Expert in Smarter Science?

This post is about both Jonathan Bailor's Smarter Science of Slim as well as why I will continue to blog about why Jimmy Moore's influence is so detrimental to the larger community.  With his podcasts, Jimmy does more than just disseminate valuable information by bringing various experts and viewpoints on his well-listened to podcasts -- he interjects his personal biases into the conversations.  For quite a while lately he likes to work in the "we're all on the same side" thing so he can be seen as some sort of great healer of the rifts he, himself, has had a part in instigating  In my opinion, a recent "Ask the Low Carb Experts" episode, featuring Jonathan Bailor provides yet another example of what I'm talking about, perhaps even especially so.

28: Jonathan Bailor | The Truth About Low-Carb Research

ATLCX is a live weekly podcast where listeners can call in or email their questions ahead of time to be asked for them.  One would have thought that such a format might offer less of an opportunity for Jimmy Moore to interject his own opinions, and yet it seems an even more comfortable platform for him, at least judging by the few episodes I've listened to so far.

I have read The Smarter Science of Slim and blogged on Bailor and his book a few times:

And the Cherry-Picking Baton has been passed.
The Smarter Science of Slim ~ General Thoughts 
Is it Possible? "Smarter Science" worse than "Good" Science Journalism?

A super Cliff Notes version of my opinion on Bailor is that he's yet another one of those diet gurus long on the schtick and short on the facts.  He can cloak his schtick in a hundred references and studies, it doesn't mask the fact that a very cursory look at his research demonstrates the studies don't bear out the claims he's making.  On his major point that eating less and moving more not only doesn't work, but can be harmful, he cites weight loss studies where participants did in fact either eat less and/or move more than at baseline.  Sure, we get the usual citing of cases seeming to show a metabolic advantage for low carb vs. low fat diets, but this much is not really anything groundbreaking.

Bailor talks of eating SANEly and incorporates a combination of low carb advocate positions into a generally low fat, low carb, high protein diet.  That's right ... low fat.  The low carb masses are clearly not enamored with Bailor who: 

• Eats and/or recommends eating low fat or fat free dairy and egg whites for protein. 
• Believes in the satiating power of water and fiber content in foods
• Recommends a higher protein intake than is in vogue in LC circles (especially lately)

He does not market his plan as a low carb diet ... well, except when he can take advantage of the fact that it is one for exposure and promotional purposes.  

In this vein, we are treated to version 8675309 of the "can't we all just get along"  kumbaya kabuki dance with Jimmy Moore.  Bailor declares that everyone -- well those who have earned their LLVLCarbScout science badge anyway -- agrees that the following things are bad (bad, bad, bad!!):

• Starch (first and foremost and repeatedly)
• Grains
• Sugar
• Seed oils
• Processed foods

What's good?  Real whole foods.   We could get a little tipsy playing "whole" with this podcast!  

Bailor even contradicts the main premise of his Smarter Science schtick -- that you need to eat more and exercise less (smarter) to lose weight.  Because he specifically addresses that a caloric deficit is needed in order to lose weight/burn fat and makes the claim that eating whole natural foods spontaneously accomplishes that.  Nothing wrong with that last part.  In general switching from a diet of nutrient bereft, calorically dense foods to one comprised of nutrient rich foods will result in the desired "weight loss without trying" in many people.  And consuming lots of low fat protein sources and fiber -- especially that fiber -- will mean you are eating more, a lot more, volume-wise.

But in this podcast he's really all over the map trying to please everyone -- most especially the nutritionally ketotic host -- and contradicting either himself within the podcast, or himself in what he writes in the book.

Bailor tells us early on that he always had trouble gaining weight and used to eat like 6000 cal/day while telling his clients to eat 1200.  First of all, I don't necessarily see anything wrong with this other than that 1200  cal/day may be too little for many.  He's obviously one of those naturally lean people with a high metabolism.  Chronic undereating can be detrimental, but there's nothing misguided or hypocritical about counseling an overweight person to eat less ... which is what he acknowledged in the podcast is how TSSOS ultimately works.  Yet the flipside is this.  Is Bailor following his own plan?  It would appear so.  He avoids starch and eats like 15 servings of veggies a day.  Why is Bailor "bulking" up like this?  

