Guyenet v. Taubes: Random Thoughts on the Reaction

Now that I've weighed in with my thoughts on Stephan Guyenet's disassembling of Taubes' "Carbohydrate Hypothesis", I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the reactions of others to his posts (including the first one responding to the "drama at AHS").

First, although clearly many still (as well they should and hopefully always will) hold Stephan in high regard, the mere fact that he addressed the altercation at all has drawn the criticism of some.  I found the seemingly well-meaning-sounding comments of Andreas Eenfeldt to be especially bothersome in this regard.  Honestly folks, how many of you have been in a situation where you were caught by surprise by something only to think later -- gosh, I should have said that!  Or perhaps, I wish I had the time to look into that for a better response, or merely had more time to respond period.  Don't get me wrong, Stephan did well in that exchange.  But clearly he had more to say in response to Taubes' questions and/or wanted to share more thoughts with his readers.    For the life of me I can't see what's wrong with that, nor do I see what is so wrong with the "people who live in glass houses" written/online response vs. the "thanks for the advice" live one.  I thought the live one was witty and cool, but the glass houses one is actually more to the point as it calls Gary out on his hypocrisy -- much needed to say the least.  Why is it a one-way street for so many of these LC promoters?  Why was it OK for Gary to offer that advice, even if he apologized, and not for Stephan to essentially stick up for himself and point out that Gary is guilty of his charges?  Is it that somehow any who disagree with LC dogma are expected to take some stratospheric road all the time while these guys (and gals) muck around in the trenches ruthlessly abusing anyone who doesn't agree with them?  Oh ... and it is sooo funny when they do it too, right?


No, this is clearly a debating tactic of this faction, and it is nothing but the ad hominem attacks they decry in disguise.  Nonsense I say!  What happened here was that Taubes tried to sucker punch Stephan and missed.  Live this played out as Taubes falling when he failed to connect and Stephan stepping over him on his way out of the ring.  On his blog Stephan blocked the punch and threw a few legal ones in return in a match initiated by Gary's challenge.  I'm hoping the bell for round 1 has not yet rung, or that we get some sort of tandem thing going like in WWE with some other ancestral/paleo or other bloggers climbing in.

There also seems to be this large group that feels one cannot be critical of any of Taubes theories because to do so might discredit others.  They seem especially protective of the whole saturated fat and cholesterol part of GCBC.  I say be not afraid.  Others like Malcolm Kendrick have your backs and the science supporting  your views is pretty solid.  Well ... let me qualify that, and say that consuming normal amounts of saturated fat in a relatively balanced diet does not seem to be unhealthy and may well improve health.  I do think the jury is still out on eating the amounts some do -- of any fat for that matter -- on their very high fat diets.  In any case to try to stifle debate on topic A because of topic B is silly.  And unfortunately, it appears that the diet doctor is protecting the franchise here a bit.  This is seemingly more a "movement" in Sweden than it is here in the US or on the internet.  The draw of this is obvious -- going against the mainstream and feeling like you have science on your side.  The sentiment seems to be "if you don't agree, that's OK just so long as you don't tell anyone else".  Stephan is but the latest "traitor" to a cause he never really seemed to be a part of to begin with, which I've always found a bit odd.  

It's too late for me (and probably most of you) to do this, but if you haven't already read Stephan's "drama" post, it might be an interesting lesson in how the LC dogmatists warp perceptions to read the comments first.  Because some of them read like the devil now doth possess Stephan and he said some mean things about Gary.  Bring back the old Stephan one cried!  Just because GT apparently later apologized to Stephan all should be forgiven and forgotten ... and let's move on ... nothing to see here.  Does YOUR world work that way?  Apologies are wonderful, but they do not undo what has transpired.  Only future actions to make amends can mitigate but never erase a transgression.  I think a prompt and open apology on, say, his blog would have gone a long way for Gary to save face, and it would probably have netted Stephan a bigger drubbing if he published the exact same posts after receiving such.  But what I've learned is that timing and strategy in dealing with criticism are really not Gary's strong suit.  There's no reason to believe his thinking would be any clearer in this situation, and he should have done it by now if he ever intended to.  Still, it would do nothing what transpired, and Stephan should not feel bound, IMO, by some ridiculous gentlemen-when-convenient scientists code in responding to the meat of the matter.  Which is just what he did in his next post.  

