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...

It appears that Tom Naughton is making the podcast rounds promoting his new nutrition book for kids.  PLEASE, leave the kids out of it!  That goes for the zealots of all extreme camps including vegans and paleo and WAPF and whatever other diet cult imaginable.   Do not indoctrinate children into your eating disordered behaviors. There are rare instances where ketogenic diets are therapeutic in children, and most of them -- epilepsy -- stay on the diet for the shortest time possible where therapeutic efficacy is achieved, and then wean from the diet. You absolutely cannot make a case for children traditionally being raised on any sort of low carbohydrate diet, not even Zone/Ludwig/Hymanesque 40% levels.  In virtually every culture, the children of both genders consume a diet similar to their mother's ... the gardeners and gatherers.  Children of Tom's generation were raised on mixed diets that included processed foods.  Obesity existed but was not com...

This post brought to you by Duck Dodgers' arrogance.  If there ever were an example of what is wrong with science in the Incestral Health Community, it is the phenomenon that is "Duck Dodgers" and his comments here.     A seemingly non-controversial post -- on how the US Dietary Guidelines were never any radical departure from the way humans around the globe have eaten for thousands of years -- went viral, at least in part because of Duck's return.   What rubs me personally the wrong way about this person (or persons, though I've been told it is only one person who posts with that ID in comments here so I operate on that assumption) is his response to any challenge to "How Food Enrichment Made Us Fat, Diabetic, and Chronically Diseased" otherwise known as the "Iron Food Enrichment Hypothesis" .  Despite doubling down on the whole fortification thing at the off-the-grid web rental only around a month ago, this guy comes on here and plays...

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...

As I found myself debating whether to tackle which controversy to publish up first, I kept running into trouble with some background and tangents to discuss one, that really could apply to either case.  And then my good friend [sic] Robb Wolf wrote a blog post about a proposed North Carolina law that seems pertinent as well.  So I'm going to write a post on the commonalities, and then, as time permits, a separate followup post for the Pete Evans and Tim Noakes controversies that raise some similar but distinct issues. For those who are not aware of what has transpired recently, allow me to summarize: Pete Evans Pete Evans is a celebrity chef in Australia who has become popular through cooking shows and such much like Gordon Ramsey or many of the Food Network stars in my country.   Evans has apparently been into nutritionism for some time (activated almonds anyone?), but as recently as 2012,  Pete was writing popular cookbooks on making healthy pi...

Several months ago, I began writing a post entitled Paleo Schneckenfeude, inspired by the concept of schadenfreude and the misfortunes brought on one faction of the paleo community by other factions, and vice versa.  I never published it up, because the "sell by" date had definitely passed before I had the time.  But I will use the title here, with the addition of the term Payleo™ to the IHC lexicon, courtesy of the latest high profile Guy to jump ship. Schadenfreude  [shädən froidə]   from the German:  schaden  (damage) and  freude  (joy).   Enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others Yes, it is fair to say that there is no love lost between me and most in the paleo wing of the IHC, and I am experiencing a tinge of guilty enjoyment in watching the coconut fed chickens coming home to roost yet again. Schneckenfeude  ... The Evolution of Schnecken?

A little detour into the Protein Power  book by Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades, 1996.  Was looking at a few things sparked by the thermodynamics posts he's made, and was surprised by a few things in the PP book that I had never even skimmed until now.  This post didn't fit the thermo topic, so I thought I'd mention this separately (and there may be another post or two coming as time permits). I had never heard of the Eades or their books until I found the low carb community in 2009.  While Atkins remains the primary low carb diet, the PP book/plan is high up on the list for second place, and Eades' blog was still uber popular at that time. Circa 2009 the low carb mantras of the day were largely focused on: Up the fat intake Fat can't make you fat You can't get fat or gain fat weight without eating carbs, so even if you don't lose more weight, at least you won't gain.

