The Carb-Sane Asylum

After reading the new book   The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina ry T au eicholz more throroughly, I became rather frustrated.  How does a book that contains so many glaring errors even make it into print?  This book is being promoted as discussing how scientists got everything all wrong, one in particular.  It discusses nutritional science and recommendations gone wrong.  It firmly places the blame for obesity on advice to reduce dietary fat.  In doing so, however, Teicholz commits far more egregious errors than any she would like you to believe have occurred.  So I'll do a revolving post, adding them in here as the mood strikes, rather than clutter the blog with tons of posts.   My hope is that this post doesn't end up to be of epic length, and that this book turns out to be a flash in the pan that fades quickly from memory.    Each new entry will bump the post and be at the top with previous entries to follow, most recent fi

TO SUM IT UP WITH AN IMAGE UPDATE!!!  I've found a genuine, real-life, actual error in Teicholz's book.  She spelled the author's name incorrectly in her notes.

Nina Teicholz is fond of portraying the modern American diet as "near-vegetarian", and that we need to "return" to our meat eating ways of a century ago.  But even her most exaggerated statistic lists meat intake at 200 lbs per year.   [200 lbs/year]  * [16 ounces/lb] ÷ [365 days/year] =  8.77 ounces/day  or 0.55 pounds or 250 grams of meat per day Now to pick a fatty meat ... Prime Rib This works out to just under 800 fat calories and just over 200 protein calories, roughly 75% fat, 25% protein.  Now you have around 1000 of your daily calories.  What else was on the plate to provide the additional 1000 to 1500 or 2000 if the men from the Minnesota Starvation Study intakes are used for reference?

I have long been troubled by the "they ate nose to tail", and all of the fatty organs.  By FAR, the most common organ mentioned is the liver.  Ahem.  The liver is not supposed to be fatty, and I don't think these people are really so hypocritical as to eat foie gras and claim that's what they mean.  Well .... As the fauxtrage over the not-yet-released 2015 Dietary Guidelines rages on over on Marion Nestle's blog , George carries the fatty offal flag in to blame American health issues on our Orwellian fear of the fat in organ meats ... at the hands of the DGAC.  Yeah, if by that he means we've been avoiding tongue, tripe and brains (classic American fare!), I guess he has a point.  Actually, as you'll see, many of these meet the DGAC's definition of "lean" (< 10 grams per 100 grams weight), but are not "low fat" by percentage.    So just a little sampling of some specialty/organ meats.  You can click, resize in browser,

So in No Big Surprise fashion, Nina Teicholz, is back at it again, this time in the New York Times with an editorial.  It's bad enough that she has mangled past history, and the science, beyond recognition, but this time she is distorting (one might justifiably use a stronger word such as LIE at this point) current events.   The  Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee  is out.   (It is important to realize that these are not the actual guidelines, but the DGAC report, the official guidelines will not be issued by the USDA and HHS until sometime later this year if not early next). Who did the NYT tap to comment?   Someone with ANY knowledge of nutritional science?  No.  Nina Teicholz.  Seriously, Gray Lady.  This was clearly commissioned in advance, you couldn't do any better for your readers?  Is business that bad?  I guess so.   The Government's Bad Dietary Advice   by Nina Teicholz Let's start with the big fat lie, and I'

A Continuation of  The Mechanisms of the Glycemic Index: A Fatty Acid Roller Coaster?  .... Quick summary of Ludwig's mechanism for high-GI making us fat v. 2002: High GI carb causes glucose and insulin to spike and fatty acids to plummet early on.  Then glucose plummets resulting in hypoglycemia and counterregulatory hormones kick in.  These bring glucose back or slightly elevated and cause fatty acid levels to rebound to levels reminiscent of a long fast making the person hungry (hypoglycemia) and hungrier (feeling fasted) so they eat more.     The Mechanism of High-GI ~ 2012 by Davis S. Ludwig In 2012, with colleague (often listed as a co-lead investigator) Cara Ebbeling and others, Ludwig published:   Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance .  In  JAMA .  I only mention this study here for two reasons.  First, to demonstrate that the 2002 review paper was not by then forgotten.  Second, as will be discussed towar

Almost all of these are for 100 grams fat.  For comparison only.  Click on image and resize in browser.  Compiled from nutritiondata.com.

... or at least stop lying about him and promoting bad research reviews. Around a year ago, a "commissioned and internally peer reviewed" Editorial appeared in the British Medical Journal 's off-shoot Open Heart online journal.   The author, James J DiNicolantonio is identified as a Cardiovascular research scientist and PharmD, and he is also an Associate Editor of the journal.     

There are several recurring themes, mostly from low carb advocates of the "fat burning is best" bent, that keep ... well ... recurring!  Perhaps foremost among these is this concept of "internal starvation".  From Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories :   "F or the past century, the conspicuous alternative to the positive-caloric-balance hypothesis has always been, as Pennington, Astwood, and Hilde Bruch suggested, that obesity is caused by a defect in the regulation of fat metabolism. At the risk of repetition, it is important to say this is, by definition, a disorder of fat accumulation, not a disorder of overeating. For whatever reason , the release of fat or its combustion is impeded, or the deposition or synthesis of fat is promoted, as Astwood said, and the result is obesity. That in turn will cause a deficit of calories elsewhere in the body— Astwood’s “internal starvation”— and thus a compensatory hunger and sedentary behavior.

Context is important ... always.  But never so important, it seems, as when we're talking about fructose.  The vast majority of studies used to demonize fructose involve either: Very high doses, and/or An increase in energy intake or overall energy surplus Doing some math, let's use some 500 cal/day increments, a few percentage levels, and  a traditionally sugar sweetened beverage, Sierra Mist ( 26g sugar in 8 oz , or 3.25 g/oz).

This post will focus on some statements made by a researcher who I've dubbed "America's GI Man", Dr. David Ludwig, in this review: The Glycemic Index: Physiological Mechanisms Relating to Obesity, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease , JAMA , 2002. A Note Regarding Definitive Statements in Review Papers As I found myself getting sucked down the Pubmed rabbit hole that is the GI, it was really this paper that took me past that point of no return.  I have taken a screenshot of the top of the PDF format of the article to convey a few things, and at this point I'm beginning to understand how it is that doctors can get sucked into bad paradigms when their "prestigious journals" put out "SPECIAL COMMUNICATION"s from their "CLINICIAN'S CORNER"

As I have quite a few tangential thoughts going on, in search of a cohesive theme here, I've decided I'd just throw up a few short posts, and perhaps come back and put them together at some later date. The Glycemic Index is credited to Canadian researcher David Jenkins, and originated, near as I can tell, with this paper:   Glycemic index of foods: a physiological basis for carbohydrate exchange
. INTRODUCTION :   Recent work has suggested that the carbohydrate exchange lists that have regulated the diets of many diabetics for over three decades may not reflect the physiological effect of foods. Such factors as food form, dietary fiber, and the nature of the carbohydrate have been shown to have a marked influence on the postprandial glycemia and allowances cannot be made for these in lists which take into account only the available carbohydrate content of foods. Currently, very good blood glucose control has been advocated for diabetics to reduce the incidence of lon