Still, many of the reactions around the web deal with Stephan and defend Taubes' honor, and have nothing to do with what he wrote vis a vis Taubes' hypothesis.  And worse, they mock him for his food reward hypothesis simply because their n=1 experience doesn't seem to mesh with it.  FWIW, my own experiences don't seem to mesh with FW & setpoint theories, but that doesn't disprove it.  It just makes for some observations that it doesn't adequately explain.  So personally I think there's merit to FW but I just disagree that the mechanism is via a resetting of the setpoint for body fat regulation.  And I maintain that, at least once one is obese, but probably contributing to its development in many, higher brain function overrides any of these homeostatic mechanisms.  If not ... why are not all low carbers effortlessly slim?  Atkins popularized the diet almost 40 years ago before the obesity epidemic even got traction.  People are undergoing radical surgery in desperation in record numbers (with great success but also considerable recidivism) ... if just cutting carbs were the solution don't you think it would have worked by now??????  

OK ... so, some general responses  to Stephan's recent blogging, and my commentary -- in no particular order.  The bolded words are not mine, they are me paraphrasing comments about the web.

Stephan's wrong therefore Taubes is right after all:  These responses are predicated on the assumption that these two are alternate hypotheses.  I contend that in a heterogenous condition such as obesity with so many possible causes that cannot be independent of one another, the whole notion of a singular hypothesis is fantasy ... let alone that we can formulate two competing hypotheses where it is either A or B, never A and B, and not possibly C or any other explanation.  So in this regard, just like it really matters not whether I'm a legit low carber, thin-as-a-rail or fatter-than-Kimmer, it doesn't matter much if Stephan's hypothesis was wrong, that doesn't make the case against TWICHOO weaker on the merits.  It may make one more inclined to scrutinize the studies Stephan cites to make sure they support his assertions, but when you find that they do the source could have been Durian Rider for all anybody should care.  This is about science, right?

Stephan and Taubes can both be right:  This twist on the response is to try to reconcile food reward with carbohydrates.  I say why bother?  Each is different and must stand on its own merits as to how the hypothesis fits the evidence.  There are enough carb eating human black swans living on planet Earth today, billions in fact, to falsify Taubes.  Period.  Stop stressing your brains to reconcile how food reward and your beloved carb/insulin dogma can co-exist peacefully so you can keep liking Stephan.  Keep liking him because you do and you don't have to stop liking Gary just cuz he's wrong.

Food Reward theory doesn't explain obese poor mothers with starving babies:  It doesn't have to, but it may very well explain it if we were provided all of the information.  It can't be repeated enough, because some never seem to "hear" it.  Stephan said FR is A dominant factor.  A = singular, dominant factor indicates there are other factors and does not preclude that some of those may also be dominant.  To say that one Klitschko is a dominant force in boxing does not mean the other is not, or that a boxer named other than Klitschko cannot fit that description as well.

Stephan is an insulting idiot who doesn't understand fat people and what makes them fat:  This seems to be the prevailing sentiment on LC forum threads such as this one (among many)  and the now-deleted commentary of one seemingly woofully distraught person.  It seems to boil down to an argument that since food reward ultimately goes through a CICO path to obesity (aka taking in more energy than one expends)  Stephan is merely trying to find a more highly-minded scientific way of calling fat people gluttons and sloths.  And I do find it interesting that while many don't take offense to the Eades' and Taubes' of the world telling them "just don't eat carb", they do take offense to Stephan suggesting they choose less rewarding foods prepared at home and stop eating the highly processed crap with engineered hyperpalatability.  That, they protest, would be unsustainable, but subsisting on fatty meats and greens for the rest of your life ... now that is a workable solution to this hot mess.  Please.  

