Gary Taubes speaks ...
http://www.latestinpaleo.com/blog/2011/8/29/latest-in-paleo-30-gary-taubes.html
If you're in the mood for a little torture ;-)
He knows more than all those bloggers out there about those Pima! (~21:30) If this is the case, why does he still use them as examples?
He discusses AHS/Stephan Guyenet (~34:30). Of note, this was obviously recorded recently. He could have taken the opportunity to apologize publicly to Stephan. Since he didn't address that specifically, the ticker stays.
Well folks, meal to meal issues are irrelevant to obesity. Nice to know.
Towards the end he says he wants to write a book about how sciences should be done. I'm sure legions of actual scientists are waiting with bated breath.
Well folks, meal to meal issues are irrelevant to obesity. Nice to know.
Towards the end he says he wants to write a book about how sciences should be done. I'm sure legions of actual scientists are waiting with bated breath.
Gary's new tack is to focus on sugar. Fructose. He said in a recent lecture that w/o sugar it may not even be possible to become obese. Since fructose does NOT elicit an insulin response, however, it almost seems like he's discrediting TWICHOO to me!
I'll leave you with words of wisdom from Gary: (~1:06:45)
Speaking about a conference panel of nutritionists and such, Gary says:
That one, of course, is me (grin!)
I'll leave you with words of wisdom from Gary: (~1:06:45)
Speaking about a conference panel of nutritionists and such, Gary says:
They're arguing that it's really important that we all give the same message because the public will be confused and anarchy will break out...
And my comment was, let me get this straight, it's more important that we all appear to agree than that one of us be right.Seems there's some great advice in there for the greater LC/paleo/ancestral crowd struggling with cognitive dissonance and where almost diametrically opposed views exist. Rather than defending fundamentally flawed science put forth by the likes of Taubes (and others), in favor of putting forth some sort of cohesive message for the cause, it's better that one of us is right.
That one, of course, is me (grin!)
Comments
My theory is that Taubes suffers from the disease known as "Einsteinitis." I worked for physicists once. Great guys but there's one thing you have to know about them - at one point in their lives they were THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM, or the SCHOOL, or whatever. And every one of them at one point was positive he would be the guy to top Einstein, to Figure It All Out. I'm really not kidding.
When they go to college, they discover that they aren't THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM, and for some, it is a shattering experience.
Regarding the evils of sugar, I do realize I am repeating myself here, but I think my little n=1 is relevant here.
This lifelong sugar addict and fatty ate small doses of sugary foods for one solid week and gained no weight. In fact I think I lost weight, but I won't go into that here for brevity's sake.
Long story short: I worked real hard. Expended a LOT of calories.
Perhaps the obesity epidemic can be explained as a glitch between the time that the human race stopped working hard and before it realized that the foods we like to eat during our hard-working phase just can't be eaten in the same amounts (or perhaps at all) when we aren't working hard.
I prefer the word "work" to "exercise."
@Todd,
"what foods that we like to eat are you referring to?"
Anything. I didn't mean any specific kind of food. Just whatever an individual likes, which he now eats to excess. Admittedly in many cases these are carbs, but not everyone.
"How do you explain all the overweight people at the gym or working construction?"
What Duffy said,
Also, this last week of trail work has truly driven home the difference between the piddly shit we do in gyms and REAL hard work.
We lifted logs, stones, dirt-bags, etc. Some of it was done in 50 mile an hour winds. We did 7 hours a day. I was just doing it as a volunteer. Imagine working hard like that every day, for 10 hours?
"And working hard doesn't make you hungry?"
It sure does, and that's why I had to control myself. I ate way more than I usually do but not as much as I would have if I hadn't lost 16 pounds in the previous months and wanted to maintain the loss.
But Todd, don't you realize there are so many places in the world where people have to do brutal hard physical labor, and ad libitum eating is out of the question because food is short? That is why they are so skinny. And this is what the Church of Low Carb denies.
PS I truly wonder whether burning 200 calories on a treadmill is the same metabolically as burning 200 calories hiking on rough terrain.
