Is SuperStarch a Safe Starch?

Remember "safe starches"?   This whole SuperStarch thing reminded me of that for some reason.  It was just a little over a year ago that Jimmy Moore sent out the email to all of the experts he considers experts to inquire over the safety of consuming starches.  It mattered not the quality of the response, he published them all up.  This post put the pry bar in whatever cracks there were in the community along carbohydrate lines and was the source of much of the antagonism Jimmy decries.  Some responses of interest:
Jeff Volek: Claiming you need carbs to prevent scurvy is a red flag this guy is a nut job. Tell him to eat a red pepper. There is no evidence what so ever the human body has any dietary requirement for the nutrient class of carbohydrate (i.e., there is no defined condition associated with not consuming carbs).
This comment just demonstrated that UCAN be an asshat in LLVLC-land so long as it's not against a low carber.   Next up, the other Bobsie Twin of the pair.  He's not on the UCAN board, but it's kind of hard to separate yourself from the energy drink biz of someone you are so tightly associated with in the LC community.  

Dr. Stephen Phinney (On the topic of dietary carbohydrates of any kind and blood glucose regulation):  Clearly some carbohydrate foods raise blood glucose more than others, which is the basis for both the ‘glycemic index’ and presumably the ‘safe starches’ concepts. In part, how fast your body absorbs the carbohydrates you eat influences how these energy sources are processed.
The other half of this picture is how promptly your body can ‘tuck away’ the absorbed carbohydrate, which passes through the blood stream mostly as glucose (which means you need both adequate insulin in the blood and insulin sensitive cells to clear it).
Insulin resistance (the hallmark of both metabolic syndrome and type-2 diabetes) occurs to a varying degree in many of us. Thus the more insulin resistant we are, the less tolerant we are of dietary carbohydrate from the different dietary sources (i.e., one persons ‘safe starch’ may far exceed the carbohydrate tolerance of someone else who is more insulin resistant). Many people with type-2 diabetes go into complete remission when they eat less than 50 grams per day of total carbohydrate, but remain diabetic if they eat 100-150 grams (400-600 Calories) of carbohydrate (independent of what grain or tuber it comes from).
There is no absolute human requirement for dietary carbohydrate. In our many published studies of human research subjects given well-formulated very low carbohydrate diets (e.g., 5-50 grams of total carbohydrate per day), we never observed low blood sugar levels. In fact, in my 1983 study of bicycle racers eating an Inuit diet [anyone have a link or info on this study??] , even when we exercised them to exhaustion, their blood glucose values remained normal. Simply put, if the body maintains a normal blood glucose level with little or no carbohydrate sources in the diet, how can one argue that they are required?
If the level of glucose during a well-formulated very low carbohydrate diet is maintained in the normal range, how can one credibly postulate inadequate glucose availability for glycosylation? (There was more on other topics) 
In the tangled web that is the Nutrition Misinformation Society, Volek also leads us to Richard Feinman, President.  Volek is on the scientific board of this society disingenuously claims they are "not advocating any specific dietary strategy".  
Richard Feinman:  Yes. Great dangers here.  I remember at the Ancestral Health Symposium where people were dropping like flies.  The only part worth considering is the remark about glycosylated proteins. The normal processing of many types of proteins involves the enzymatic addition of molecules of carbohydrate, sugars or what are called glycosaminoglycans (sugar amines). This is an important part of biochemistry but completely different from the non-enzymatic non-specific glycosylation of proteins which occurs due to excess of blood glucose and which is measure, for example, as hemoglobin A1c.  The former is part of normal metabolism and is necessary for the normal function of those proteins.  The non-specific glycosylation is not normal and impairs the function of the glycosylated protein.
Well, at least he addressed part of Paul's premise, albeit misrepresenting it as I'm quite sure Paul knows the difference between enzymatic and non-enzymatic glycosylation.  Still, I include it here for the opening snark, I guess somehow implying that the attendees of AHS11 were predominantly low carbers.  But CANU be president of a 501(c)3 with Jeff Volek sitting on your science board and be totally ignorant of his work on a starch containing energy drink?  In any case, when one thinks of the meme "there's no dietary need for carbohydrate", it is Feinman who immediately comes to mind.  

