The Carb-Sane Asylum

I normally only share this stuff on social media these days, but the hypocrisy and irony here is too much.   This book is stocked full of ironic and just downright hilarious contradictions and inconsistencies.  So many ... not enough time ... :-) Taubes post:   Catching up on lost time – the Ancestral Health Symposium, food reward, palatability, insulin signaling and carbohydrates… Part II(b) Kindle Location for Teicholz quote:  652-657

As I have been trying to wrap my head around the abomination that is The Big Fat Surprise and the buzz/media blitz surrounding the book, it occurred to me that far too much of the conversation surrounding nutritional research involves the use of one or both of two tactics.   It struck me how this book embodies so much of what I've written about here when discussing specific nutritional research studies.   All too often, a study purporting to investigate a particular diet did not actually study that diet.  This can be through poor interpretation of the diet by the researchers, but more often through poor implementation and compliance by subjects.  This happens almost universally with seemingly no quality control over what is constitutes an acceptable diet in order to use terms like low fat, high fat, low carb, high protein, Mediterranean, paleo, etc.etc. in the title.  

A bump of sorts to an Asylum Classic.  Yes folks, the evil $ appeared in Gary Taubes name for ... what? ... the second time and second-to-last if not the last time, way back when.   I think the title of this post holds ;-) Since that time, Dr. Eades has used the same analysis in his AHS11 presentation :  Nouvelle Paleo: Caving in to Carbs?   (this begins at the 22:44 mark in the video) .  More recently, and the reason for this bump, Nina Teicholz shows this study on a slide in her TEDx East talk   (18:50 mark as she says "a tremendous amount of research done") , and makes multiple references to it in her book,  The Big Fat Surprise .    I'll be discussing this egregious misuse of science here shortly.  So without further ado, "you can't eat carbs, you can basically exercise as much gluttony as you want as long you're eating fat and protein"     ~ Gary Taubes

My friend Seth over at Science of Nutrition blog (check it out!) wrote the following post:   FAT IN THE DIET AND MORTALITY FROM HEART DISEASE: A PLAGIARISTIC NOTE .  I encourage you to go read it, but it is long, so in case you don't have the time at the moment, let me summarize my take away.  It's quite a bit more complicated than this, but he lays out the case that a diverse group of people has essentially plagiarized Gary Taubes (from GCBC) .   On

Investigative journalist, Nina Teicholz has written a book extolling the virtues of dietary fat (and saturated fat) and perpetuating the lie that is Americans on a low fat diet.  She calls it The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet . Don't waste your money.  Spread the word so others can save as well. I'm not going to review this entire book because I cannot stomach reading it.  It is a poor follow-up to her friend and manuscript reviewer Gary Taubes' Good Calories Bad Calories ... and its what ... over 6 years late in the game?? In the Highlight reel: Teicholz claim Americans went from eating 43% fat to 33% fat.  Unreferenced assertion.  I.just.can't. We will now know Ancel Keys middle name is Benjamin.  As if referring to him by his full real name makes the demonizing better somehow -- like scolding a child.  Pathetic.   I will have much to say about Keys in the coming week as regards revisionist history by so-called i

BA, MA politics and history ... or so she tells us on Twitter. It is a really tough watch, but she manages to mangle the Pima and the Masai, says Atkins ate like a Masai warrior, calls Keys by his first middle and last name like a child needing scolding, oh .... and she drags out Shai.  I'll fill in some links tomorrow if I have time. Book reviewed by Wheat Belly, Grain Brain and Eades even came out of retirement to promote the book Big Fat Surprise.  Amazing.

You know who you are. Please ...  I have but one favor to ask.   Can you just stop making shit up?    That's all.  It's simple.  If eating a particular way works for you, then say so, and be done with it.  Don't go making up scientific "facts" for why when you just made it up.  Really, it's OK to believe that turtle toenails added to your mammoth toe jam smoothie improves your brain function if you want to.  It's fine with me if you think adding a half a stick of butter and a glob of coconut oil to your coffee is healthy, but a packet of sugar will kill you.  Go right ahead and believe you're a ketoadapted obligate fat burning beastie caveboymanchild if you insist.   Be my guest and believe that grains rot your brains, wheat swoles your waist and gluten is Satan's excrement.  Just stop scamming other people with this nonsense in the name of science. Thankyou. P.S.  I know I said one favor, but while I'm asking ... Could you also qui