In the meantime, eating real food, as Paleo advises, is always better than LC Frankenfoods, which no one should be consuming in vast or maybe even so-called moderate quantities. :)
I think the roads that lead to obesity are varied, and part of the problem IS our increasing sedentary ways. Folks who had to hoe or reap or chop or hammer or walk from daybreak to sundown burned a lot and could eat a lot (if a lot was available to eat). We get up, sit, sit, sit, stand a bit, maybe walk a bit, sit, sit, sit, and sleep. Some of us try to walk or jog or move more, but mostly, we sit. Drive. Tv. Computer. Video Games. We sit.
My dad, never in his life more than 130 lbs, would walk 8 blocks to buy one load of break, walk back, sit to have some with his eggs. He'd climb to check the roof. Putter in the garden. Putter with the electronics. Maybe walk 8 blocks again to get some milk for his coffee, walk 8 blocks back, have his coffee with sugar. Have his fried chicken with rice and plantains and beans. And then, when the day was done, sit to watch an hour or two of television.
How many hours of tv or computer do we watch now? How often do we sit. A LOT. And that has to be part of the issue. We have access to tons of easily digested food, but we aren't burning off tons of calories getting through a day. Well, unless we're high-activity professionals (athletes, roofers, physical trainers...)
As far as Mr. Taubes: He seems to forget the rule that the best listened to debaters are the gracious ones. I would walk out if someone was ridiculing my deeply held beliefs. I will sit and listen with an open ear and mind if they are GRACIOUS as they debate against my deeply held beliefs.
A respect for others and a gracious manner and a winsome personality can make an enormous difference when one is proposing challenged ideas.
This is insane. I cannot see how anyone could say that unless they've deluded themselves into believing the myths. Someone who just reads on Jimmy's forum and websites like Fat Head I can excuse from reality (but not from their own self-imposed ignorance of the facts). But Jimmy, having interviewed hundreds of experts really has no excuse.
Princess I had tried for over a year to nudge Jimmy towards that epiphany. As did so many others in the comments of his (now defunct) menus blog over the past 3.5+ years. I'm not sure if even Gary himself told him he needed to eat less and move more if it would help at this point.
What is really sad now is that Jimmy is playing a "damaged at 40" card. Please. That is insulting to a goodly portion of his followers who are older women that can't lose weight at 10 lb/week clips even when they go on his eggfast or whatever. He should be so grateful his metabolism seems to NOT be too damaged at all and he suffers none of the mobility issues many others do. If only he'd exercise with more reason (e.g. not this haphazzard all or nothing a little of this a lot of that crap).
True, Americans in the era before the obesity epidemic (BOE, howzat for another acronym) were not doing heavy physical labor. They were eating less, as Evelyn has pointed out so many times on this blog.
Let's please please get real about this. We are eating more. The OE is in my opinion the nasty interregnum between the old ways of eating and moving and the modern onslaught of total lack of physical work plus the opportunity for 24/7 365 food bacchanalia. No wonder there is so much obesity. It is in short a disequilibrium.
Also we ARE exercising less than in the 50s. I live a 1950s lifestyle, tech-wise. I don't own a car, I shlep up 80 steps a day, I have to carry my laundry to a laundromat 4 blocks away. This adds up incrementally and as Taubes (yes!) points out, and as Evelyn hints (I found an agreement between them, let's celebrate), you can't get fat if you depend on having a normal weight for your livelihood or lifestyle.
Anecdotally, most of the construction workers I see here in NYC (mostly union laborers, with a growing number of Hispanics) are not fat. They are pretty lean guys. (The white ones also seem to smoke a lot, alas.)
"I'm confused by your comment regarding global laborers with food in short supply. Wouldn't these people be really hungry if they worked really hard and food was in short supply? Wouldn't that situation make it difficult for them to work hard?"
What is confusing about it? Yes, Todd, they are hungry. Yes it makes it difficult for them to work hard but they work hard anyway. For crissakes, this is the lot of most of humanity outside our privileged world.
A lot of the world goes hungry. And they are thin as a result. Why is this so hard to fathom?