I'm sick of listening to skinny guys with degrees and their scientific mumbo jumbo:  I actually agree with this to an extent.  Except that many of the gurus they do listen to are skinny guys with degrees.  Or worse, they're less than skinny guys with degrees, or worse they're less than skinny people (male or female) with or without degrees.  If any of those ALC'ers are reading this, consider for a moment that I am a whole lot more like you than you think.  I've been there.    I've even used a version of low carb (mostly VLC) to lose a lot of weight -- likely 100 lbs -- and keep it off without that dang weight cycling.   I don't really care what y'all think of me but really, read your own words ladies (mostly) and get a grip -- or it will be another two years from right now and I'll be reading the same old same old from you as you continue your quest for some magical solution.  If all the studies and the long term results from GBP tell us anything it is that scientists can come up with theories upon theories and unless you're that rare human who has a genetic condition akin to a Zucker diabetic rat, the reason you can't lose and maintain the losses has less to do with the diet than the mind after all ... and I'm not talking the hypothalamus and leptin.  If you've lost the weight and you're regaining then perhaps seek leptin therapy or get in some study or whatever.  Go have your BMR actually measured so you know what you're working with.  And if all else fails only you can decide for yourself what puts you at higher risk:  remaining obese because no diet seems to stick for you or bariatric surgery.  Get gene tested or whatever to see if you have a metabolic insufficiency.  None of the individual cases of "this or that" "works or doesn't work" for you changes the validity of the science.

I lose weight eating more on low carb and gain eating less on high carb so Taubes is right:  Prove it, or more importantly to your health prove it to yourself.  True, bio-individuality is a reality.  The whole 9/4/4 calorie thing is a guideline and average.  It's not exactly what any single person gets from the macros in their foods and it's not exactly the calories per gram in the food as these are averages.  Heck ... it's not even the same for the same person for different fats, proteins and carbs, or for the same food in different form.  Did you know that ground beef contains more effective calories than the same amount of whole beef with equal lean/fat ratio?  And yet given this remarkable variation, isn't it all the more compelling that in study after carefully controlled study, when isocaloric diets are compared for varying macronutrient composition (and even fructose v glucose or PUFA/MUFA/SF v. other fat) ... things repeatedly settle down to a "washout".  No metabolic difference let alone a demonstrable advantage.  And if anything, where weight gain is concerned the advantage -- as in gaining less -- clearly goes to the carbophiles because converting carbs to fat requires energy, fat is already fat!

I lost weight on LC therefore carbs made me fat so Taubes is right:  So the guy who lost weight on the potato diet got fat from all the other foods he used to eat?  And Little Debbie man got fat on all the non-processed real food he used to eat?  Or Oprah got fat eating solid food because she wiggled into her size 10 Calvins by going on a liquid diet?  This is so silly.  Really!

Stephan is dealing with why we get fat, Taubes is dealing with what to do about it:  Someone actually said this on Stephan's blog and it floored me.  Taubes' new book is Why We Get Fat, and he's openly lamented he'd rather not have added the "and what to do about it" part.  Very little of that book is devoted to that part and it's nothing new under the sun that hasn't been working in the long run, for whatever reason, any bettter than any other dietary solution to the problem.

Stephan's hypothesis applies to normal people.  Taubes addresses the obese and those with diabetes:  OK, but how did they get obese and diabetic?  Taubes implies that provoking an insulin response causes fat tissue to become dysregulated hoarding energy and growing.  So you eat more ... except previously he contends that the obese eat no more than the lean.  He's a walking talking contradiction and he can't explain an initiating event.  Meanwhile, Stephan has offered some food reward-based ideas that might help with weight loss.  Oh but I couldn't live on such a plain diet .....

Stephan's hypothesis is correct for normal people, but we're talking damaged metabolisms and   Taubes is right about them:   First, as Taubes will tell you, the hypothesis has to be consistent with the rise in obesity beginning sometime circa 1980.  Some underlying defect that made people add carbs to break all these metabolisms doesn't fit -- we did not en masse undergo mutation, or epigenetic switcheroo.  Prospective studies looking at fasting insulin or measures of IR or IS do not support that carbs break the metabolism with time.  The effectiveness of LC for weight loss in IR people is not evidence that carbs caused the IR.  We have various routes by which the most broken glucose (and underlying fat) metabolisms (T2 diabetics) can be fixed.  These include early insulin therapy, GBP surgery, and drastic calorie reduction.  This would suggest, by their logic, that a lack of insulin or overabundance of food (and perhaps gut hormones in GBP) are responsible for obesity in each case respectively.  If you're going to use that logic, you have to apply it in uniform fashion.

