another one. Below is a plot of the absolute amounts of protein, carb and fat that Americans claimed to consume from 1965 through 2011 (adapted from Hite & Economic Litigation Consultants, 2015 , blog post).   All but 1965 is NHANES data, but I'll even "give them" the inappropriate toss-in of the 1965 Sesame-Street-song data point.

I've properly lined up the timelines for prevalence of BMI > 25 curve  (that scale -- not shown -- goes from just over 45% to just under 75%. ).  This is the same curve repeated by Adele Hite and so, so many others -- often immediately after chastising Ancel Keys for equating correlation with causation (keep ignoring thqt he didn't do that with his infamous plot) -- in an attempt to implicate the Dietary Guidelines in the obesity epidemic.    Even IF one could pin the obesity epidemic on an increase in carbohydrate consumption, two things are clear:

• Absolute fat intake stayed consistent with baseline
• Calories increased 

Q:  How does TWICHOO  explain this?

                   (Taubes Wrong Insulin-Carbohydrate Hypothesis Of Obesity)

A:   It doesn't!                                                                          

The only time ANY effect at all has been seen for LC vs. LF, it has been when carb restriction is extreme, protein is not controlled for, calories are not controlled for, the low fat is of negligible difference from the baseline diet, LC is whole real food vs. processed carbs and sugar for the LF, or some combination of several-to-all of these confounders.  Even with the deck stacked, any effect seen is relatively short lived and can't be attributed to increased satiety of fat or clinically significant reduction in insulin levels.  

If you take that together with data we're supposed to accept at face value -- NHANES -- there can be no support for an increase in carbohydrate from around 225 to 275 g/day resulting in hyperinsulinemia induced fat cells gone wild.   It doesn't square.  

Why is anyone spending another research dollar to test this idea that doesn't even fit the observations?

It's TOTAL Energy Expenditure that Matters, and RMR Doesn't Necessarily Predict It!

Post Overview:

In the context of weight loss, maintenance or gain, eventually all roads lead to the acceptance that *calories matter* ... you must be in deficit, balance or surplus respectively.

In the wake of the recent The Biggest Loser Regain study, there has been a lot of doom-and-gloom reporting, led by Gina Kolata and Sandra Aamodt in the New York Times.   I've distilled the results down to the bare bones:

Summarized from Table 1 from Fothergill et.al.   14 Contestants (6 Men , 8 Women)

The "alarming outcome" was that resting metabolic rate was reduced as might be expected, but seemingly remained suppressed and even further declined despite significant re-gain (70% re-gain/loss for the mean) after 6 years.   However the TEEs -- the TOTAL energy expenditures for the day -- tell a different tale.  These were measured over a roughly two week period by doubly labeled water in free-living conditions.

• The TEEs remained high at 30 weeks 
• The TEEs increased with concomitant re-gain

And most importantly of all to the big picture

• The TEEs are substantial ... averaging over 3000 calories per day at all time points in a study group that is 43% male, 57% female.

This post is about the RMR and TEE data from another study looking at discrepancies in weight status and reported intake.   When compared to predictions from regression lines (similar method as used in Fothergill) the relative RMR did not track to relative TEE.

• It's TEE that matters when considering caloric intake for weight goals.
• Using generally predicted RMRs to set individual total energy intake goals is somewhat "foolproof".

Is Gary Taubes Losing It?

Is Gary Taubes losing it?  His grip on reality, that is?  I submit that it is the only "innocent" explanation for his behavior of late.

Gary Taubes and Mike Eades
in Better Days for Low Carb "Science"  8/13/2008
direct image link

I'll have more to say when I can recoup from the busy time of year in my real job coupled with traveling weekend before last.  But if you haven't heard, two studies conducted by NIH scientist Kevin Hall:

• The unveiling of the results of the NuSI funded multi-center study at an obesity conference.  See Nutrition Wonk for the most info.  This was a 2 month metabolic ward study.
• The followup results of a study on The Biggest Loser with some confusing metabolic outcomes.  I say confusing as the numbers don't add up, but that hasn't stopped pretty much everyone from painting a picture of doom and gloom topped with a large dollop of CICO/ELMM is going to destroy your metabolism fatalism.    I will have more to say on this topic, I'm just trying to focus my thoughts into some sort of manageable post or series, and I'm struggling to do so when the voices in the different communities I travel in are at once somehow in sync and conflicting all at the same time!  It will get done.

The predictable response to the first study has been, disturbingly, worse than usual.  The worst of it coming from Mike Eades.   Scratch that, I think it is even worse that Taubes himself offered up no original comment on his own blog, but yet allowed Eades' screed to speak for him.  You see, Kevin Hall is, according to Eades, hampered by youthful inexperience in the scientific world and likely a corrupt scientist riddled with cognitive dissonance.  This coming from a guy who listens to Feinman explain that entropy is how energy disappears when boulders drop off cliffs, and other manglings of the laws of physics.   SIGH.