More response to my Gallon of Gas analogy to Calories Post ~ David Pendergrass PhD.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a comment on my recent post -- More on Calories: A Gallon of Gas is NOT A Gallon of Gas? ... And Other Silly Thermodenyic Arguments -- from David Pendergrass, PhD.  Pendergrass has been a speaker at AHS, and last year his talk was:
The Physiology and Biochemistry of the Paleolithic Diet for Weight Reduction:  The physiology and biochemistry interactions of an individual using Paleolithic nutrition will be compared to an individual on the USDA recommended diet to demonstrate why Paleolithic Nutrition results in a success weight loss.
Bio: Director of Applied Science at the University of Kansas. He conducts a yearly seminar on appetite regulation. He is the author of the Smartest Loser program. He founded the Paleo Nutrition Foundation and a Paleo Nutrition Certification program online. 
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a bootleg audio available for this presentation.   It's interesting, to me anyway, to get an idea of where the person I'm speaking with is "coming from".  As his book is no longer available on Amazon, there is no description beyond the title, nor a date of publication, there's nothing more to be had there.  As blogged on extensively here, I would find any discussion about some special physiological and/or biochemical interactions with "paleo nutrition" suspect as we'd have to clearly define what is meant by this.  As Pendergrass is defending fellow AHS speaker and low carb zealot (not normally comfortable with such words, but I do believe that is apt), and as he used the word *paradigm* in referring to CICO, I think it is safe to presume Pendergrass favors a VLC version of paleo.  Whether he is more in line with vintage Eaton, Konner, Cordain, DeVany, and Wolf's mass-media distributed diet books, and/or whether the fat content favors the low-to-very-low saturated fat content of Lindeberg, Ryberg, Frassetto, O'Dea, Jonnson, etc., is unknown.  Perhaps there is some information out there or Pendergrass has made his presentation available somewhere online.  (It is my understanding that AV issues occurred at AHS13 and the presentations were not of suitable quality to share.)

I am going to put Pendergrass' comment indented in dark blue and intersperse my responses in regular font.  Some find this changes the interpretation of the full comment, and if you are one of those people, by all means I encourage you to read his comment in full before proceeding.  Pendergrass begins his post by quoting from mine, beginning at "This does not change depending ..." in the screenshot below.


Dear Carb-Sane Asylum,
Please call me Evelyn.  :-)
You are correct that the energy in a gallon of gas is indeed the energy of a gallon on gas. The 1st Law is indeed immutable. And that in a "metabolic chamber with tightly monitored metabolic ward studies" you would have a calories out equilibration.  
You seem to be repeating this bizarre notion that somehow the human body functions differently in a metabolic chamber or even in a metabolic ward.   There is no reason to believe that substrate cycling or whatever is any different in either context.  The chamber is akin to "rest" only all gasseous and thermal with the environment inside the isolated chamber are measured along with bodily excretions.  I posted several links to the Atwater experiments in a prior post on  Calories (a browser search on Atwater will get you there faster).   I don't understand what you mean by "calories out equilibration", but if there is such a thing that alters the function of the human body in a metabolic chamber it most certainly is not applicable to a metabolic ward.  The major (huge) difference in ward vs. free-living studies being that calories in are monitored, verifiable and verified.  
However, you unfortunately do not discuss the rate of formation of such output which is directly tied to the basal metabolic rate. This, significantly, IS highly variable according to the dictates of the the brain-pituitary-gut-immune system. And importantly tied to satiation.
I'm confused here, because when you talk about" rate of formation of output" it sounds like you are speaking of kinetics.  Surely you are not suggesting that the chemical energy content of the food molecules is altered by the rate at which they are oxidized?    I think we can all agree that the BMR is a significant term on the CO side of the energy balance equation.   Many have tried valiantly to claim that various diets boost "fat burning" via increases in metabolic rate while you sleep!  I've yet to see convincing evidence that the macronutrient composition alters CO.  