In Part I , I discussed the first three of four talks at the recent Ancestral Health Symposium that were actually devoted to -- or supposed to be in some fashion -- "ancestral diets".  The IHC has a long history of co-opting select aspects of such dietary practices to fit the current interpretation of the hunter-gatherer-inspired way.  If the deluge of cookbooks from all corners are any indication, there will be no letting up soon of the trend to cauliflow paleoize all "inferior" but nonetheless delicious and often cultural staple foods.   But now, in a most bizarre twist, we've reached the point where imposing "paleofied" versions of ancestral diets on  these very peoples went off without a hitch, or seemingly any notice of the supreme irony of it all. This assault on ancient humanity was culminated in a presentation by Gideon Mailer, PhD.  I took a screenshot of his title slide for visual impact here.  So that you won't need to clienlarge...

Yes ... I know "plagerize" isn't a word, but image link As you may or may not have heard, Time magazine, where all dutiful Americans turn for information on what the government and others think we should be eating, has done an about face.  Eat Butter they say ... in a cover article written by one Bryan Walsh. What?  Not Nina Teicholz you ask?  Nope, not Nina.  But it sure sounds like her.  Or does it? Teicholz was all over Twitter several days ago, egged on by many who tweeted along in support.  These ideas are just too new and original to have come from anywhere other than The Big Fat Surprise .  

Random bump because this is making the rounds again due to being published in the IJES this month:  Unrestricted Paleolithic Diet is Associated with Unfavorable  Changes to Blood Lipids in Healthy Subjects Original Publish Date:  5/14/2013 A student, Eric Trexler , at Ohio State did a study on the paleo "lifestyle" for what appears to be an undergraduate honors thesis towards his degree in Exercise Science.  Here is the link to the full text:   Paleolithic Diet is Associated With Unfavorable Changes to Blood Lipids in Healthy Subjects .  So I thought I'd put up a quick blog with some thoughts, because a tweet is just a tweet and I've seen a few comments reading into my supposed motivations for tweeting this.  So ... let's discuss a bit and include some criticisms I've seen elsewhere on the web. 1.  It's not a peer reviewed article or a graduate thesis.   This is true so it hasn't undergone rigorous scrutiny, that shouldn'...

In observance of the impending imprisonment of "Secrets the Government and Real Doctors Don't Want You to Know" author, late-night infomercial guru and scammer Kevin Trudeau ...  I thought a bump on this post was apropos.   The FTC has been clamping down recently on false claims of miracle cures.  While Trudeau is ultimately being sent up the river more for legal financial issues, I hope this is the beginning of one of those pair of dimes shifts the supplement shills are always talking about.   

True confession:  I ate beef in a stew last night and I'm in that dangerous age range for doing so according to the latest study that came out.  Finally, a study the paleo community can finally agree on about and rally around!  Paleo for the win!  If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can get a dose of sanity here . But before mass media hysteria gifted the paleo community with the great unifier -- another meat is bad study -- it was all up in arms over another media circus:   Paleo on the Dr. Oz show !! That was truly an odd spectacle.  There you had Paleoista, Nell Stephenson, who in her own practice and through her blogging is about as puritanical "paleo" as one could imagine, and Chris Kresser, someone who was at best loosely associated with paleo, but almost from the get-go seemed to be "beyond paleo".

As I mentioned in my last post , there's a new paleo diet comparison study out!  Long term ... two years!  Woo hoo!!  

It's January 18th, and that means if you went with the packs, you are almost 2 weeks into your 21 Day Sugar Detox or, I believe, roughly half way through the torturous Whole30 ®  ... or maybe you took up Amy Kubal's invite to drag the paleo yo-yo out of sleeping dog with Robb's 30 day plan (upon which Whole30 is based). Ya know, if you don't think there's science behind paleo, just ask Robb!  He'll shoot you a Lindeberg or a Frassetto .  Let's look at that latter one for just a bit more than I did HERE .  The Frassetto paleo diet is an outlier in that all of the others ended up spontaneously reducing calories (~1400 to ~1900 cals) while this diet modestly increased calories from baseline to ~2700.   Furthermore, in Frassetto, total carb intake before and after the diet was roughly equal at around 250 grams per day.   They ramped up in three phases for 7 days and then followed the paleo diet for 10 days.  Here are the menus:

Whoa boy! Did you hear? US News & World Report listed the Paleo Diet dead last in their " Best Diets of 2014 " round up ... AGAIN! I warn you, dear readers, that I'm in a mood, and my snark and sarc levels are quite high as I write this.