Gary Taubes saved my life with GCBC, so Stephan Guyenet should STFU about a few minor errors:  OK, that's a reduction of various sentiments I've heard but really now.  If LC worked for you that's great.  It doesn't make GCBC correct, and WWGF is even worse.  Taubes contends that carbs and only carbs make you fat these days. That calories have nothing to do with it.  The guru worship has got to go!  Stephan is not a fill in derogatory adjective because he knows that Taubes' hypothesis is wrong.  Remember, he is in the Endocrinology & Metabolism department at UW -- read, he talks to these folks all the time and he's one of them.  So I think he's well qualified to comment on the sentiment of the group, don't you?  And if you think these folks are irrelevant because no post WWII German research is worth a darn, just remember who wrote those endocrinology and such texts *that were right all along* despite what Gary says, and insist Taubes cite texts no newer than 1950.  Instead he readily cites such as authoritative when it suits his purposes.  

Stephan comments on CarbSane's blog and lost all credibility:  If after reading Stephan's blog post, the GCBC Reference Check posts here, and posts with Frayn or McGarry in the title you still feel that way, there's no hope for you.  Perhaps we need an intensive cult deprogramming intervention ward here at the Asylum. 

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater because we have no better working hypothesis:  This is mostly Andreas (apparent head of the Swedish faction of the Church of Latter Day MAD*) Eenfeldt's sentiment, but others seem to buy this.  No working hypothesis doc?  Really??  This one deserves its own blog post.  Stay tuned!



In proofing this I noticed that I tend to refer to Stephan by first name and Taubes by last most of the time.  There's no "meaning" to be read into that ... it's just the ease of typing out, sound in my head while typing, etc. and whatever.  I don't think the esteem or lack thereof in which I hold these two is in any question here :-)

Comments

CS, great post!

As an aside, have you been following J Stanton's series on satiety and hunger? (Here's part 4, which has links to the earlier parts: http://www.gnolls.org/2407/when-satiety-fails-why-are-we-hungry-part-4/).

I haven't finished part 4 yet, but in reading the intro, but I like the direction. I think I prefer the idea of a 'hunger' or 'appetite' setpoint over a 'fat' setpoint ... i.e., the reason for higher fat mass is essentially increased appetite disproportionate to fat stores. Tho I suppose that's a bit semantic (either way, reward/brain is involved).
Frosty said…
The more I see the comments around the net (most recently the comments on Chris Masterjohn's blog post on diet dogmatism), the more I wonder if LC diets makes one stupid and/or irrational. I've been active in the LC community for around 10 years so I have seen all of the arguments, even before Taubes, but I don't think I have seen it this bad. The flailing around to soothe the cognitive dissonance is almost comical.

I do hope that it is helping some people, like myself, get off the diet hamster wheel and actually make progress.
James Krieger said…
Nice post, CarbSane. This is an excellent outline of the fallacious reasoning used by some in the LC sphere to continuously try to defend an indefensible belief system
Galina L. said…
It is very balanced and fare post! You know, I am a VLC eater, but it were nor carbs that made me chubby . Food used to taste too good for most of my life, I inherited it from my mother together with my body type.
Sam Knox said…
It's common for politicians to edit their public statements, but it's a practice that is, as far as I know, rare among scientists.

The appropriate response would be to engage in another debate, either in person or online. What Stephan Guyenet did, essentially, was publish a fantasy debate in which the other side was unable to participate. It's bad form, at best, and childish at worst.

To follow that with a "refutation" of the carbohydrate hypothesis seems less an advancement in the scientific conversation about the causes for overweight/obesity than a temper tantrum. The timing can't be coincidental. In any case, whether or not the carbohydrate hypothesis has been "disassembled" remains to be seen.

Also, you've ignored what was by far the most cogent post in that thread, which simply pointed-out that if excess carbohydrates are a necessary but insufficient condition for the development of obesity, the existence of a lean population that consumes carbohydrates in large amounts doesn't falsify the hypothesis.
Frosty said…
The Taubes supporters' goalposts keep moving.
James Krieger said…
Sam,

It is nonsense that the other side "was unable to participate." The internet is widely open for people to post their thoughts. Taubes can easily participate either by commenting on the blog post, or by writing a blog post himself.

And yes, the carbohydrate hypothesis has been "disassembled" by many individuals, including by me and CarbSane herself. Claiming it "remains to be seen" only means you choose not to see it. Stephen did a brief overview of how it fails, but by no means was his post a thorough treatise on the matter.
Sue said…
That's right James but for some reason(s) Taubes just usually goes silent.
Chris Masterjohn post is great. it's about dietary dogmatism and Fred has found his way there:

http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/08/against-dietary-dogmatism.html?showComment=1313618475538#c751165244279877360
Mirrorball said…
About your last point: It shows how deep ignorance goes. People read Taubes and think it's all there is to know about the subject. They don't have any contact with different ideas. I was also surprised that some people reacted as if the results Stephan discussed were highly classified information. I have learned from that article, but most of it was based on stuff that lots of people had already pointed out, even in blog posts, here at the Asylum for instance, or in James Krieger's blog.