As to satiation, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the thermodynamic argument.  Surely you aren't arguing that eating more food increases the CI of the food previously eaten?   I think rather that you are implying that certain diets may increase appetite and overall CI, but this is irrelevant to this discussion.
Using your own analogy of the (a) a motorcycle, (b) a car, (c) a truck or (d) my weed whacker, let's exam the efficiencies of work output for each of those machines. A gallon of gas for a motorcycle might well get a person 80 miles away, for a truck perhaps 20 miles away and for the weed wacker perhaps around the block. There is the same energy, but not the same work output. What happened to the extra energy? Answer, it left as either heat or conversion to another chemical bond formation unusable by that machine afterwards. In the case of the weed wacker, it left as smoke!  {bold emphasis mine}
You seem to be missing my point here so allow me to clarify.   Simply put, you are arguing that CO changes CI, or more specifically the partitioning of CO to different energy types changes CI.  I am specifically stating that this is not true!  First, I'm presuming that the engines in all of my devices are combustion engines and we have complete combustion. So hopefully we agree that 

Hydrocarbon + O2 → CO2 + H2O (and other possible products) + ENERGY 

is the same regardless of the how the combustion takes place.  Energy is, after all, a state function.  To save time, I'll cite this excellent discussion for the benefit of my readers who are unfamiliar with the concept.  Unfortunately no numbers are provided for their example, so rather than have to track down these values, I'll use letters for hypothetical compounds and make up some enthalpies to work with for a scenario analogous to reactions 1 through 3 at my link.  My hypothetical:

Reaction 1:  ∆H = [C+D] - [A+B] = [-100 + -150] - [100 + -50] = -300Reaction 2:  ∆H = [E+F] - [C] = [-200 + 50] - [-100] = -50Reaction 3:  ∆H = [D+E+F] - [A+B] = [-150 + -200 + 50] - [100 + -50] = -350
Whether the chemical reaction between A and B to form D, E and F occurs in a single step (reaction 3) or two steps (where a product of reaction 1 becomes a reactant in reaction 2) the net energy change in the transformation is -350 (let's just say kcal/mol for units).  

For glucose, I've shown the net reaction here.  (*The molecular weight of glucose is about 180 g/mol, and if we use the 4 Cal/gram average, each 180 grams of glucose metabolized to carbon dioxide and water provides about 720 "Calories In".)   Some of those calories go to generate ATP -- to eventually fuel the functions of every cell in our bodies including muscle contractions, nerve impulses, molecular synthesis and breakdown, etc. -- and some will be released as heat -- which as I've stated many times now, is not a waste product in a warm blooded human.

What Feinman seems to be suggesting is that substrate cycling between free glucose and stored glycogen somehow reduces the amount of energy that dietary glucose adds to the body.  I think the simple schematic above shows how this is not the case.  The glucose ↔ glycogen pathway is not part of the glucose metabolism (breakdown) pathway.  So if glucose is stored as glycogen, the body provides ATP "calories" to do so -- Calories Out.  The ~720 calories are still in that glucose bound up as glycogen, we didn't lose those Calories In.  The same would go, by the way, for the free fatty acid + glycerol ↔ triglyceride cycling that continually occurs in the body.  Such cycling is not part of the metabolism of fatty acids to carbon dioxide and water.  It bears repeating that the energy cost of gluconeogenesis would also be CO from the body, and when that glucose is eventually metabolized, if the substrate came from the diet, we have CI.  If the substrate came from the body (e.g. broken down protein), then it would be CO.  The energy cost of de novo lipogenesis would be CO, and since acetyl-CoA generally comes from the diet, thus the substrate was dietary in origin, when the fatty acids are metabolized the energy would be CI.  

The preceding discussion is easier to think of in the black box!  We "count" the calories when they are absorbed into the body CI.  They aren't really "calories" until the food molecules have been metabolized, but potential calories are just fine.  Then CO is the sum of any chemical, electrochemical or mechanical work done during the course of the living, breathing and moving about, plus whatever heat is generated in the process.    When potential CI exceeds CO, you gain mass because you store the unmetabolized molecules until needed (mostly as fat over the long term).  When fully metabolized CI do not meet CO needs, stored molecules (mostly from fat) are metabolized to do so and stored mass exits the body.