This is really the basis for the Jaminets' recommendation for what is really a bare minimum of carbohydrate consumption. Their preference is starches over sugars for this carbohydrate -- which can be debated -- but I think the main "bugaboo" over this is that it is too "conventional wisdomey" for the renegade "scientists".  And yes, despite Volek, Phinney and Feinman being scientists all, I believe the tipping point has been reached for these three where affiliations and advocacy overshadow their science such as it is/was.  

Clearly, CLEARLY, there is no such thing as a fat adapted athlete with no dietary need for carbohydrate.   Yet the deception of folks like Volek and Phinney that one can adopt an extreme diet and essentially become superman persists.   It makes me pretty sick to think that they could even write a book like "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance:  A Revolutionary Program to Extend Your Physical and Mental Performance Envelope".  ** A special thanks to the anonymous donor who provided me with a copy**  My, my, the tangled web ...  
Seriously?  SuperStarch?  You can't make this kind of stuff up!

So ... I guess starches are safe after all.  Paul is just a nutjob because he isn't hawking proprietary SuperRice to go along with Perfect Health Diet.  Is it just me, or is there a special irony in a chapter entitled why you don't need carbs, in a book about ketotic superiority, there is STILL the need to include the "parting shot" of how you may be able to incorporate carbs in your diet??  And come on folks, root veggies -- recommended by Paul as a safe starch, his definition being independent of glycemic behaviors -- are not known for slow release behavior.  Potatoes have a high GI.  How does this "factoid" compute?


From the Volek authored "white paper" on SuperStarch,

The importance of carbohydrate for athletes was recognized as far back as the 1924 Boston marathon where it was discovered that blood glucose levels decreased in the top runners during the 1924 Boston marathon. The following year carbohydrate feeding was shown to prevent the decline in blood glucose and improve performance. However the notion that carbohydrate feeding was important for athletes was not fully appreciated until the late 1960s  hortly after the advent of the biopsy needle which allowed histological and biochemical studies of human muscle before, during and after exercise. This early research led to the understanding of the importance of muscle glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrate in muscles, as a fuel for active muscle during prolonged exercise and made the connection between glycogen depletion and fatigue(1, 2). Researchers discovered that manipulating an athlete’s training combined with a high carbohydrate diet several days prior to exercise (carbohydrate loading) significantly increased muscle glycogen levels and delayed fatigue(3). Subsequent work throughout the 1970s and 80s continued to investigate the impact of carbohydrate feeding and fluid intake on exercise performance.
It goes on to discuss osmolality and fat burning.   Blah blah blah at this point.  This is truly sickening folks.  Bottom line, this SuperStarch is being marketed as a better way to supply glucose where gluconeogenesis is insufficient to keep up for maximum performance.  This is why Tim Olson and every one of these endurance athletes use carbs to fuel their races and if there were any credibility left with these scientists, they would acknowledge that front and center.  

But noooooo.  In the LC community, this won't fly and still sell books. You just encourage untold numbers of people who should never adopt an extreme diet of any sort -- because with almost 100% certitude they will "fall off the wagon" -- to adopt a diet of truly unknown long term safety.  

