Quotable Quotes: Taubes the Radical!
Due to a recent article in Wired, I think this (6/30/14) post could use a hearty bump. These words were uttered just over a decade ago by Gary Taubes.
THE COLLAPSE OF A $40 MILLION NUTRITION SCIENCE CRUSADE
Seth Roberts: But you'd seen Nobel-Prize-winning physicists get it very wrong.
Gary Taubes: But what they were getting wrong were subtle; yes, they'd believe incorrectly that they'd discovered elementary particles, but what they were doing was a real subtle game. What they were misinterpreting were extraordinarily subtle aspects of the data.
This obesity screw-up is fundamental; it’s like a grade school error in the interpretation of the laws of thermodynamics.
And I made it as well, up until five years ago. I never thought differently.
But what radicalized me is that they don't care. If they successfully ward off my threat to their beliefs, then I'm in a very dangerous place. Then it's, like I said, where I end up a bitter demented old man, one of those guys who's muttering to himself all the time that they, the establishment, didn't listen to him…
I don't mean to wish ill on a person, but if he doesn't end up a muttering demented old man, it means that fantasy wins out over fact, and sensationalism over science.
Comments
At least his looks give some subliminal indication of the quality of his advice. Nevertheless this ***** guy is omnipresent on TV and presented as an "expert".
http://www.beobachter.ch/fileadmin/dateien/bilder-editionen/2011/04/Gewuerze_01.jpg
> If they successfully ward off my threat to their beliefs
[0] many of his supporting pet theories already have been 100% debunked
Who ever claimed saturated fat was the main focus of all chronic diseases anyway? False dichtomy alert.
If LC diets were the solution, then at least those who adamantly support them and follow them would all be svelte ambassadors for the truth. It's just not so.
(I could be wrong, but such an intake may have something to do with maintaining that presence of substantiality...)
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/dark-chocolate-and-artery-function/
There's more involved in the benefit of darker chocolate than the butterfat in the milk. It has to do with better absorption of the beneficial compounds from dark chocolate, or better yet, cocoa powder, than milk chocolate.
The New Atkins diet is much better than the original version, but it's still hard to sustain and in longer term follow up it does no better than any other diet for weight maintenance.
The idea that RDs tell diabetics to eat Twinkies and Frosted
Flakes because they are "high in carbohydrates" or "fat free" is just slander.
And with this same good-bad-fat filter, Reaven followed Keys in recommending the common low-sat fat-full-of-Omega-6 plant oils:
corn, safflower, peanut, soybean, sunflower.
Unlike Keys, Reaven did regard olive oil as particularly healthful; Keys regarded olive oil as being "in an intermediate position", along with peanut oil--that is to say, not among the "fats to be favored" [i.e., cottonseed, corn, sunflower, safflower and sesame oil], but better than "the fats to be used with discretion" [i.e., the animal fats of course, but also the plant fats of coconut oil and cocoa-fat].
(if I'm not mistaken, I believe I read that Ancel made his salad
dressings with corn oil. Also used in his cookie recipes).
[Reaven. Syndrome X; the Silent Killer (2000); pp 80-83]
[Ancel Keys. Eat Well and Stay Well. Rev ed. (1963); p.56]
I have never cooked with anything other than olive oil or butter despite my pro-science leanings. I was unaware that safflower oil was desirable (my nutritional guru, Julia C. didn't use it.) Tasteless vegetable oil is for oiling baking pans and seasoning cast iron. However, the primal/paleo/Taubesian panic over omega-6s makes as much sense as earlier fears about eggs or their fears about the effects of microwaves on food.
("people don't get fat because they overeat, they overeat because they got fat." Oh really? and how did that happen? "...protein and fat don't make us fat, ONLY the carbs do..." (my emphasis) [Taubes. Why We Get Fat; p.211]
Or this: "...if you replace the carbs in your diet with an equal quantity of lard...it will make you healthier ." [p.189-190] Lard IS a good fat-(especially ideal @ 50:50 with butter in pie crusts!), but I can't see how we can avoid regarding this claim as other than being prima facie preposterous.
As the great E.V. McCollum wrote (back in the 1920's), people forget that every morsel they swallow [protein-carb-or-fat] is something the body has to deal with, has to put somewhere, has to do something with.
Carbsane used the term "overconsumption"; I like the term "nutrient overload." Powerful confirmation that overconsumption/nutrient overload--and NOT carbohydrate per se--is the culprit behind metabolic syndrome/Syndrome X has come from the remarkable reversals of pathological metabolic states achieved by intermittent fasting interventions.
That maintenance problem, though, is not due to macronutrient selection. It's because we are immersed in an easy food culture. We're targeted by clever advertisers, we're now in the habit of eating almost continuously, prepared food is available readily, cheaply and in absurd portions. In her day Julia C. appeared for an hour once per week on a fuzzy UHF channel, now you can stimulate your appetite 24/7 in high-def.
see: Megumi Hatori, et al. Time -Restricted Feeding Without Reducing Calorie Intake Prevents Metabolic Diseases in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet.
Cell Metabolism (2012) May 17
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3491655/pdf/nihms-378808.pdf
"To test whether obesity and metabolic diseases result from High-fat diets (HFD) or disruption of metabolic cycles, we subjected mice to either ad lib or time-restricted feeding (tRF) of a HFD for 8hours/day. Mice under tRF consume EQUIVALENT CALORIES from HFD as those with ad lib access, yet are protected against obesity, hyperinsulinemia, hepatic steatosis, inflammation and have improved motor coordination."
[WOW].
And this: "Most remarkably, despite equivalent energy intake from the SAME nutrient source, the high-fat time-restricted diet mice were protected against excess body weight gain that affected the ad-lib diet mice, suggesting that the temporal feeding pattern reprograms the molecular mechanisms of energy metabolism and body weight regulation."
[WOW]
So while calories-in-calories-out (CICO) remains the main story, apparently it is not the whole story.
http://www.originmagazine.com/2013/05/25/dr-andrew-weil-on-changing-the-current-paradigm-in-healthcare/
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