The Carb-Sane Asylum

What happens when you take 25 overweight-to-obese, type 2 diabetics and: increase their carbohydrate intake by around 100 g/day   increase their absolute carbohydrate intake by 45%  increase their carbohydrate percentage in the diet by over 25% of total calories have them consume over 300 grams of carbohydrate in a day decrease their caloric intake modestly (< 200 cal/day*) cut 50 g/day of fat from their diet reduce absolute fat intake by over 60% reduce fat to only 15% of total calories cut protein by almost 40 g/day cut absolute protein intake by roughly 40% accomplish all of this on a grain-heavy vegan diet What happens?  Do they get fatter?  See their glucose spiking and soaring and fear imminent amputation and blindness?   No.  What happened is this: This after only three weeks.  Oh ... and 70% of the Ma Pi group dieters taking oral diabetes drugs at onset were able to get off their drugs.

An important result was that motivation to lever press was impairednot only in food-restricted rats working for food reinforcement (sucrose), but also in water-restricted rats working for water reinforcement.  The non-specificity of the impairment suggests that the REF diet affected general mechanisms of motivation rather than those specific to the feeding behavioral system. Taken together, these findings lend support to the hypothesis raised by scientists [28,29] and journalists [30] that obesity may not be the result of impaired motivation (lethargy).  Rather, an obesogenic diet, such as that consisting of highly processed, refined foods, may induce obesity and disrupt motivational mechanisms of the central nervous system.   This hypothesis awaits further empirical  scrutiny and does not necessarily rule out the lack of will power as a contributing  factor to obesity. Three guesses who/what reference 30 is, and the first two don't count.  Oh my. ...

direct image link Greetings! So with time for a little breather, I'm getting caught up on my reading. I've got three books I plan to review and it's a conundrum which to do first, they are all so bad. Seriously, it's not the style or the writing. It's the content that passes for science these days that is just so mind-numbingly abysmal. The three books are David Perlmutter's  Grain Brain , Jonathan Bailor's  The Calorie Myth  and Chris Kresser's  Your Personal Paleo Code .  I'll save Bailor's for another day, but his poor man's version of  GCBC  somewhat factors into today's post.  I'll also save the reviews of the others for a later date.  For now, let me share my little round about the internet that inspired the post title here ;-)   

I'm going to have at this abomination that is sweeping the nation faster than Wheat Belly and Fructose Alarmism combined, or so it seems.  But Grain Brain promises to be a classic from first blush.  Yes ... I just got my "hands" on a Kindle copy. Here's a risk assessment quiz (Kindle Locations 210-227) ... note that if your answer is "sometimes" you are instructed to answer True. 1. I eat bread (any kind). TRUE/ FALSE     2. I drink fruit juice (any kind). TRUE/ FALSE     3. I have more than one serving of fruit a day. TRUE/ FALSE     4. I choose agave over sugar. TRUE/ FALSE 5. I get out of breath on my daily walk. TRUE/ FALSE     6. My cholesterol is below 150. TRUE/ FALSE     7. I have diabetes. TRUE/ FALSE     8. I am overweight. TRUE/ FALSE     9. I eat rice or pasta (any kind). TRUE/ FALSE 10. I drink milk. TRUE/ FALSE