This goes well beyond the intellectual dishonesty we've seen from one Gary Taubes. It even goes beyond the general dishonesty we've seen from Jimmy Moore.  Volek and Phinney (and Feinman) are PhD's either actively or in otherwise on the faculty of institutions of higher learning. Phinney is additionally an MD.  As someone said in comments recently, we expect this sort of thing from manufacturers of things like UCAN, but we don't expect this behavior from scientists.  Sadly, this is just the sort of behavior we can expect from low carb "scientists".   Which makes the comments from Anonymous on that safe starches post such a fitting close here.
Anonymous Prominent Member of the Low-Carb Community:  Jaminet is not a clinician seeing patients and he’s never been obese. In that sense, he’s a theorist. His background isn’t in medicine, and it’s his Harvard affiliation that gives him cache. Like many bloggers in the field, he knows what worked for him and that his informed his opinions.
Now here’s the issue: if he was treating obese individuals or type 2 diabetics, he might find out that 600 calories of glucose a day is too much for weight loss. He might also find out that some people have to go far below 300 to 400 calories a day to lose weight. He might find that safe starches and berries aren’t “safe” for some, even if they are “safe” for others. Or maybe not. But the key is to make a prescription based on what works for you is always a bad idea. What he did, though, is cut carbs considerably and then, in effect, add them back to deal with problems from eating so few.
Compare Jaminet, say, to people like Dr. Steve Phinney, Dr. Jeff Volek and Dr. Eric Westman who have spent their lives working on this in the clinic and the laboratory would give different explanations for all that Jaminet is describing.
So my main point is this: telling people they have to eat or should eat 600 calories of carbohydrate a day based on “book learn’n” is maybe not the best idea.
Ahhh, gotta love the anonymity there!  Surely the LLVLC gang would have provided cover for any and all criticism this "prominent member" might have garnered.  It is a valid point about Paul Jaminet -- his is a theoretical prospective and his opinions/interpretations of data/studies are fair game for disagreement, scrutiny and legitimate criticism.  But yeah, unlike Phinney and Westman, he's not a clinician -- with all the experience that brings, but in my opinion, a greater responsibility to operate as if one is acting in that role.  Phinney's work as a clinician was to supervise multidisciplinary (aka all manner of approaches) weight loss programs.  He uses that cache to profit off of promoting extreme low carbohydrate restriction.  Where's that long term study bearing his name?  As to never being obese, the same could be said for the trio of Atkins authors listed (though Westman appears to have struggled with some weight issues) ... but these guys have no first-hand knowledge.  Not that this is important in addressing the science, but since these guys take great liberties with the science of how human metabolism actually works, it is all the more pertinent to them rather than to Paul.

Oh how I'm bothered by the fact that the SuperStarch Nutty Ketosis Twins don't have names ending in "s".  The $ would be so apropos.  Bottom line, according to these $hills, starches aren't safe in levels that merely allow one to function normally for most everyday activities -- e.g. having sufficient glycogen stores to provide for steady blood glucose control w/o stressing the liver to provide for all glucose needs via gluconeogenesis.    But they sound safe if you're keto-adapted, and you stand to profit from them.  'Kay.  Of course I'm sure some detractor will trounce me for pointing this out.  C'est la vie.

Comments

Anonymous said…
1980 Phinney
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7000826
'To study the capacity for moderate endurance exercise and change in metabolic fuel utilization during adaptation to a ketogenic diet, six moderately obese, untrained subjects were fed a eucaloric, balanced diet...'

1983 Phinney
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6865775
'To study the metabolic effects of ketosis without weight loss, nine lean men were fed a eucaloric balanced diet'

Also, 1983 Phinney
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6865776
'To study the effect of chronic ketosis on exercise performance in endurance- trained humans, five well-trained cyclists were fed a eucaloric balanced diet (EBD) for one week...'

Could be the last study. But not Inuit diet, and not the 70s.
snakeojakeo said…
hi, first time commenter here, i think. it took me way too long to create an ID just to be able to post this, but i think i did it! could you, at some point, discuss whether you think sugar or starch is really a better way to get your carbs? i hue pretty close to paul jaminet's diet, and take in anywhere from 400 - 600 calories from carbs every day. but i'm not religious about making it glucose, like paul kind of is. i'm not off in ray peat land, but i just wonder... and you're pretty quick, so could you help a fellow out?
Puddleg said…
How common is hypoglycaemia in ketogenic diets? Probably not as common as it is today in people on SAD high carb diets. How much does it stress the liver to make a few grams of glucose every hour? I mean, the liver interconverts many ounces of similar material every day. If it's making less of something else - triglycerides, say - it can take the time to make a little MORE glucose - because the fact is, everything the hepatocytes can do is always being done; even when you're eating glucose, you're making glucose.
It may well be that a prediabetic who goes on a VLC diet comes to have less, not more, gluconeogenesis going on.
The ratios change, and the location shifts; there's a concept called liver zonation - i.e. location, location, location:

Pharmacol Ther. 1992;53(3):275-354.
Metabolic zonation of the liver: regulation and implications for liver function.
Gebhardt R.