Whether most of it goes to mechanical work and a little to heat, whether you have a lot of friction and wind resistance, travel flat terrain or navigate the hills of San Fran, weed whack or power a generator, the amount of energy contained in the gasoline that is released in the (SAME) combustion remains the same. (BTW, I have a pure gas utilizing weed whacker, no oil mix, no more smoke than anything else :-) )
If you measured the environment that the machine is in, you would indeed measure the energy of that gasoline to be the same as it was going in. But the work output is completely different for each machine.
Exactly.  That is what I'm saying.
In the same line of thinking, the human body is capable of adjusting the basal metabolic rate through a series of hypothalamic circuits that alter cellular metabolism. For just a single example (and there are MANY), hypothalamic release of TRH (thyrotropin releasing hormone) to increase release of TSH in anterior pituitary increases thyroid hormones (T3/T4) which increases metabolism in every single cell especially in sympathetic neural circuitry. This effectively increases the BMR! Or to use your terms, an increase in CO.
Yes, the body will adjust CO to CI to some extent, but it doesn't change CI it changes the magnitude of the deficit or surplus. 
With low calorie diets the BMR is reduced through lowered basal release of TRH (again just a single example) . This is a conservation of energy in the face of decreased resources, an important evolutionary outcome for survival. Thus, the effect of simply lowering food intake by portion control for weight loss is blunted. The body responds correspondingly to a perceived loss of environmental resources by lowering the energy requirements.
Agreed, but this will happen if calories are reduced spontaneously or deliberately, and since carbohydrate restriction mimics starvation, it is possible that this "negative" adaptation of CO is seen with carb restriction even with caloric sufficiency.
Again, using your terms, the lowered CO results in lowered CI!
OK ... I think perhaps I see the issue here, but any confusion is cleared up by viewing calories in the way that the "paradigm" does.  In other words, although the calories aren't technically put "in" to our engine until they are required and released from their chemical bondage (see what I did there? :p ), but the calories are "in" our bodies.  To use the car analogy, the calories aren't "in" the engine to be able to do work when sitting as uncombusted fuel in the tank, but the potential calories in the gasoline are.  If we define CI as the chemical potential energy of absorbed food molecules, we can avoid any confusion.   
Thus, energy metabolism relative to food intake relative to satiety and feeding behaviors is altered as a calories out AND calories in. The body is far more dynamic than a mere weed wacker!
See, again here you are talking about irrelevant things.  Eating more increases CI because you add more.  How this supports any of Feinman's version of thermo is beyond me.    
The specific example given by Dr. Feinman is correct. The kcals conversion to ATP for a gram of glucose completely oxidized is indeed closer to 4 kcals and yielding 30 ATP per glucose. But if it gets converted to glycogen first, then for every glucose converted to glycogen there is a loss of one ATP, so those glucoses only generate 29 ATP per. This approximates a 3% loss of energy from the ATP cellular standpoint. The energy, however, is NOT lost, it leaves as unusable energy in the form of heat. This would have been measured nonetheless in an external metabolic chamber. I doubt, however, that the loss of energy to the cells (in the form of usable ATP) in that external chamber was counted.
I refer back to the discussion above.  Any ATP used for cycling is CO to the body, it does not alter the chemical potential energy added to the body (CI) when the glucose is ultimately metabolized.   Feinman's specific example is incorrect. 
Conversion of glucose to glycogen and glycogen to glucose is strongly under the influence of insulin, cortisol, and glucagon hormonal levels and glucose itself in response to blood glucose levels and neural input from brain. This aspect alone is enough to alter the basal metabolic rate and the CO. Since all of these ALSO impact satiety and feeding behavior, then the intake is also altered.
Again, that the body adapts and can alter CO is irrelevant here.  IF the BMR were altered significantly, especially to the degree some imply, and if this were altered by postprandial hormonal fluctuations, again to the extent some imply, we would see this in metabolic ward studies.  We do not.   
Part of my concern for not accounting for REFINED carbohydrates is the unusually high insulin resistance from consumption of such carbohydrates and the unusually high insulin response from lactose in dairy products.
Lactose is not particularly insulinogenic, the opposite actually.   It is the protein in dairy that appears to be responsible for dairy's insulinogenic effect.  I am not aware that refined carb is in and of itself at all related to insulin resistance, and we can add high GI carbs like potatoes and white rice to that as well.  Junky refined carbs consumed in the context of a relatively high fat (SAD is not low fat) hypercaloric diet seem to be problematic.  Context is everything.
I take no serious issue with carbohydrates found in whole foods such as fruit, but in a liquid or processed form (such as beer!) there is a high probability that insulin (and leptin resistance as well) result in problems with satiation from receptor downregulaiton in liver, brain, pancreas, muscle and immune tissues. Therefore a lower carbohydrate intake relative to other macronutrients seems prudent and indicated.
What diet is prudent and indicated is again irrelevant to this discussion.  That we tend to overeat highly palatable high carb and fat foods is CICO compliant.  But if we are looking for evidence of "quality" of calories and obesity, and since you're an ancestral guy ... I've blogged quite a bit about ancestral diets here -- what they were, not what is claimed by many in the community.