I remember when I stopped believing Taubes's hypothesis: I was reading an article about NEFAs and the author mentioned that the obese have higher levels of circulating free fatty acids than the lean (fat is not locked inside fat cells after all), and also when they artificially lowered NEFA levels in a muscle's blood supply, the muscle became insulin sensitive again. I also remember that in diabetic subjects there was an additional, unknown factor that caused 1/3 of the observed insulin resistance (the remaining 2/3s caused by high NEFA levels). That happened a few months after I read GCBC a couple of years ago.
Sanjeev said…
Sue wrote:
> Taubes just usually goes silent. ...
> Fred has found his way there:

draw your own conclusions.

IMHO, FRED is Gary's personal reification / personification of

"OH YEeaaaaaaAH ?! ?! ?! ?! ?!"
Sanjeev said…
(complete with waving fist)
Sanjeev said…
> the more I wonder if LC diets makes one
> stupid and/or irrational

Not especially, no ... the vegans can get just as bad, can't they? (insert weakness, paleness and anemia jokes here)

My best guess is a combination of cognitive biases, emotional leanings, some empirical evidence (it does "work" for some) and (IMHO the most powerful) social feedback loops (complete with group socialization style extremism) on "teh boards "

Genetic proclivities run through the last paragraph's entire list, by the way.
M. said…
I don’t really get the “necessary but insufficient” talk. Oxygen is “necessary but insufficient” for obesity. Does that really explain anything worthwhile? Is it worth creating a mythology around?

A billion lean people eating white rice are making the Taubesians squirm mentally.

If all these white rice-eaters do fine on a high carb, high glycemic diet, THEN run into problems on a Western Industrial diet and lifestyle, isn’t it obvious that “carbs” really shouldn’t be the area of interest.

Someone in Stephan’s comments even went so far as stating that the explanation for all the lean, high-carb people on the planet is that (1) they eat a lot of carbs, but they can't overeat carbs because of financial restraints and (2) they have higher activity levels and burn more off. It is amusing to see someone defending Taubes use “Gluttony and Sloth” as the reason Western people are fatter than others.
Sanjeev said…
> amusing to see someone defending
> Taubes use “Gluttony and Sloth”



and of course in remaining a Taubesian this helps immeasurably
Mirrorball said…
"Oxygen is “necessary but insufficient” for obesity. Does that really explain anything worthwhile?"
Haha! But you could have given a more ordinary example: A normal-sized stomach is "necessary but insufficient" for obesity. When you reduce the size of the stomach, people lose weight. There it is, the true cause of obesity.
moldyfudge said…
A possible explanation: Groups can become stronger/more extreme when a flaw in a leader is found.

Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/

Essentially, the most skeptical or moderate voices in a group are the first to leave which shifts the group average in a more extreme direction. A lesson from this: the pattern is a positive feedback process groups are inherently susceptible toleration of dissenting/moderate voices slow/prevent this dynamic.
Tonus said…
"The appropriate response would be to engage in another debate, either in person or online."

The term "another debate" implies that Taubes' blindsiding of Guyenet at the AHS qualifies as a debate.

"What Stephan Guyenet did, essentially, was publish a fantasy debate in which the other side was unable to participate."

This being the internet, Taubes is able to participate if he so wishes, since he has his own blog. While he updates it infrequently, I have no doubt that if he publishes a response to Stephan, word of mouth will make sure it reaches a wide audience.

Taubes did not start a debate at AHS, he ambushed another speaker and walked away abruptly. Guyenet, on the other hand, has actually started a debate.
Kindke said…
"And yes, the carbohydrate hypothesis has been disassembled by many individuals, including by me and CarbSane herself."

Well done, Well done, congratulations to you both.

Theres just one problem, everytime I consume potato/rice/bread my blood sugar skyrockets and I get a flabby bloated feeling around my waist, which I would attribute to hyper insulin secretion.

Im just wondering now that youve all done fantastic work and demolished the carbohydrate hypothesis, why does this still happen to me???
Frank said…
Things are just getting crazier.