Liver parenchyma shows a remarkable heterogeneity of the hepatocytes along the porto-central axis with respect to ultrastructure and enzyme activities resulting in different cellular functions within different zones of the liver lobuli. According to the concept of metabolic zonation, the spatial organization of the various metabolic pathways and functions forms the basis for the efficient adaptation of liver metabolism to the different nutritional requirements of the whole organism in different metabolic states. The present review summarizes current knowledge about this heterogeneity, its development and determination, as well as about its significance for the understanding of all aspects of liver function and pathology, especially of intermediary metabolism, biotransformation of drugs and zonal toxicity of hepatotoxins.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1409850
CarbSane said…
Welcome to the Asylum! Sorry it takes a bit to have an ID, but it's a necessary evil to keep the spam and drive by comments out.

I think the sugar v. starch debate is an interesting one. I don't really subscribe to the either/or out there. I was hoping to have time to look into some of Peat's theories on fructose this past summer, but it was a bit more tumultuous, in blog land and IRL, than planned (<- understatement of the year!)

I'm hoping Paul will moderate his stance on fructose in the new PHD, because it was one thing reading the book that I disagree with pretty strongly. He says: "Fructose is a poison at any dose: it reacts with proteins, creating toxins. To prevent such inappropriate “fructation” the body shunts fructose to the liver for disposal, mainly through conversion to fat. The conversion process, however, damages the liver, potentially causing metabolic syndrome."

I've not seen any evidence for fructose being poisonous at any dose, and suggesting proper fructose metabolism by the liver is damaging is not supported by the science I've seen. The liver converts fats to ketones, carb-derived acetylCoA to fats, amino acids to glucose. That's what it does. The fructose = alcohol analogy Lustig draws is nothing more than hyperbole. Even alcohol per se is not damaging, it is the acetaldehyde metabolic byproduct that is. To the best of my knowledge fructose feeds into various "normal" metabolic pathways in the liver.

Where it leads to metabolic mahem it is often in isolated form (e.g. not in sucrose or packaged along with free glucose as in most fruits), huge doses, and under hypercaloric conditions. This tells me anyone gaining weight ought to not be drinking 2L of Coke a day, but not much more.

Also, from an evolutionary POV it seems more likely that humans got carbs from fruits/fructose than starches that require more prep/cooking. I'd steer clear of fruit juices myself, though there's some pretty compelling studies out there showing a benefit of OJ for diabetes (e.g. it's not the same as soda) and "juicers" out there.

Fruit is something I avoided in my LC days that I regret doing. I did very well eating fruit galore in the summer time growing up and it sure as heck didn't make me fat! It would be difficult for me to overeat fruit on a caloric basis.

I actually think starches have more potential for fattening than sugars in that they tend to come in more concentrated form, even in whole foods. But moreso because starches seem to beg for a bit of fat to go with them, and most of our starchy foods that Grandma knew made her fat were not consumed alone. You put butter on potatoes, bread, rice, fatty sauces on pasta, etc. This is one reason I would caution those transitioning from LC to PHD to watch calories and not go whole hog on the fats.

I note that athletes tend to "carb up" with starches, but prefer sugars during the events. I'm not the one to go to for sports nutrition as I never got into that realm. When engaged in competitive sports, I just ate food. Yes, endurance was a factor in the sports I played, but overall performance was training/skill related. Performance enhancement, be it pharmaceutical or dietary, doesn't improve hand/eye coordination or movement timing for example.