  • Probably well over 95% of all of these cultures consume a high-to-very high carb, low-to-very low fat diet which is necessarily low in saturated fat.  
  • The likely less than 5% of cultures that consume a high fat diet:
    • Masai - Only the warrior class consume a whole milk dominated diet during this phase of their lives.  They do not consume a lot of meat, and women, children and elderly consume far less milk and meat vs. warriors.  There is significant evidence that serum cholesterol levels are mitigated due to genetic adaptation and consumption of saponins.
    • Toukelou -- Consumed whole coconut which is 55% MCT and thus the diet is not nearly as high as a diet high in land herbivore meat and dairy.  (And Kitavan total fat is quite low).  Also vegetable fat with accompanying micronutrients in vegetable source, oligosaccharides, etc.
    • Inuit -- Consumed a diet very high in protein and not nearly as high in fat as erroneously claimed (45P/55F).  Cold water mammal fat is some of the least saturated around, very high in PUFA especially O3 so no comparison to SAD or "paleo" fats.
This taken together with countless controlled experiments have demonstrated that a robust GSIS is not responsible for "insulin resistance", hyperglycemia, obesity or diabetes.  Feinman misrepresents this quite often as well, especially when he wrote that embarrassing letter to JAMA about the Bray overfeeding study.  So embarrasing, he has retracted the blog post about it after what can only be described as a humiliating defeat at the hands of Nigel Kinbrum on Fredrick Hahn's Facebook wall.  Sorry I'm too busy to track down links for all of the above, but this one I blogged on here if you're interested:  The First Law of Thermo still doesn't violate The Second Law.  

With all due respect, in a dynamic metabolic system such as that found in living systems, the calories in = calories out paradigm simply does not take into account all of the responses by the organism to its environment. It is in this dynamic system that a gallon of gas in ≠ gallon of gas out.
In a dynamic metabolic system, a pound of Fat (or carb or protein) In must equal a pound of Fat (or carb or protein) Out or we gain or lose weight (mostly fat especially when small differences exist over lengthy periods).   I hope this post has not been in vain and my rationale for this has been presented more clearly. 
Most sincerely,
David Pendergrass
I would like to thank you for your considered commentary, and most especially for engaging on the issues rather than resorting to Feinman-like tactics.  I had a fairly lengthy and time consuming email exchange with him four years ago, and came away from it realizing that he is not interested in explaining his ideas to someone such as myself who has both an extensive formal education on the subject (from multi-disciplinary angles I might add) and experience applying these concepts.  Your attempts were admirable and helped me to address the ideas in greater depth.  Thank you.

It quite frankly boggles the mind that a man of Feinman's education and stature could ever write the following, as he did in an email to Dr. Eades  (this is a screenshot from my post discussing this, warning these folks bring out the snark in me, from this post):


The concept of conservation of energy is integral to many applications of physics.  Work done by dissipative forces such as air resistance and surface friction, are analogous to First Law energy terms, not entropy, which appears to be Feinman's primary error in all of this.  In chemistry, heat evolved is a First Law energy term, not energy gone poof "because Second Law".   Just continues to baffle me that he is incapable of reconciling his ideas with the types of analyses done in engineering and science applying these laws all the time, not to mention that CICO holds up extremely well in practice.  (When it doesn't, it is almost always due to compliance/reporting, but measurement error may play more of a role than it is given attention.)