BlogBlog just said that carbs are BAD (80' low-fat craze, anyone?) that human are obligate carnivore and that 20g+ per day is high carbs. LMAO.

I think some people are so brainwashed that a remission is not even possible in some case. These LC ''vampire myths'', as Eades would put it, will never die it seems, and talking about nutrition is a pain in the ass these days.
Mirrorball said…
@Kindke
The carbohydrate hypothesis is about carbohydrate consumption driving weight gain. Disassembling it doesn't deny the existence of people with blood sugar problems. BTW, have you measured your blood sugar and postprandial insulin levels?
Diana said…
I followed the link to the low carb forum, and found a commenter who dealt with the Pima this way. he claims that their traditional diet was full of fibrous carbs, so that their net carb intake was zero.

I must admit, this is at least addresses the issue head on, and is in its way, an ingenious low carb solution to the issue.

Unfortunately, it's total bullshit. Their traditional diet was cholla cactus buds, honey mesquite, other desert fare such as prickly pear fruit, wheat (from 19th century, maybe not exactly traditional but didn't make 'em fat), melons, squash.

But at least he deals with the issue in his own crazy way. Bravo!

"Also, you've ignored what was by far the most cogent post in that thread, which simply pointed-out that if excess carbohydrates are a necessary but insufficient condition for the development of obesity,"

That is NOT what the LC dogmatists say.
Mirrorball said…
"I followed the link to the low carb forum, and found a commenter who dealt with the Pima this way."
I think I know who he is, and he is the worst specimen of a low-carb fundamentalist I've ever found (though there are others almost as bad).
bentleyj74 said…
Where do we get the "necessary" part from?
Hornet0123 said…
I once lost 52 pounds on a low fat diet. Whenever I tried to add butter back in I started getting blubber around the middle again. So all you low carbers are fools. Fat obviously is what cause weight gain.
Frosty said…
Diane wrote "I followed the link to the low carb forum, and found a commenter who dealt with the Pima this way. he claims that their traditional diet was full of fibrous carbs, so that their net carb intake was zero."

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say Martin Levac.
Sanjeev said…
bentleyj74 wrote ...
Where do we get the "necessary" part from?
_________________
The people who think it happened to them (losing fat while consuming excess fat calories but zero carb, and gaining fat on low calorie high carb)

are loud

Everyone else has quit the diet & doesn't go around seeking validation
Kindke said…
Hi Mirrorball,

Not measured my insulin but checked my blood glucose, it shoots up to like crazy in response to starch foods, bread seems to be the worst for it, followed by potato. For the same reason the only fruit I have trouble with is bannana's, even though grapes reportedly have a high GI I can actually tolerate them well.

Not all carbs are bad ofcourse I admit that,I consume alot of milk and yoghurt and with no weight maintence difficulties there, I also admit I do not usually count carb grams myself but instead just stay the hell away from foods that make my blood sugar go crazy.

Yes, it is wrong to demonise all carbs,

BUT

demonising fat is retarded, I GARAUNTEE you that you will not gain bodyfat on a pure lipid diet, ( no carbs no protein ),

You will puke long before you exceed 3500 calories daily.

Meanwhile, I would have no problem consuming 3500+ calories daily in carbohydrate rich foods. Not to mention roller coaster hunger.
Diana said…
Regarding the name of the LCer who said the Pima effectively ate no carbs, I didn't catch name or care to but I went back and checked -

Ding, ding, ding!

Now let's see what the does with the Chinese and the Japanese.
Diana said…
About these n=1 self-experiments, especially the folks who are sure, absolutely sure, that they gain weight on 1000 cals of carbs, and lose weight on 2000 cals of fat/protein, (or whatever) I used to be one of them. I was sure, absolutely sure, that even ONE APPLE made me maintain, perhaps not gain, but maintain.

Guess what, it ain't true. I am being pretty careful with calorie counts now and it turns out my mind must have been playing tricks on me. I have lost weight eating as much as 70 carb grams at a time, as long as the overall caloric intake of the day was low.

I still think that some folks do better on low carb than other, see the Stanford study, but only in the context of energy balance, CICO.
Aaron said…
I would love to read your reactions to some of these videos of the Ancestral Health Symposium.

http://vimeo.com/ancestralhealthsymposium/videos
bentleyj74 said…
"I GARAUNTEE you that you will not gain bodyfat on a pure lipid diet, ( no carbs no protein ),

You will puke long before you exceed 3500 calories daily."




