The Carb-Sane Asylum

S ummary: BUMPED January 26, 2018 This post was written around three and a half years ago, and through some bizarre twist of dietary fate, somehow ketogenic diets are still trending on Google for everything from weight loss to hang nails.  So I thought I'd bump this post which was my attempt at dispelling some myths regarding ketosis and the role of dietary protein in the mix.   In the end, and some of these points are not made specifically in this post but I'll make them here: Carbohydrate restriction is the greatest determinant of ketogenesis  Protein (various amino acids) can feed into the Krebs Cycle and attenuate the reduction in oxaloacetate that favors ketogenesis from fatty acids. Ketogenesis represents a conversion of fat energy to ketone energy but it is not evidence of the ultimate usage of that energy.   Like glucose, ketones will be burned for energy before fatty acids, so ketogenesis is not an indicator of actual fatty aci...

... an acronym most closely associated with Sean Croxton.   [ Or as I call him in my head:  Sean Ton of Crocks, because Croxton is the king of the alt func med summit marketeering spree].  But now it looks like Croxton is in the processed convenience food biz, releasing a J.E.R.F. bar!   screenshot of today's JERFbar.com home banner One of the things that most annoys me about Noakes and his "Real Meal" revolution.  Many in paleo talk about eating "real food", and many exclude from this definition foods that aren't part of their restrictive food paradigms.  You know, such UNreal aka fake foods like whole grains and legumes for the low carbers,  soy and veggie oils for the "ancestrals", maybe dairy for the vegans, regular sugar for just about everyone.    "Real food" is a foolish label.   If what you mean by *real* is "whole" foods, then concoctions don't fly, no matter how "clean" the ingredients list ...

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...

Last Friday (Sept. 16, 2016 for those who may stumble upon this in the future), I had the pleasure of being a guest on  Angelo Coppola's Latest in Paleo podcast .    I had/have a post on the main topic discussed -- the *SMOKING GUN* that the sugar industry funded a study 50 years ago, and *O*M*G* -- in the works, and was not even half done by the time recording came around.  I was also trying to get in the last bit of summer.   This link  will go live when that post is finally published (hopefully later today or tonight):   The Slimey Truth About Sugar Slammers I have not had a chance to listen yet, so hopefully this isn't even necessary.  But, due to my passion on the topic and being mid blogging swirl, I'm sure I was quite animated at times.  It was a new format for Angelo's podcast, and for me as a guest as well.   I may well have talked over the other guest, Meredith Rhodes (a.k.a The Forward Health Coach; Forward Health C...

ORIGINAL PUBLISH DATE:  October 3, 2015  This post will probably repeat some things I've said before.  But in light of recent events, and with controversy over the US 2015 Dietary Guidelines reaching fever pitch, I wanted to collect them in a semi-coherent summarized fashion.   Mostly I want to discuss the role of governments and industries in the evolution of what we know today as a science.  In many ways, a look back at the early Twentieth Century demonstrates how the more things change the more they stay the same.   Are we doomed to repeat past mistakes in the Twenty-First?

Forget the fauxtmeal and n'oatmeal .  For crying out loud, if you like cauliflower (as I do) then eat it ... but it is just NOT a breakfast "cereal".  With this ridiculousness in mind, embrace the latest news from serious anthropological research.   A few media mentions: NPR : Paleo People Were Making Flour 32,000 Years Ago Science (AAAS) :   The world’s oldest oatmeal? IFL Science :  Ancient People Ate Porridge 32,000 Years Ago

This was intended to be a targeted post on one specific issue pertaining to the recent AJCN study and the actions of some of the study authors involved.   Not sure I succeeded ;-) When I wrote my first post on the topic , I had not read the full text of the study.  Instead I compiled a table of characteristics for the four individual studies involved, and concluded that no meta-analysis was appropriate for such disparate studies.  That initial "analysis" holds despite the table containing a few errors. After being called "unscientific" by author Esther van Zuuren on Twitter, I obtained a copy of the full text and read it.   Additional information contained in the full text makes matters worse, not better, on virtually every point I made in my original post .  So I am working on a letter to the AJCN and in doing so am working on an expanded and more accurate version of the summary table.  During this process I sought to check values published in the or...