He also eats egg whites and fat-free Greek yogurt.  As you listen to the podcast you'll hear his rationale -- that he doesn't consider whole eggs a good protein source because they are about 60% fat by calories.  He trips over this a bit because he realizes he's admitting that high fat protein sources can impact bodyweight by -- gasp! -- coming with too many calories!  Nonetheless, it seems like a reasonable argument when put in bogey-carbman context as he does.  You wouldn't call beans a protein b/c they come with more carbs than protein (some will be surprised that according to CRON-o-meter, evil soybeans are 43% fat, 33% protein, 23% carb) .  In any case while repeating "whole" in reference to foods over and over again, he seems focused on either refined/processed/partial foods to {paraphrase} "achieve his goals".  Bailor's goal is a rather high protein diet which is integral to his SANE eating -- not only the S = satiety, but the E = efficiency.  Bailor's efficiency is regurgitated Feinman thermo -- a first law CICO argument based on thermogenic factors for the macros.  The thing is, while Bailor chides the fat-phobic, he cannot with a straight face make the case for protein being SANE without making a case for fat being inSANE based on being highly efficient for converting food to body fat.  In Chapter 12 Bailor rehashes Feinman's metabolic advantage schtick -- taking a few liberties with Jequier's thermogenic factors to show why starch is twice as likely to add to your body fat than protein.  I've copied his table and corrected it for Jequier's average factors (22.5% v. 30% for protein, 7 v. 6% for carb, and 2.5% for fat).

For someone who did such exhaustive research for 10 years, he sure is quick to just leave fat out of the discussion when it is convenient.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that Bailor knows calories count and fat calories are quite low on his satiety scale (he lists only lean animal proteins near the top, and oils near the bottom).

I really hope Jonathan didn't hurt himself contorting his positions too much as he genuflected to Jimmy Moore.  Really.  The argument that "your goals" should guide your protein choices, and if your goal is to eat a lot of fat, then by all means do so, goes against his entire book.  He is presenting the unequivocal "facts" after all.

But it gets even worse as he slogans on with the various versions of describing eating quality "whole" foods.  Bailor clearly views dairy fat as *bad*, but doesn't want to come right out and say so to the Jimmy Moore audience.  If he didn't, why, then would he resort to reengineering his foods?  He tells of his favorite "fat dessert" consisting of fat-free Greek yogurt mixed with almond butter and cocoa.  He consumes so much cocoa he buys it by the 25 lb bag!   But what he has done is isolated the dairy protein and added back "healthy fats" from the almond butter and cocoa.   I'm not sure one could come up with a much better antithesis of a whole food than this concoction.  Why not just eat full-fat Greek yogurt ... add cocoa if you must.  Or chomp on a few almonds -- coat them with cocoa if you must.  But cocoa is a highly processed/refined food.  There's no getting around that one.  And Bailor makes no bones that he's engineering a perfect complete food from the parts of others.  Yet to Bailor, eating a potato would be inSANE??!!

Which brings me to the "N" in that acronym because that stands for Nutrient and he spends a fair amount of time dissing starch as devoid of nutrients while treating protein as a nutrient -- mixing his macros and micros.  One can use wheat as your only comparison (he compares it to spinach in the book), and make a good case, but compare a potato with chicken or even 90% lean beef (roughly 50/50 fat/protein raw) and the potato wins out on many counts over the "protein".   What is interesting is that Bailor also keeps all oils (yes, even coconut) relatively low.    While fats & proteins certainly convey their fair amount of vitamins and minerals, so, too do carbohydrates.

From p. 134/Ch. 23 of  TSSOS

Bailor likes to class foods as one of the three macros based on the predominant composition.  This is absurd, because look what happens when you do -- four of the six foods he lists as proteins are not "whole", and even lean meats can run you afoul of his designations*.  Still if you look past this a bit you see he has mostly just found a way to repackage a high protein diet in a more palatable way for the mainstream while demonizing carbs appealing to the Jimmy Moore's out there.  Who cares that he's not even in the same ball park as low carbers, when push comes to shove ... he relied on enough LC "researchers" to coalesce his theories.    Thus he is an expert on the research!  Ha!!