In this article [please make them stop! ... but HT CharlesG anyway :-) ]  Feinman is quoted as follows:
Feinman has looked at calories from the perspective of thermodynamics—or the laws that govern heat and energy. Like Ludwig, he says the idea that calories from different macronutrient sources would have the same effect on your body is silly. Put simply, it doesn’t make sense that “a calorie is a calorie” because your body uses the energy from different foods in a variety of ways, Feinman explains.
All metabolized food molecule CI basically have three fates:
  • Generate ATP (and a few other ATP-like molecules) 
  • Generate heat
  • Excreted products of metabolism and/or very small molecules following substantial breakdown of the original food molecules
ATP is used by the body to fuel chemical reactions for "life" regardless of their source.  If something in a store costs $100, the store owner doesn't care if you got that Ben Franklin from getting lucky in the stock market, engaging in the world's oldest profession, or flipping burgers at McD's.  You give him $100, you walk out of the store the proud owner of a $100 Thingamajig.   Likewise if 100 MJ of heat is required to keep some space warm, it matters not if that is generated by an electric heater, a gas stove or a fireplace.  Heat is heat.  

What he is getting at is the likelihood of fat accumulation.  Insulin doesn't have the power to create mass out of thin air, so it is ultimately playing the role of traffic cop.  Insulin may influence the distribution of fat, and paradoxically, favor fat tissue over lean when low.  Hormones may alter CO to adapt to changes in CI, total energy expenditure on maintenance may differ with varied isocaloric diets, but neither of these has been demonstrated (and again would favor carbs over fat vis a vis obesity).  No, mostly what dictates fat accumulation is chronic energy excesses, and since fatty acids are:
  • Already fatty acids and require almost no energy to store
  • The most energy dense (e.g. most energy, least mass to move around) so there are virtually unlimited storage sites
  • The last macronutrient to be burned for energy 
If you're really going to point fingers at a sole macronutrient, it's fat.  It's a paradigm that fits both scientific principles, epidemiological evidence and good old fashioned observation and common sense.  Thanks for reading :-)

Comments

charles grashow said…
This is a link to the PP presentation


http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0LEV0njMtRTi2AADuhXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzdmZvZDkwBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDVklQNDk1XzEEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1406444388/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fappetiteregulation.files.wordpress.com%2f2013%2f08%2fthe-physiology-and-biochemistry-of-the-paleolithic-diet-ahs-13-with-markings.pptx/RK=0/RS=AAulnQ0RwVQi4.z2gu9zY9k77AA-
charles grashow said…
http://paleomagonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/PMR_Episode-Six-Transcript.pdf

Plus

His talk at AHS12
http://vimeo.com/55471861

Paleo Nutrition and the Brain

Abstract:
Neural pathways and gut hormones interact to control hunger and body metabolism in response to food intake. Such interactions are modulated by stress, food addiction and the obesogenic environment. In the obesogenic environment cues by advertising and cultural norms of eating continue to cause specific neural pathways to be activated that result in overeating. Additionally, highly processed grains and added sugars cause a positive feedback response that further activates orexigenic pathways in the brain. Paleo Nutrition advocates a return to pre-agricultural food intake that supports proper signaling in the brain and restoration of neural pathways to promote a healthier lifestyle.

Bio:
Dr. Pendergrass is the director of the Applied Science Professional Science Masters and Molecular Biology programs at the University of Kansas. He conducts a yearly seminar on appetite regulation. He is the author of the Smartest Loser: The Paleo Pathway, a comprehensive weight loss program designed for the general public. Dr. Pendergrass has founded the Paleo Nutrition Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation that seeks to forward Paleolithic nutrition principals to health care providers and the general public by offering CME and CEU credits, and to solicit funding for primary research activities in Paleolithic scientific principles.
Greta said…
Read about 2,4-DNP, an uncoupling agent that lets people lose weight when eating a lot. There's a minor side effect in that some of them die, but what's a little mortality when you're losing weight. If you don't drop dead, you'll be able to eat a lot of calories while losing weight. There's no reason to think the body doesn't use similar uncouplers (UCPs), and other energy wasters like futile cycles, to try to maintain weight at different calorie levels.

Living systems are a lot more complex than bomb calorimeters.

When heat is produced by such energy wasters, it is indeed a waste product.
carbsane said…
Greta, I know all about DNP. (and uncoupling and futile cycles)

There's a minor side effect in that some of them die, but what's a little mortality when you're losing weight.