The controversy should serve as a warning about meta-analyses, Willett adds. Such studies compile the data from many individual studies to get a clearer result. "It looks like a sweeping summary of all the data, so it gets a lot of attention," Willett says. "But these days meta-analyses are often done by people who are not familiar with a field, who don't have the primary data or don't make the effort to get it. " And while drug trials are often very similar in design, making it easy to combine their results, nutritional studies vary widely in the way they are set up. "Often the strengths and weaknesses of individual studies get lost"   "It's dangerous." Walter Willett MD Speaking about Chowdhury, et.al. (HT: Colby Vorland of NutSci.org ) Yes.  This.  

I have conducted a systematic search on my Twitter notifications for all people who have retweeted a tweet in which my ID has been mentioned.  I then narrowed it down to tweets in which inaccurate claims were made about me and furthermore to whether the retweeter had subsequently blocked me. @zbysfedo O dear. I saw CS deleted all your comments from her blog. Expected a lot, but not that. @CarbSane @Ezzoef — Melchior Meijer (@PolderPaleo) August 22, 2015 I'd draw you all a funky flow chart, but it's not really worth my time.  I did, however construct this nice table. Conclusion:  Inability to answer to criticisms based on the merits of their study.

Screenshot of Meta-analysis lead author Eric Manheimer's article on Cordain's ThePaleoDiet commercial website. Is it that time already?  For systematic review and meta-analysis?  Apparently someone thinks so and managed to get some time at or off of work to do one on the paleo diet.  Seriously?  What even is the paleo diet?  I have asked that question many times here myself.  If a premier expert in paleolithic nutrition cannot provide an answer, then who can? I've also written on this many times.  I believe that THIS POST   is a great place to start as it contains links to the various studies and blog posts I've done on those studies.  I'll repeat some links here in a bit. These were the clinical trials (not all randomized-controlled) to date as of January 2014.   I've included the purported composition of "paleo diets" as well. Direct links to blog posts:   Frassetto , Lindeberg & J ö n...

A quick post.  Sweden has released their latest version of their Dietary Guidelines .  I think Andreas Eenfeldt must be busting all manner of guts by now!!  This includes an activity/lifestyle component, but the recommendations are shocking!   There's no paleo, no low carb.  Two screenshots.

When Elizabeth Licorish was 9 years old, she read a skating reference book that revealed that 12 year old Tara Lipinski trained five hours each day, enjoyed a diet rich in spaghetti and marinara sauce, stood 4 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 68 pounds. When she put the book down, did she .... (a) Hop on a bathroom scale (b) Ask Mom to make more pasta with marinara (c)  Request a longer training schedule. The answer to this is the subject of this post.  Apologies for the somewhat longer than intended delay in publishing.  Part I of sorts:   Women, Athletes & Calories -- Does Tara Lipinski Eat Enough? This post was inspired by a reaction piece in Philly Voice by freelance journalist Elizabeth Licorish entitled:   Dear female athletes: Please don’t follow Tara Lipinski’s 1,200-calorie diet.    In Part I, I tried to limit commentary mostly to answering the question in my title, though I did touch on other topics.  I'm h...

I really thought this was a joke, and a silent hat tip goes out to the person who brought this to my attention so's that I don't get them on anyone's bad list for contributing to such a post here at the Asylum.  But OMG . How Many Calories Does Mayo Have? ... now that Mark Sisson is whipping up wonderful mayo, I can get to work on the backlog of tuna salad, pea salad, and deviled eggs I’ve been denying myself. ... I thought I’d enjoy some tuna salad with two heaping spoonfuls of Mark’s zippy mayo—call it research for  lower calorie  meal plans for my new business, the FatBurn Factory.  With the addition of a few capers, instant lunch! But I need to know for, for the sake of my patients, ...    WHAT IS THE CALORIE COUNT OF THIS QUICK AND EASY MEAL  . Yeah I know what you're thinking.  What the heck is pea salad, and is there anyone else on the planet denying themselves of this dish?  