Nowadays I'm personally more into "functional performance" than anything else. I like being able to climb a flight of stairs w/o getting winded, lift the cat litter bag out of the cart with one hand (freaks people out when I do this with the heavier bags!), work firewood, etc. To me, where I get my carbs is not really an issue. I probably tend towards 2/3-3/4 starch because of preferences and cost. Fresh fruit can get rather pricey, depending on the season, as compared to starches. And now that it's winter time, starches make good stewps.

OK a ramble there ;-) Hope that at least somehow got to what you were looking for?

Lesley Scott said…
about fructose - I know from a common-sense point of view, the "at any dose" thing makes no sense. I mean, neither do 250 bananas (or mangoes) a day, but I'm assuming from what I've read that the fact that fructose turns quickly into bodyfat is our way traditionally of making the calories available from fresh fruit - epecially the ones that ripen in late fall & just before the onset of winter - available later during the leaner months.

as for Phinney who notes: "In fact, in my 1983 study of bicycle racers eating an Inuit diet [anyone have a link or info on this study??]" Ima hafta cite The Kraken here. (I think it's been too long, no?) I remember him in an interview shaking his head in a way indicating he thinks these types of Inuit-meat-diet reinactment experiments belong with Alice: in Wonderland. He made the point that the meat the inuit ate couldn't be more different from the meat people eat now, plus it was loaded with omega3s, plus they apparently ate more greenery than the rabid VLC crowd gives them credit for...plus, plus, plus...

I know for myself just from firsthand experiencing managing my weight & remaining at my goal weight while working out regularly (it's true, I buy into ELMM 100%) that the Ache/honey money works a lot better - both for energy to get up & workout with gusto plus in terms of staying lean. I wouldn't make a meal out of sugar or get all Ray Peat about it (especially with the orange-colored liquid sugar marketed as "orange juice"), but I tell you, I've found for myself that relatively sugary stuff that's low in fat (like say a sweet potato with brown sugar sprinkled on for a snack) is satisfying - to my tummy & sweet-tooth both - & doesn't make me put any of the weight I lost back on.
Unknown said…
I did a lot of cycling when I was young and around the 75 mile mark I wanted sugar more than anything in the world, anything would do so long as it contained sugar.
snakeojakeo said…
thanks, evelyn, i really appreciate the thoughtful response!
Lerner said…
Sugar would have different effects than starch on gut flora. If you want to make bread rise more, you add sugar.
Lerner said…
Evie says, "I've not seen any evidence for fructose being poisonous at any dose"

Animals also go crazy for sugar, even birds. Is there any evidence of animals willfully eating poison of any kind?
Anonymous said…
Off-topic, sorry, but this looks intriguing:

ww.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/24/self-tracking-health-wellbeing-smartphones
Anonymous said…
I think hypoglycemia in ketogenic diets is pretty common, is one of the most lamented symptoms. People who suffer from hypoglycemia and fail the glucose tolerance test, anecdotally, don't do well with a LC ketogenic diet. People who are already at a normal weight and exercise and still try a LC ktogenic diet because they're convinced it's a better diet, experience frequent hypoglycemia bouts after attempting a LC ketogenic diet. The only people not suffering from hypoglycemia when switching to a ketogenic diet are overweight semi-sedentary people. Young people, lean people, active people and people who failed the OGTT notoriously function poorly on a ketogenic diet.
Galina L. said…
Leo, human body is quite adaptable. Adaptation to the fasting and to the exercising in a fasted state prevents the ability to go into hypoglycemia. Besides, many people who experience hypoglycemia, find themselves in a such state due to the eating some carb junk first(not the part of a ketogenic diet).
CarbSane said…
There had been a few reactive hypoglycemics that frequented Jimmy's forum when I was active there. They tended not to do well on VLC diet. One in particular was convinced she had to do this diet despite feeling horrible on it. She left and returned at least 3 times during my time there, not sure if she's been back (I do check in from time to time to see how some old friends are doing, but that's less and less and fewer and fewer of them are around anymore).