Haha. They die because they literally cook their cells. Once the reducing equivalents get to the electron transport chain, the "calories in" are all accounted for. It's like charging your car battery and placing a short across the terminals. Car won't start and the short gets very hot as all energy is discharged to heat.

CICO maintained. Nobody is saying that CICO are completely independent variables in a living system. They are not. Heck, in advanced engines with sensors, they wouldn't be in many machines either. Still has nothing to do with Feinman's arguments which do not even address this.

What are your thoughts on his ideas about substrate cycling and CICO? Am I wrong?
carbsane said…
May watch Vimeo later. But wow to this PPT!
John Smith said…
From a quantum perspective our bodies do not function differently in a metabolic ward but the "CI" is totally different because the CI is being closely observed (it is the very purpose of the metabolic ward) and as we have previously established the fundamental nature of CI depends on the degree of observation, this is why metabolic ward studies produce different results than self-reported studies using committed alcoholics as subjects.

In the latter case the subjects can't even remember what they ate due to frequent blackouts rendering the CI totally unobserved, resulting in far greater weight loss regardless of the magnitude of CI.

I must admit that I find this continual rejection of the Copenhagen interpretation of holistic nutritional science to be totally baffling, coming from purported scientists.
Gordon said…
"Where does the energy go?"!!! We're talking high school physics.

Thanks for the laugh.

Gordon
carbsane said…
Exactly!
Greta said…
> What are your thoughts on his ideas about substrate cycling and CICO?
Am I wrong?



I think Feinman's reasoning is sound.



This book is a good read for anyone interested in thermodynamics in living
systems:



http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Thermodynamics-Donald-T-Haynie/dp/0521711347/ref=sr_1_1
Greta said…
Of course cycling doesn't change the calories in glucose. But we don't care about the calories in food as much as we care about the calories we can use. Sawdust contains calories. But we can't metabolize it.

The second law says that no process is 100% efficient. So the more times something cycles to something else and back, the more usable energy is lost and entropy increases.
carbsane said…
Of course cycling doesn't change the calories in glucose.

So Feinman's reasoning is not sound after all. Thanks.

But we don't care about the calories in food as much as we care about the calories we can use. Sawdust contains calories. But we can't metabolize it.

Neither did Atwater. His factors are for metabolizable energy for stuff humans consume for energy.

The second law says that no process is 100% efficient. So the more times something cycles to something else and back, the more usable energy is lost and entropy increases.



1, The losses Feinman is talking about are not entropy, they are the energy input/requirement for each glycogen synthesis part of the cycle.


2. If a system is in chemical equilibrium, what then? Entropy loss?
Kindke said…
Take it from someone who has used 2,4-DNP extensively, I still didnt lose weight on this until I cut the carbs. Although it does make you seemingly immune to weight gain, I could gorge on the most unhealthy junk food imaginable and not gain an ounce.

I would also point out 2,4-DNP increases appetite, I would estimate by about 500-700 calories per day.

In my experience I would say 2,4-DNP is NOT a magic bullet for curing obesity. Definitely not. People get vastly differing weight loss results with it. ( infact some reports from the 1930's papers mentioned some people didnt lose any weight ). Death from hyperthermia is the LEAST of your worries with this thing. There are far nastier consequences like peripheral neuropathy, complete loss of taste, etc.

You can really feel how your body goes into to overdrive on this drug, you can find yourself completely out of breath just sitting in the chair ( because it forces high levels of fat oxidation and fat needs alot of oxygen to be burned. ) also its impossible to relax while on it aswell. Insomnia also common, most nights I would wake up in a pool of sweat and the whole bed would be like someone poured a bucket of water on it.
carbsane said…
Your experience with DNP and appetite is similar to what many experience with cold thermogenesis. Makes sense to me as these would both favor heat production over ATP which would deplete cells of ATP (albeit probably mildly). There are certain things I'm not willing to even entertain, DNP is one of them.