Summary: I present here, the unequivocal evidence that the answer to the question posed in the post title is "Yes".   If I were the author of the book Chris Kresser cribbed from, I'd be hopping mad.  This is a very big deal.    I'm also under no delusions that this will amount to much of anything in the Incestral Health Community (the IHC), because Fonzi is in the air !  (Will Sisson selling reverse cave leveraging plans be far behind?)   But you never know.    Plagiarism in general is serious business.  Heck, I hear colleges are even still willing to expel students over the charge (used to be virtually automatic).   What Chris Kresser did was copy the central tenets of The Perfect Health Diet , and pass them of as his own in The Healthy Baby Code -- a $197 multi-media package.   Of this there can be no doubt ... because he copied erroneous material! {ASIDE:  I don't know if folks reading this truly appre...

Sometime in June of 2010 , I wrote the following words about Gary Taubes: I'm left to conclude this man is totally bereft of intellectual honesty. Supporters of Taubes jumped at this and claimed I had called the man a liar.  A willful fraud.  But at that time I had never used those words.  I don't believe I flat out accused him of lying until December of 2010 in response to his defense of his then new book Why We Get Fat .  I still try to avoid those words, if only because of the flack I receive when I do.  And yet, the qualifier "intellectual" has been bothering me a lot lately.   Intellectual Dishonesty :   " When one avoids an honest, deliberate and comprehensive approach to a matter because it may introduce an adverse effect on personally and professionally held views and beliefs."

Summary:    In the Perfect Health Diet books, the claim is made that omnivores prefer a high fat diet along the lines off the PHD macronutrient ratios.  Two studies on mice are cited as evidence in support of a 65% fat diet.  This post discusses those two studies, as well as how the results are more likely to caution against a high fat diet than advocate for it.   NOTE:  This is NOT a comprehensive look at the two studies discussed in the post.  In order to keep the post length managable I've only addressed the points relevant to claims made in the  PHD  books citing these studies.

Recently I shared some "blinded" study results from a real study conducted on two strains of mice, each studied after eating one of two diets.  More correctly these mice are of the same strain, but one set has a mutation in the brown fat cells.  I did this along with some simple -- obvious -- questions, and then a more open ended question regarding interpretation.  I intended for one more installment, but I think it just got tedious, so I'll incorporate that into this reveal post.   So from the first post, here is the data I provided:

It's hard to believe that Tim Noakes actually gave the presentation in the embedded YouTube video over two years ago.   It's even more difficult to believe that anyone has taken him seriously since.   For the topic of this post, one needs only devote ~ 6 minutes to listening to Noakes read to you about human evolution and how Ancel Keys destroyed the world.  This begins at roughly 3 min 36 seconds.   If you can't tolerate the video, or simply wish to follow along with a written form, the South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition has dramatically lowered their standards and published Noakes' heavily fortified "transcript" (at least 25 references date to after the 2012 delivery of this speech) without any peer review .  His references, regardless of date, are enlightening, so I'm glad they were provided, however the journal should put a heavy disclaimer directly in/on the paper in question (and fix the oversight that allowed the peer reviewed ...

PREEMPTIVE UPDATE:  A few days before finishing up this post, I noticed that the Bubba Yum Yum book has finally been self published in iBooks.  It will be interesting to see what the final published formula is though and if they added any carbohydrate (somehow I doubt it from the preview pages available of other recipes). Background Posts & Prior BabyGate Files: Mammalian Infant Food Macronutrients ~ Especially Human Common Themes: The Chef Evans & Prof. Noakes Controversies, and Robb Wolf vs. North Carolina The Obesity Paradox The BabyGate Files: Tim Noakes Blames Gerber for Baby Cereals (this post contains historical breast milk alternatives and weaning practics) The BabyGate Files: Tim Noakes Just WRONG on Protein (discusses "early protein hypothesis" link to increased adiposity later in childhood.) The BabyGate Files: Pete Evans' Bubba Yum Yum ~ There's a Macro Missing!   (key to this post, they claim adaptation from WAPF recipe) ...

In 1985, S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin J. Konner wrote a seminal paper, in the New England Journal of Medicine , that would "start it all" for the modern paleo diet:   Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of its Nature and Current Implications .  Also that year, they would publish, along with Konner's late wife Marjorie Shostak, The Paleolithic Prescription .  [Some links:  Links to full texts of many paleo papers are here , I discussed the book here .]   Unfortunately the PDF is not digitized so I can't quote here, so I've simply screenshot the introduction below.  If you need to enlarge to read, click on the image and do your thing with the browser!