I have decided to adopt the paleo template.  As anyone who reads this blog knows, just about any diet that doesn't involve dining with Marie (Callender), Debbie (comma Little), Ronald (McDonald) and Wendy can and will be *fit* into the paleo template!  Let's see there's: WAPF:  Eh, nevermind the sprouted grains and dairy of all manner, we're all on the same team. Vegan:  Well ... it is real food.  We can always try to convert them. Atkins:  What's a Quest Bar between friends?  Swap the Splenda for Stevia and we've got a deal. Zone:  The cause of every eating disorder including potentially Evander Holyfield according to the paleorati, but Sears cites Eaton so there's that. Mediterranean:  Well that's just really paleo low carb right? The Tequila Diet:  It IS paleo.  STFU! Perfect Health Diet:  Grok sooooo ate white rice and coconut oil! Carb Nite?:  Shhhhhhh he didn't really mean to front load junk food during ...

Have you just stumbled upon an old book, blog post, interview, etc. from your favorite guru only to have someone exclaim how old that is and how your guru's opinions have changed?  It might be time for a new guru. Quick background here.  First, no I haven't dropped the Paleo ApprovED issue, but there are some things related and lots of stuff unrelated going on that have eaten up time and energy to blog on the subject.  It is a sensitive issue and needs more "care" than your run of the mill blogging.  It is also rather stressful and defeats one of the purposes of this blog as an outlet for my sarcastic side -- for which a post such as this is perfectamundo!    So that said, as I was looking for a post on Robb Wolf's blog ( this one ) my search also popped up the following post: Insulin: Anorexic?

Around a month or so ago Sally Fallon Morell, President o the Weston A. Price Foundation, reviewed Robb Wolf's book and gave it a "Thumbs Down" .  What's up with her?  Wasn't the response to her President's Message  from this past June enough to put her in her place?   I had parts of a post together at that time, but since the full letter wasn't publicly available at the time, and who knows what else was going on, I never published it.  I was going to augment that and include with this, but perhaps another time ... it got too long and convoluted.  Some day ... I make no promises though.  In any case, my link here is now to the full letter for anyone interested, but to sum up she wanted to clear up some myths about WAPF: It's not high protein, most do best on 10-15% protein and WAPF diet is small amounts of fatty animal protein, including organ meats, with each meal ... emphasis on fat, while high lean protein depletes Vitamin A. It's not l...

What duping?  Was he was duped, or does he dupe people?   Roughly 10 months ago, Robb Wolf posted the first installment on his "current" views about carbohydrates in the diet:   Low Carb And Paleo: My Thoughts Part 1 .  In it, Robb describes his changing views on dietary composition and body composition through his personal prism of going from highly active, running a gym, etc. to a more sedentary lifestyle involving lots of writing time.  As he relates: I had a tough time remaining lean. I’d cut carbs…but to no effect on body composition. Slowly I realized, both by experimentation and by really looking at the literature: CALORIES MATTERED MORE THAN CARBS FOR BODY-COMP. I have to say this was a pretty big shake-up for me. I’d assumed one could eat as much fat as one desired and STILL get leaner .

A quickie here, but I know many of my readers don't do the whole social media thing and this is just too something for words (can't even think of a good adjective there!)   I try and read Jimmy's stuff in a reader to avoid the ads, but there it was ... screenshot right. So I couldn't resist clicking ... and no, it's not April Fool's Day and no it's not a spoof!  Awww shucks ... you go to the link  today and the paleo header is not displaying at the moment :(  It was a Geico-style cave man juxtaposed with Jimmy Moore's "The Thinker" and the LLVLC promo.  Hope they bring it back!!