I'd disagree with Leo slightly and say that, at least in my experience, it's the metabolically healthy that tend to do the worst on VLC in the long haul. I never experienced a hypo in all my life (well, perhaps when I was idiotically fasting for days on end at 110-115 to undo binges) until VLC. Other than those fasting days, I did manage to lose weight fast on other plans, sometimes not generally "healthy" crash diets, but generally LF vs. LC variety and didn't have any problems with them. FWIW, I've never experienced the Atkins flu either so it's not an adaptation issue. I take to VLC very well for fairly long periods.
Galina L. said…
I think a person adapted to fasting will not experience a sugar-crash on a ketogenic diet if he/she chooses for any reason to perform in a such state. Adaptation to a LC diet is not the same thing as an adaptation to fasting.

Even on a LC diet I continued to have a "hungry" migraines from time to time, until I spent at least 6 months getting adapted to the exercising in a fasted state, probably it took me a year to be completely adapted. It really trains your liver not to wait till you "bonk" with producing glucose when BS is getting too low. I think it is reasonable to expect from our body to get used to perform in un-fed state, but not to sort-out a BS roller-coaster after consuming a food which gets BS too high at first than drops it too low. I guess for sedentary people doing just a LC diet ,their body may not get enough incentives to keep BS at a reasonable level, however, they should avoid "sugar crashes", or probably, some of them will need a longer time for their adaptation.

I don't think there are a lot of healthy people doing long-term LC diets. They have no reason, and it can be rather inconvenient. Adaptation to fasting is a different story. Besides my personal experience, I also had a chance to observe my son who is a student now. He lives on a campus in another city and eats very irregularly because of laziness. I remember him having hungry headaches during his childhood, but now he could eat once a day on evening without any ill effect because he got used to do so, he arrived home three days before thanksgiving at 8 pm, and I fed him the first food of his day (pork butt roast, pan-fried with onion potatoes , sauerkraut). It is not what I told him to do, when he is at my home he eats regularly. He is lean and muscular eating any food, but avoids gluten and rarely eats sweets, a very active member of a mountain climbing gym (there are no mountains in Florida), he told me he often goes to the gym hungry because full stomach is an obstacle in his performance.
Puddleg said…
thanks for those responses. interesting that metabolically healthy do worst, overweight sedentary best, in this regard on VLC. Fits with "metabolic inflexibility" being an indication to try it.

the 'no such thing as an essential carbohydrate' meme deserves a reductio ad absurdum.
EPA, DHA and arachidonic acid are not essential. Histamine, tyrosine, glycine, serine, cysteine, taurine, (ASOASF) are not essential.
Lets make a diet with only essential amino and fatty acids, full micronutrients and electrolytes, and adequate energy. Will humans survive? Maybe - the textbooks say they should be able to synthesize all the missing stuff.
Unless there is something wrong with them. (cough).
Wenchypoo said…
More than a day late, and more than a dollar short, I came by to say that Jaminet is an unemployed rocket scientist (read his bio). The fact that he's married to an Asian woman may play into his "rice as a safe starch" theme.


When NASA and random Asian women start directing how I eat, there's a problem. Houston? Hello...Houston?
carbsane said…
Well, I may not have used those exact words to describe Paul (and his wife, who by all accounts are lovely people), but you aren't too far off the mark. When I first met Paul, I read the bios and presumed their book was a joint effort. It soon became clear that he was the blogger on the website but "our book" still made it sound like she had a lot of input. Shou Ching is a Molecular Biologist PhD doing cancer research if I'm not mistaken -- BY FAR the more qualified of the two to be speaking to such matters. As time has progressed it is apparent that she has little to do with the PHD collective (they are branching out into retreats so I use that term) other than to lend her name and credentials. I have never heard her speak and as far as I can tell she only attends the occasional book signing. I find this disturbing at this point especially when Paul goes off on tangents.