Insomnia and night sweats. Sounds like menopause!
Greta said…
Living systems are not at chemical equilibrium.
StellaBarbone said…
Dr. Pendergrass has twisted himself up in knots trying to use science to defend a statement that was originally meant to be metaphorical. In GT's original use, the idea that CICO doesn't matter merely meant that low carb diets, through some as yet unelucidated mechanism, caused reduced intake and increased output of energy. The diet was supposed to bring about energy balance without the irritating need to count calories. That's a claim that clearly doesn't work for everybody (or for most), but it's an entirely different claim from Dr. P's labored attempt to define the limits of his metabolic black box so that CICO is literally untrue. He needs to take a deep breath and a step back. The rest of us can then go back to making fun of the amateur "scientists".
MacSmiley said…
Wow in a good way or a bad way? I'm getting "resource removed" message.
charles grashow said…
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/66/4/845.long
Age relations
of cardiovascular risk factors in a traditional
Melanesian society: the Kitava Study

"Although we
consider our study population representative of the general Kitavan population, we are slightly more concerned as to whether their dietary
staples really correspond with those of preagricultural humans. Tubers,
fruit, and fish would all have been available to preagricultural humans
but coconut, which is rich in saturated fat, was probably not."

So much for the paleo crowd and their fascination with coconuts!
charles grashow said…
http://www.theiflife.com/carb-diets-overrated-part-ii-kitavan-okinawa-diets/
"T.L. Cleave, who wrote an important book called The Saccharine Disease. In this book, Cleave notes that the rural Zulu of Africa (in the 1950s) were in good health on a diet comprised of 90% carbohydrate calories. In contrast, the urban Zulu ate less carbohydrates (81%), yet had more diseases than the rural Zulu. Cleave concluded that the amount of carbs being eaten by the two groups didn’t matter so much as the types of carbs. This seemed to make all the difference: the rural population ate maize and root vegetables while the city-dwellers consumed refined, industrialized carbs, such as sugar and white flour.

..it’s not as simple as whole foods vs. refined foods — it’s also a matter of the qualities of the foods. To illustrate this, let’s evaluate two of the evils that Cleave proclaims to be the cause of modern man’s health demise. On one hand we have white flour: a starch — also known chemically as a polysaccharide — which is broken down to glucose in the body. Sugar, on the other hand, is a disaccharide with a significant difference: it’s composed of glucose and fructose, which the body handles quite differently than it does starch.

A high flux of fructose to the liver, the main organ capable of metabolizing this simple carbohydrate, disturbs normal hepatic carbohydrate metabolism leading to two major consequences… perturbations in glucose metabolism and glucose uptake pathways, and a significantly enhanced rate of de novo lipogenesis and TG [triglyceride] synthesis, driven by the high flux of glycerol and acyl portions of TG molecules coming from fructose catabolism. These metabolic disturbances appear to underlie the induction of insulin resistance commonly observed with high fructose feeding in both humans and animal models."
Screennamerequired said…
You're making more sense than Jack Cruise did most of the time. If you start a blog and keep on elaborating on your theories you'll most likely gain a bunch of followers and eventually morph into a diet internet guru.
carbsane said…
Well, there's nothing about living vs. non-living systems that would make them at chemical equilibrium or not Greta. Most reactions in the body are not equilibrium reactions, but we do have some.

This wasn't my point with #2. You are claiming energy-losses/entropy-increases with every cycle of glucose ↔ glycogen . So I am asking, what about a system in chemical equilibrium? Are those systems continually losing energy to entropy increases?
MacSmiley said…
This is what I'm getting, Charles.
MacSmiley said…
This is what I'm getting on my iPhone, Charles.
Lighthouse Keeper said…
That misspelling of Jack's surname proves to be most apt considering his now infamous quayside comeuppance.
charles grashow said…
when you search yahoo enter this

The Physiology and Biochemistry of the Paleolithic Diet for Weight Reduction

The first result should be the link to the PPT
charles grashow said…
Some interesting papers for the group

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20021127&slug=eat27
The Eating Paradox: How We Tolerate Food

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3090647/
The Control of Food Intake: Behavioral versus Molecular Perspectives

http://www.ilsi.org/Documents/2013%20AM%20Presentation/Woods.pdf
Neural Systems Involved in Food Intake: An Integrative Overview
John Smith said…
I am not interested in starting a blog, I am interested in starting a movement.

