The Carb-Sane Asylum

In light of the recent brash of coconut oil articles following the Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association , I thought I'd bump this post.  Of course all the coconut oil advocates are up in arms over this.  Mind you, coconut oil is the most nutritionally bereft oil out there ... "empty calories".  This post discusses a study in the Sixties on two Atoll island populations that live in virtually the same environment, etc. but with nearly opposite diets in terms of total fat content, where the majority of fat comes not from coconut oil, but the more nutrient dense coconut meat and embryos. One Line Summary :   The increased fat content in the Tokelauan diet correlates in increased adiposity in this population as compared to nearby Pukapuka.   While the cited study abstract says the following: Vascular disease is uncommon in both populations and there is no evidence of the high saturated fat i...

Blogstress Note:  This post has been in the draft bin for some time, most of it written very shortly after the JAMA article that sparked it.  As you'll see, it's more ranty than usual ;-)   I thought about toning it down or adding to it from the NYT editorial, but have just gotten too busy.  So I'm publishing it up -- as is -- before it exceeds its best-if-blogged-by date by too much!  There's probably some repetition with the Percentages post published up in the interim.  Please forgive typos, dropped sentences, incomplete thoughts, etc.  Dunno how many there may be, so here goes ... Let's Do Away With The Dietary Guidelines   The true cause of the obesity epidemic! ... if this is what it takes to save me from being bombarded with one more idiotic editorial in a peer review journal -- like the recent one in JAMA by Dariush Mozaffarian MD,DrPH and David S. Ludwig MD,PhD -- I'm jumping on board.  Oh!!  And this rank stupi...

Part I Metabolic and physiologic effects from consuming a hunter-gatherer (Paleolithic)-type diet in type 2 diabetes U Masharani, P Sherchan, M Schloetter, S Stratford, A Xiao, A Sebastian, M Nolte Kennedy and L Frassetto {Apologies in advance:  No idea if this is truly as scattered as I think it might be, but I'm currently working on a number of projects, including "real job" stuff.  So rather than hold this up for perfecting, I'm hitting the publish button!} The Take-Aways, Such as they are ... In this three week trial, researchers used food questionnaires to assess usual intake prior to the study.   ... on the basis of our intake questionnaire and food recall responses, we expected the parameters of the subjects on the ADA recommended diet to remain unchanged from baseline, but in fact they also improved reducing the differences observed with the two diets. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the baseline reporting was, as has b...

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

Thank you to everyone for contributing to my little survey !  I wasn't trying to trick anyone or anything, just get an idea of whether or not there is any so-called macronutrient confusion across the pond (and/or in other countries that have adopted similar nutritional recommendations). Where'd that come from?  I had a random page hit from a blog discussing a paper by Zoe Harcombe where a commenter had linked to my  discussions  of Harcombe's  credentials .    Yes, Zoe Harcombe -- obesity researcher extraordinaire -- did indeed publish a paper in a "peer reviewed" journal back in March of this year:   Food for Thought: Have We Been Giving the Wrong Dietary Advice? .    In it she, and coauthors, lamented some so-called macronutrient confusion in the UK. I was wondering if it did, indeed, exist.

There's a new Swedish paleo diet study out: A Palaeolithic-type diet causes strong tissue-specific effects on ectopic fat deposition in obese postmenopausal women .   The title sounds promising, but my first reaction to it, sadly, not so much about the potential findings, but, what exactly is this paleo- TYPE diet??  It would appear to be based loosely on Cordain's original Paleo Diet (I hear that's trademarked).   This was a small study, 10 women, no control group, lasting only 5 weeks.  There were some benefits including around 10 lbs average weight loss and almost 50% reduction in liver fat.  This shall be for another blog post.  But what diet was tested?  Here's the diet description from the full text: Participants were given prepared meal portions that were intended to provide an average intake of about 30 energy percentage (E%) protein, 40 E% fat (mostly unsaturated) and 30 E% carbohydrates for breakfast, lunch and dinner, together with...

I really like fish -- all kinds.  And fish is one way to get a lot "supplements" -- in whole form, complete with other components that act in synergism with what has been refined out in supplements.  I've been getting more into fish lately as the new Korean-American owned market opened nearby.  They have an amazing seafood department including crystal clean tanks of live fish. (The other Asian market with large tanks is not quite so pristine).  One day they were having a hard time constraining jumpers!  In addition to seafoods you don't usually see elsewhere --  abalone, barrels & tanks of live crabs, octopus -- they have a really nice selection of fish varieties, both common and eccentric.   Even if I'm not in the market for fish I'll still swing by for the Chilean sea bass samples, to die for! But as protein sources go, fish is pretty danged expensive nowadays.  Even your run-of-the-mill cod While this market is rather more affordable than ...

Gestational diabetes -- hyperglycemia during pregnancy -- effects a considerable number of women.  It is also a known risk factor for developing diabetes (T2) later in life.    Some degree of peripheral insulin resistance normally develops during pregnancy.  Why?  Because the fetus' growth and development takes priority in nutrient partitioning so glucose is conserved for the fetus much like it is conserved for the brain in the fasted/starved/glucose-deprived state.  The link of GD to T2 most likely reveals the genetic predisposition towards IR -- in other words, while diet can cause insulin resistance, there is a genetic component in most who eventually develop hyperglycemia as a result.  Most women will compensate for the mild IR state and maintain normal glycemia during pregnancy, while those who are perhaps even mildly IR to begin with will exceed their capacity to compensate during the pregnancy.  In most cases, deliver the baby and the diabe...

It's sort of a funny thing in low carb circles.  Atkins followers - or those who have fashioned their plans by tweaking Atkins - remain the majority of adherents to this lifestyle, despite the surging popularity of Paleo-styled plans.   I admit to not knowing or caring a thing about Omega 6 vs. Omega 3 and all that jazz until sometime in 2009 after I'd found the LC web.  Atkins was a big fish oil pusher (if memory serves he had his own line of supplements) and fan of the O3, but he certainly didn't spend much time addressing the dreaded O6 fats.  The root of all evil in the minds of many. I have his original book, and many recipes contained good old  fashioned industrial mayo made from soybean oil or other veggie oil.  There was no shunning of veggie oils that's for sure, or commercial salad dressings containing them so long as no carbs went along for the ride down the gullet.  Chicken may not have been as highly touted as the more luxurious ribeye, ...

Comparative toxicity of fatty acids on a macrophage cell line (J774) In the present study, the cytotoxicity of palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, arachidonic, docosahexaenoic and eicosapentaenoic acids on a macrophage cell line (J774) was investigated. The induction of toxicity was investigated by changes in cell size, granularity, membrane integrity, DNA fragmentation and phosphatidylserine externalization by using flow cytometry. Fluorescence microscopy was used to determine the type of cell death (Acridine Orange/ethidium bromide assay). The possible mechanisms involved were examined by measuring mitochondrial depolarization, lipid accumulation and PPARγ (peroxisome-proliferator-activated receptor γ ) activation. The results demonstrate that fatty acids induce apoptosis and necrosis of J774 cells. At high concentrations, fatty acids cause macrophage death mainly by necrosis. The cytotoxicity of the fatty acids was not strictly related ...