I don't know if unemployed is a correct term, but he only worked as an astrophysicist for 5 years (the nature of that work is unspecified) and then went back into economics, dabbling in relationship economics and whatnot before the health thing. I should have looked more closely at the time, but didn't. That if my bad though for me with lower caloric intake, PHD works out almost isocaloric. Much of his research is NOT combing the primary literature for answers, it is gleaning stuff from other people's blogs tied up in a neat bow to fit some macros. It would be nice for a change not to have to look into every claim made in books, or to look into them and for the most part find they are actually substantiated by the sources and scientific evidence. *sigh*

Just last weekend at AHS he discussed how around the world macros end up around the same percentages (????!!!!). He apparently doesn't know the real Thai cuisine he says the diet is based on. http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2013/07/did-low-fat-diets-cause-obesity.html
Kieran said…
I have no idea if you continue to check comments on here?

Anyway, it confuses me that you declare yourself such a science buff then seem to miss fairly obvious physiological processes in the body. You seem to have a major issue with many LC advocates (of which is your prerogative) but ignoring the people, you should attack the ideas rather than garnering votes by making people dislike figure-heads. This same process occurs towards Crossfit where people harass specific figures within the world as representative of the entire concept.

To my point. You state "This is why Tim Olson and every one of these endurance athletes use carbs to fuel their races and if there were any credibility left with these scientists, they would acknowledge that front and center." ~ but at what point do any low-carb advocates state that performance is 'better' while burning only ketones for energy. Basic biochemistry tells you that isn't true during higher intensities, glucose becomes preferred fuel. So to say that LC athletes who are using exogenous CHOs to ensure glucose levels stays at a certain level is bad for their credibility is total BS. Those same LC athletes could drop the intensity, lower their RQ to a level where fat is the main fuel and compete at a lower level.

I don't follow many of the people in the LC-community that you seem to pinpoint but read a lot on the topic (Peter Attia's blog) and his angle towards exercise on LC is that exogenous CHOs are needed but preferably slow-releasing (i.e. superstarch) types where possible. The research you use to disagree with many of the points made by prominent people is typically in-complete or doesn't necessarily prove facts either way due to flaws in the research.

I was hoping that your blog would be able to provide an alternative view-point to my own pro-LC-readings but it seems your own poor attitude towards other people in the LC community hinders your ability to convey a good message.

Hoping for a response,
Kieran
carbsane said…
Hi Kieren, I'm not a science buff, I am (was) a scientist. Yes, I do have a problem with many of these advocates spreading misinformation, but I always bring the science behind why it IS disinformation. At some point it is impossible to separate the messenger from the message. Case in point, these athletes aren't getting a lot of their energy from ketones. This is misinformation point number 1. Ketosis is energetically disadvantageous, it is an adaptation to preserve lean mass during starvation, but is not without energetic cost.

"but at what point do any low-carb advocates state that performance is 'better' while burning only ketones for energy. "

Seriously? Why would a competitive athlete or those that work with athletes promote something for performance (that word is in the title of the Art & Science book) if they didn't mean *better* performance. Oh the dishonesty!

"Why didn’t he need much? And what DID he eat?

STEVE PHINNEY: I wouldn’t tell you the details even if I knew because it’s confidential research information. And I don’t think he’d want any of the details of what he’s doing to be public, because, realize, all of a sudden this guy knows absolutely that he’s got a remarkable competitive edge."


Why didn’t he need much? And what DID he eat?

http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2012/11/fat-burning-beast.html

The feedback I've gotten about SS from some folks is that it's not all it's cracked up to be and may only have some gastric benefits. Most athletes are still downing caffeinated sugary drinks and glucose gels. Including the "keto" warriors like Ben Greenfield who use it as a schtick.

http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2012/11/superstarch-or-does-something-stink-here.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2012/08/ketone-and-fat-burning-are-not-same.html



I'm sorry my blog didn't deliver to your liking. As the saying goes, you can't please everybody all of the time...