More than just discovering how poorly he represented and/or interpreted the studies in TSSOS (see my previous posts), we gain some additional insights into Bailor's research rigor early on in the podcast when he gushes over the researchers Jimmy has had on the podcast and expresses his nervousness in following in their footsteps.  Ummm ...  when I look at the list of podcast guests to date, (listed alphabetically, Dr's all together:  Chris Kresser,  Chris Masterjohn, David Getoff, Denise Minger, Dr. Cassandra Forsythe, Dr. Cate Shanahan,  Dr. Donald Layman,  Dr. Eric Westman, Dr. Fred Pescatore, Dr. Jeff Volek, Dr. Jonny Bowden, Dr. Kaayla Daniel, Dr. Larry McCleary, Dr. Mary Vernon, Dr. Peter Attia, Dr. Richard Feinman, Dr. Ron Rosedale, Dr. Stephen Phinney, Dr. Steven Gundry, Dr. Thomas Dayspring, Dr. William Davis, Fred Hahn, Jackie Eberstein, Jenny Ruhl, Julia Ross, Maria Emmerich, Mark Sisson, Mat Lalonde, Nora Gedgaudas, Robb Wolf, Sarah Fragoso/Jason Seib, and Valerie Berkowitz)  I see very few primary researchers in the field of obesity and human metabolism.  At this stage of the game, I find it rather a turn-off for anyone to refer to Gary Taubes, also gushed over by Bailor, as any sort of researcher.  Any serious scientist would laugh at the mere thought of Taubes' books being anywhere near equivalent to a term paper for a science class at the undergraduate level, let alone a PhD thesis (nevermind the three he claims it's equivalent to!)   They just aren't written that way, and his research -- consisting largely of interviewing scientists and skimming outdated textbooks and the occasional 1960's through early 80's journal article -- is not the "stuff" of secondary research material, e.g. a literature review.   Bailor only improves upon Gary's work by doing a better job of referencing his sources and including mostly peer review articles in said references.  But his research is probably worse in that he has upped the ante on the quantity over quality scale.  By that I mean he cites a long list of studies but his compilation of them (or as Wheat Belly is amusingly quoted as saying, "complication") leaves a lot to be desired in terms of (a) properly representing the content and conclusions of the studies, and (b) even attempting a comprehensive review of the literature.  Bailor did manage to indirectly cite Taubes though -- on the part that has been retracted, citing Newsholme and Start and that whole alphaglycerol phosphate debacle!

WOW.  As usual, I didn't really intend this to be a rant, but lookie there, it sure turned into one.  Ah well, whatcha gonna do?  Pulling this all in for some summary statements ...

• Bailor claims to be a guy who can't gain weight, yet eats 15 servings of veggies a day, lean meats, whey powder, egg whites, and low/no fat yogurt and cottage cheese and no starch.  Is he eating 3-4-5-6000 cal/day like this?  This doesn't make sense to me.
• Bailor repeatedly advocates real whole foods, assigns whole foods mostly to the carb and fat categories while promoting protein above all.  Without specifically saying so, he shuns animal fats and replaces them with "healthy" plant fats from nut butters and cocoa.  This comes through in the book, but really loudly and clearly in this podcast.  This is NOT whole foods at all then.  
• Ultimately Bailor says do what works for you.  Set your own goals.  But he puts forth some compelling (though generally not factual nor truthful) arguments to eat *his* way.   Any diet over, say, 40% fat would run afoul of TSSOS despite his protestations that he's not lipophobic.  He wants to have it all ways to Sunday -- Jimmy never really challenges him, and he genuflects so as not to rock the LLVLC boat (speaking of boats, he'll be on the next LC cruise).  You simply can't say X, Y, Z makes is inSANE and making America fat, produce a SANE eating plan to combat it, then say ... "but do what works for you" when that could be anything, like eating 85% fat when no human culture ever did.  

It is truly disheartening that this is the sort of "mainstreaming" of alternate nutrition that is going on out there.   My final note would be to point out that there is NO unifying message in the flawed idea that "starch is bad".  NONE.  I see Bailor as another great divider to add to the list. 


*A personal aside about whey protein.  It does not satiate me, it generally makes me ravenously hungry especially consumed without carbs.  This is likely because the high BCAA content of whey is highly insulinogenic and may put me a little hypo.  One would think that in 10 years of research Bailor might have stumbled across that factoid more than once and stricken whey from his list of SANE foods for just that reason (it's insulinogenic thus Aggressive!).