A Randomized Pilot Trial of a Moderate Carbohydrate Diet Compared to a Very Low Carbohydrate Diet in Overweight or Obese Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus or Prediabetes We compared the effects of two diets on glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and other health-related outcomes in overweight or obese adults with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes (HbA1c>6%).  We randomized participants to either a medium carbohydrate, low fat, calorie-restricted, carbohydrate counting diet (MCCR) consistent with guidelines from the American Diabetes Association (n = 18) or a very low carbohydrate, high fat, non calorie-restricted diet whose goal was to induce nutritional ketosis (LCK, n = 16). We excluded participants receiving insulin; 74% were taking oral diabetes medications. Groups met for 13 sessions over 3 months and were taught diet information and psychological skills to promote behavior change and maintenance. At 3 months: mean HbA1c level was unchanged from baseline in the MCCR

Hey folks ... I don't have the time to blog on this today, but I wanted to post Jimmy Moore's interview in what I'm calling the 2014 Reversing Diabetes ^ Knowledge Summit. This video (audio) will only be live at this link until 10am EST tomorrow morning.  Anyone who thinks I have been unfair or maligned Mr. Moore by spreading misinformation should listen to this. UPDATED:  Read these posts about Jimmy's "reactive hypoglycemia"  You might find them enlightening. Dealing With Possible Reactive Hypoglycemia--One Month Later The LC Doc was ... drumroll ........ Dr. Eric Westman. Post-Low-Carb Meal 5-Hour Glucose Tolerance Test Produces Rather Odd Results That meal was like 1000 calories of several eggs, butter cheese and a Chick Fil A chicken breast.   ← the obvious culprit in his metabolic woes!!! The above are from mid 2008.

Is it just me or has the IHC* gone just totally off even its own loosely secured rails lately?   Between the summits by "functional medicine" practitioners to tell you everything your doctor is hiding from you (a silence bought and paid for by Big Pharma and apparently the only thing they learn in medical school) and this resistant starch vs. keto war waging out there ... it is truly nuts.   I simply don't have time to cover it all between "real life" and projects in the works.   But ... Have you heard?  Good old Fat Head is eating more carbs these days, including resistant starch supplementation, and following the lead of an unlikely diet/health guru in one former astrophysicist named Paul Jaminet, author (with his wife Shou Ching in name only it would appear) of Perfect Health Diet .  It's quite an about face for the former comedian and mocker of starches. you can click to enlarge

If you've been around the internet the past couple weeks or so, you're aware that it is apparently Summit Season!  Lots of videos (really audios) that you get to listen to free as a marketing pitch.  Nothing inherently wrong with this, but many of the recent ones have really gotten to the point of ridiculousness.  I mean Jack Kruse was supposed to do a talk for a weight loss summit ... along side Jaminet, Bowden and the Alphabet Soup Couple (the Caltons)?  Ben Greenfield?  Mr. Keto-bonking triathlete is everywhere these days -- fat loss, thyroid, diabetes?  This man sells superencoder bracelets and magic water drops !  What the ......    So yesterday, the " 2014 Reversing Diabetes Summit " began hosted by "Dr." Mowll, and ... get this ... Jimmy Moore.  Forget Jimmy's lack of any credentials or credibility to be hosting such an event, let's look at Dr. Mowll : He graduated from Brandywine High School, the University of Delaware, and Life Univ

Hey all!  I wrote another article for the current issue of Alan Aragon's Research Review.    The Compelling Case Against "Food Addiction" My article is about food addiction -- focusing heavily on sugar addiction studies that are taken grossly out of context these days!  I present, as the title states, a compelling case against the concept.   I'm quite proud to be the lead article once again, as I was the last time . The AARR is a monthly subscription and whenever you join up you have access to all of the archives.  While aimed at the fitness world, there is always significant content that may interest readers of this blog, so I encourage you to sign on up!

Forget the paleo diet for a moment here. Let's face it, nothing in the modern interpretations ever really came close to whatever that was anyway. Forget hunter gatherers for a moment here.  Let's face it, these cultures are isolated and generally irrelevant in every way to the "modern" agricultural world. Let's even forget the diets of cultures around the globe from 300 or so years ago on back.  Most corners of the world were "contaminated" by trade and transplantation of foodstuffs, livestock and plant species not indigenous to various regions.    No ... I'm talking about traditional regional diets that persisted in practice from the relatively recent past -- within a few hundred years -- through to a few generations ago.   image link How about such diets in cultures that occupied regions that we now call the United States of America?  One of the most disgusting (IMO) things about the so-called "ancestral" health advo