True but the same could be said for ingesting pure glucose. Even sucrose would be hard and for sure unpleasant. I could never ever hit 3500 cals with a bag of granulated sugar and a spoon. No way, and I'd dread it so much I'd probably become nauseated psychologically even before I became so physiologically.

3500 of fat and sugar combined with other yummy tasty things? Ice cream? Donuts? Now that's a different story. I probably still couldn't hit 3500. I doubt I have ever consumed that many calories at a time or in a day of my life because I'm a 5'4 female who generally runs about 110. I could get a lot closer though with a few 300 cal donuts. Cold stone smallest "like it" serving of cake batter ice cream has 570 calories. More than my average meal!

Trying to follow the food reward theory now despite my imperfect comprehension of it...if that high reward food had the ability to impact my neurological response for satiety [which would have been lower by hundreds of cals with low reward normal food] what else might it be doing to my body and specifically my body chemistry?

Is there evidence that dopamine [by itself] has a relationship with insulin resistance...YES. Is there evidence that carbohydrate consumption [by itself] has a relationship with insulin resistance...NO. In fact it seems to sustain/promote insulin sensitivity. Is there evidence that lowering food reward without lowering carb [or fat] consumption can produce satiety in an obese person? YES. Enough to cause them to return to a lean normalized weight. Yes!

You would think that people who claim to be truth seekers without a vested financial interest in propaganda would be ECSTATIC at discovering this and a desire to see where it might lead.

Instead what I observe is...if anything...attempts to obfuscate and suppress while trying to tailor the evidence to fit their own failed theory using logic that wouldn't pass the smell test in a junior high debate.
Mirrorball said…
@Kindke "demonising fat is retarded, I GARAUNTEE you that you will not gain bodyfat on a pure lipid diet"

I guarantee you WILL lose bodyfat on a pure carbohydrate diet. ;)
Sanjeev said…
> You will puke long before you exceed 3500 calories daily.
_____________
heh ... NO.

I had an ice cream maker last time I reached my own peak obesity. I used to make ice cream using heavy cream (35% fat, 65% water), egg yolks and sucralose (I was able to get the pure powder, no maltodextrose/glucose like Splenda has), and/or cyclamates) and sometimes some artificial flavours.

Try it sometime, you'll love it.

A couple of times I easily ate 5,000 calories a day, of the ice cream alone - this is not counting the 2 or 3 times per day of starbucks, no sugar, whipping cream (not half and half, heavy whipping cream - I made sure I saw the container they got the cream out of.

EASILY.
Sanjeev said…
Oh, I used the egg yolks until I found a health food store that sold purified soy lecithin.
CarbSane said…
Welcome to the Asylum Sam Knox, moldyfudge and hornet!

@Beth: Thanks! Haven't gotten to that yet, thanks for the link ... looks interesting. Right now I'm thinking on the Mg thing over at gnolls.

@Frosty: Thanks for mentioning that, I follow Chris on my reader and somehow missed it (must have marked read accidentally). Yes, comments there are quite amusing to say the least. And Sue thanks for the direct link.

@Sam Knox: I see others have responded. I concur with their well stated comments. Taubes has his own blog and he could even comment on Stephan's, no? He won't blog on this as the purpose of his website/blog is to sell books. That much should be obvious by now.

@M & others re: necessary but insufficient -- IMO this is yet another way of shifting the debate and confusing people. Makes for a catchy phrase. I would also contend that fat is also necessary but insufficient by that same logic. The very high carbers eat very little fat (and less protein generally) and are not obese. Go figure.

@Aaron, seems they are finally all up there. I'm listening as I have time. It's such a bummer that the slides are not shown as it is difficult to essentially have just the audio for these when I have no clue what's on the screen. I'm going to try to watch those I can with the slides that are available for some. There are quite a few I'll take a pass on b/c they just don't interest me all that much. Have any particular one's in mind?
CarbSane said…
@All: I've written many times how I believe our "mucking around in the middle" for fat and carb is where most of us get in trouble. It just seems easy to passively overeat foods that are fat+carb. Even something as simple as eggs with toast. I think VLC diets and VLF diets work ad libitum for most who can stick to them for the same reason -- it is difficult to overeat when one or the other macro is almost completely eliminated.