Quantum Eating will put an end to the diet charlatans once and for all, because I have the power of science behind me.
Rosie May said…
Think about the merchandising potential though, Quark Bars, Proton Powder, Neutrino Proof Coffee and Quantum Leap Five Finger Shoes.
Rosie May said…
LOL! Brandishing a bogus stick of dynamite on a conference podium probably already had him in Homeland Security's bad books before the low carb cruise fiasco anyway.
MacSmiley said…
Sorry to be late to the party, but Jack who?
Lighthouse Keeper said…
Jack Kruse. Brace yourself then type his name into Evelyn's search box!
charles grashow said…
I like infecting himself with MRSA and then undergoing surgery without an anesthetic.
John Smith said…
My marketing slogan is going to be "If You Aren't Eating Quantum, You Suck"
MacSmiley said…
Can't get the search function to work on my iPhone. So I googled him. Found something about a retracted TEDx talk?

http://paleodrama.tumblr.com/post/44257147920/kruses-tedx-talk-missing

How about retracting Peter Attia and Nina Teicholz while they're at it?
carbsane said…
Hehehe y'all ... Just replying here to all. Jack Kruse is a total quack. In his infinite wisdom, Robb Wolf thought to make him a leader of the movement and when the guy went nuts he was like "wha who me , I have blood hound BS nose" -- never saw it coming?! Just like his "ringleader" RD was anorexic -- eh , she fooled him and everyone (except anyone without paleo $$ ties who had eyes and half a brain).


You had a doctor claim he smeared himself with MRSA . Why this wasn't reported by TEDx organizers to appropriate medical authorities is beyond me. Why this talk was ever broadcast is beyond me. Why even someone as medically ignorant as Jimmy Moore should have known that after that stunt, the guy didn't belong on his cruise. It has been demonstrated many times over that none of those Jack accused (including me) had anything to do with this feaking circus sideshow joke. But AHS in all its wisdom still wouldn't rescind his invite to speak at AHS12. Oh but someone in that organization was mighty threatened that I might do something irrational while talking about legumes the following year .... (there are some good people in AHS, there are more whack jobs, unfortunately)


I don't think Jack ever made it on the boat. I think it was a hoax concocted by Jack and his buddy (original Paleo FX partner, no longer after the first one) Kevin Cottrell for publicity or whatever. It was sick, and the paleo community's ultimate response -- especially in retrospect -- was sicker.


If you have loved ones in Mississippi, warn them about John "Jack" Jude Kruse, MD. He still practices medicine and cuts into people.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
Feinman has overlooked the fact that the body's temperature is regulated by a Negative Feed-Back control loop.

If you go into a centrally-heated room with the wall stat set to 20°C and turn on a 2kW fan heater, what happens to the room temperature?

Nothing. The fan heater adds 2kW to the room, but the wall stat reduces the power output from the radiators by 2kW.

Ditto, dietary efficiency. As the power produced by different diets varies, UCP's are up/down-regulated, so as to maintain a constant body temperature.

∴ Dietary Efficiency is irrelevant.
carbsane said…
Exactly. Been saying this for a while now. Also as you mentioned in another comment, the adaptations of the thermogenic sort are exaggerated in rodents, and they have a ton of brown fat to total body mass for this purpose. In larger animals, it seems that "insulation" and substrate cycling "waste" makes up a much larger part of the thermal regulation component.
Sanjeev Sharma said…
I always must + my tupp¢ lest we forget; the one who came out the worst from that kerfuffle was Dick Drinkoley.
Rosie May said…
The last straw for Dick and what made him turn his back on Jack was jack posting a picture of his back! Sounds like a nursery rhyme but Kruse put out some photo of the head and torso of a bodybuilder taken from behind claiming it was actually a picture of he himself. Dick knew otherwise and blew a gasket.
Sanjeev Sharma said…
I filed that under "convenient excuse" and sunk RN further

for Nikoley baying doesn't do it for me

https://www.google.ca/search?q=braying&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb&gfe_rd=cr&ei=_7HaU5zxA8uC8QfYjICACg
Sanjeev Sharma said…
> "Where does the energy go?"!!!


On vacation
Nigel Kinbrum said…
If you take enough Epsom Salts, you'll definitely start a movement! ;-) :-D