The Carb-Sane Asylum

There has been a spate of studies and commentaries coming out of late related to plasma saturated fatty acid content, dietary sat fats and carbohydrates.  It gets mightly frustrating to hear the same arguments made over and over, when some basic calculations and critical radiolabel-tracer studies have shown otherwise for over 15-25 years now (and longer, I'm talking major summary papers and supporting studies).  And still .... What Happens to the Carbs Kendrick is a Scottish physician, author of The Great Cholesterol Con , hence my title.  He's also a card carrying member of  and spokesman for THINCS:  THe International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics.    Sadly, his skepticism and paranoia have turned him into quite the con artist ... feet planted firmly in denial. Professors, who shall be nameless, appear unable to admit how basic human physiology works. For example, they may concede a few steps here and there, but they will never...

Howdy all!  This one's been languishing in the draft bin for a bit as I hadn't had the time to round out the continuing saga of buffalo hunters.  It certainly belongs in the "I don't call it the Incestral Health Community for nothing" file!  As I was publishing up the Buffalo Roaming post the other day, "news" came across Jimmy Moore's Instagram feed that Stephen Phinney was unloading some ancestral dishonesty on the attendees of the CONvention of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians (or was it the Nutrition and Metabolism half of the event, who cares, same general schtick, over and over).  I include a screenshot of the slide here to confirm that this is the same slide I'd seen Phinney use before as you'll see here in a bit.  Essentially, this appears to be the same talk, different CONference.

LC Biomarker Bingo OK ... before I begin on this, let me say this has languished in the draft hopper probably past it's usable publish date :-)  So first, I'll give a belated shout out to Kevin Klatt over at Nutrevolve blog for taking a close look at this study and "getting it out there" in rapid time!   Carbs, SFAs, and Circulating Fatty Acids . Effects of Step-Wise Increases in Dietary Carbohydrate on Circulating Saturated Fatty Acids and Palmitoleic Acid in Adults with Metabolic Syndrome I confess to skimming it b/c the last time he scooped me Kevin wrote so much of what was in my head I wasn't sure how to formulate the parts I still wanted to discuss without sounding repetitious.  For me, this study and its media blitz has hit a nerve and awoken my interest in a topic I had gotten a bit side tracked from.  It's almost a perfect ending to this year of what can only be described as utter insanity in the nutrition world.   So, with that said, ...

Previously ... Part I: The Journal Article & The Headlines T here is so much about the recent study from principal low carbohydrate advocate Jeff Volek, that this may well be the subject or impetus for several posts here as we close out 2014 -- it is so much more than just the study, but more what it embodies vis a vis the whole low carb/keto schtick.  Along with Stephen Phinney and ten -- count them, TEN! -- others who claim to meet the PLOS One standards to be designated as authors, we were brought the following study: Effects of Step-Wise Increases in Dietary Carbohydrate on Circulating Saturated Fatty Acids and Palmitoleic Acid in Adults with Metabolic Syndrome In a way this tops off a year of disgraceful behavior on the parts of just about everyone in the IHC who seem hell-bent on deceiving people into adopting their extreme lifestyles. If the science were really so clear, then why can they not address it honestly? There is nothing, N.O.T.H.I.N.G. in ...

This is a minor side thought prompted by the recent Volek saturated fat - turns out to be monounsaturated fat - paper and comments Volek has made to the press.  The same general comments have been repeated in various outlets.  In  the study , subjects were first put on a VLC (< 50 g/day) diet (six weeks including half that of "run in") and then carbs were exchanged for fat incrementally every three weeks until the final carb levels were roughly equivalent to starting levels at around 350 g/day.  I'll definitely have something to say about the study itself, but the "major" groundbreaking result of the study was that the levels of the 16 C monounsaturated fatty acid -- that is produced by desaturating the palmitic acid product of de novo lipogenesis -- dropped with carb restriction and gradually came back up as carbs were re-introduced.   An increase in this fatty acid indicates that a growing proportion of carbohydrates is being converted into fat instea...

Yes folks! Yet another study has hit the presses to tell you everything you thought you knew about nutrition is wrong, wrong and more wrong!!  The Journal Article Effects of Step-Wise Increases in Dietary Carbohydrate on Circulating Saturated Fatty Acids and Palmitoleic Acid in Adults with Metabolic Syndrome Brittanie M. Volk, Laura J. Kunces, Daniel J. Freidenreich, Brian R. Kupchak, Catherine Saenz, Juan C. Artistizabal, Maria Luz Fernandez, Richard S. Bruno, Carl M. Maresh, William J. Kraemer, Stephen D. Phinney, Jeff S. Volek . Count 'em ... a dozen authors.