I am thinking of the majority of people in India. No, I haven't been there, I just look at the pictures. But there are many such pictures. I remember when Bill Clinton was Prez, he visited Rajasthan and had some photo op with low-caste women in Rajasthan. Clinton was going through a thin period, but he's a big dude, and I remember the visual impact of this big white guy surrounded by painfully thin brown women in gorgeous saris.
Apart from the top 20% of the pop'n that we see written about all the time, India is mostly rural, poor - and skinny. A low-caste woman in an Indian village must walk miles to gather wood, haul water, cook with antiquated methods, all usually carrying a child on her back. I do not know how many calories she is eating in a day but could it possibly be more than 1200, if that?
Again, Todd, please, when I speak of exercise it isn't the hour a day volitional stuff we do but constant physical effort, sometimes backbreaking.
BTW if any of the Indians on this board disagrees with my assessment, please say so. According to Wikipedia, obesity in India is "epidemic" -- 5% of the pop'n is obese! Wow, what I would give for 5% of Americans to be obese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India
(I wonder what accounts for differences among states? I don't know enough about India to venture a guess.)
*******
@Evelyn,
"This is insane."
Oh God, you said it and one of the reasons it is so painful to watch Jimmy is because I've been exactly where he is.
I think the whole low carb thing proceeds in stages. You begin by "giving it a try". Initially you do realize that calories count. You get a bit of success, you make friends in the movement and pretty soon you are a bought and paid for cult member.
The man need to be deprogrammed, but that won't happen until he begins the process himself.
I don't read Jimmy Moore's blog, as fanaticism and irrationality are some of my turn-offs, but I think the guy will get back to his original, high weight, because he just likes to eat, and is in some serious denial of caloric reality. As for Taubes, as soon as someone mentions his name, I shut down. Like Jehovah's Witnesses, won't even engage. Blah blah blah bs.
Here is a blog that manages to use actual talking points and respectful counter arguments to refute Gary Taubes.
http://huntgatherlove.com/
I will go now. Continue with your head in the sand routine.
Speaking of Jimmy, I think , he doesn't understand how big his problem is. Peter the Hyperlipid eats less without a need to loose an ounce. If something is stimulating Jimmy to eat excessively, it is better to find the root of the problem, not an excuse. LC worked for me because it killed my appetite, but if extra appetite is present, something else should be done. It was my comment about his food looking like constant feast, on which he answered that overeating was not a problem. Everybody else was cheering. jimmy needs something drastic. Probably, the Woo is right about leptin injections.
Has anyone ever studied the metabolic consequences of doing extra mental activity?
Regarding Jimmy, he's young yet, from my perch. I hope by that the time he's 50 he'll have learned after all these n=1s, to try a calorie deficit n=1. With his 6'3" frame he could still eat a lot of calories and lose fat.
"Damaged metabolism" is the catch-all excuse for a lot of low-carbers who hit a sticking point, is my impression. Over and over you see them dismiss CI/CO and insist that if you eat the right diet, your body will manage your calorie intake and you will eat only as much as you actually need. When they inevitably fall short of their goals or even begin to regain some weight, they blame their broken metabolisms.
They have absolutely no proof or even evidence that their metabolisms are damaged, and they couldn't begin to explain what the phrase means or how it would be determined that someone has a damage metabolism. But in their minds, that just means that it can't be disproved! It is the equivalent of explaining away a religious contradiction by telling us that "God works in mysterious ways."
When you've effectively staked your reputation on the idea that calories don't matter and that proper nutrient management is a panacea, some people find it hard to back out. Being able to point at a factor that sounds legit (but for which no direct research is available) can keep them from having to admit that they backed the wrong approach.
We have quite a few broken folks here at the Asylum who've managed to fix things after all.
Yep. I still have the email I sent Taubes and exchanges with Jimmy Moore about my damaged metabolism. Somehow that damaged metabolism miraculously cured itself as a result of ELMM. I still remember the time I cooked up a whopping 70 grams of carbs, in the form of white rice (evil! horrors!), ate it, and lost weight the next day.
That's not supposed to happen, but it did.
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