The Carb-Sane Asylum

April 2018 Update: Here in the year 2018, it's fair to say that #Paleo is pretty much over. Nothing tells us this more succinctly than a quick trip over to Mark's Daily Apple, a website I rarely frequent these days. I'd heard rumors that Mark had "gone keto" ... given the seemingly meteoric rise of #Keto of late, is anyone really surprised?  This is the same man who developed the "more addictive than crack " P90X recovery drink and other things,  Ever the businessman (can't fault him for that), Mark seems to have transitioned from using his blog to sell paleo/primal-related books (did he ever find a proper ghostwriter for his wife's book?) to selling over-priced avocado oil products.   The whole "primal" thing is about as downplayed as possible for someone whose signature product is The Primal Blueprint, can be.    Poor Grok.  Now it's Keto Reset time!  Can these marketeers PLEASE make up their minds?   Wh...

The Noakes Foundation has put out a new book entitled Diabetes Unpacked * , edited by Dr. Zoe Harcombe PhD.   It is a compilation of chapters written by a who's who of the low carborati.  This installment deals with Chapter 3 by Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist masquerading as an obesity specialist and diabetologist.  He has no formal training in either, and his grasp of some pretty basic physiology is tenuous at best.  That latter "charge" can be backed up by fact checking (or attempting to fact check that which isn't simply Fung POOP (Pulled Out Of Posterior) ) any of his various blog articles, books, podcasts or YouTube videos.   * That's my Amazon affiliate link This post will be an evolving one of sorts that I'll bump if and when content is added.  I've avoided giving Fung much "ink" here, frankly because I never thought anyone would take him seriously enough to deserve it.  Clearly I was wrong.  There's apparently no lim...

Politics swirled this week, and as a scientist I wept.    Much more to come here, check out recent posts if you missed them!   As billionaire pescatarians Laura and John Arnold   bankroll meat industry spokesperson  Nina Teicholz via their lobbying 501(c)s Action Now Initiative & Nutrition Coalition  it is easy to lose sight of the actual nutrition surveys and science we are talking about. The hand-wringing, panty bunching, and other various "ings" going on over the impending issue of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines is almost assuredly not about the scientific rigor of the process or the guidelines themselves.  Are they perfect?  No.  Are they really all that radical or far off from what would be healthful eating, on a population-wide basis, for the United States of America?  Again, no.   Setting aside the particular foods themselves for the time being, the main argument is that this grand low-fat experiment has been a g...

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?

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 * The BabyGate Files: Tim Noakes Just WRONG on Protein * The BabyGate Files: Pete Evans' Bubba Yum Yum ~ There's a Macro Missing! The BabyGate Files: Sally Fallon & The Weston A. Price Foundation Should Not Be Let Off The Hook The BabyGate Files: Chris Kresser. Is There Any Moral Code? * May be most relevant to this post. THE INFAMOUS TWEET This is going to be a short but important "bookmarking" post, just so I get this "on paper" once things finally go down for Prof. Tim Noakes in November.  Two hat tips are in order:  1. Alex S. who found and linked up (comments on a prior post) the original tweet that got Noakes in hot water, and 2. Melanie M. for sendin...

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 ...

UPDATE 6/5:  Hearing has been postponed, and expanded to 7 days beginning November 23.  Some info on why here . Recent news piece In the tweet, Noakes advised a mother to have her baby follow a diet high in fats and low in carbohydrates. This week he said: “She was asking for advice on what to feed her child and I advised her to wean the child on to low carbohydrate, high protein , nutrient-dense food. By that I was implying that she shouldn’t wean the child on to cereals. ” BUMP: 6/4 Noakes' hearing is tomorrow and Friday, June 4th and 5th.  Since this was originally published on a holiday weekend here in the States, I'm bumping this post.   His personal cheerleader has written another article on the topic too:   Tim Noakes: will the Nutrition Inquisition finally silence him? As a sports scientist for decades, Noakes’ specialty has always been a specialist in dietetics and nutrition. He has also been studying infant nutrition for the past four y...

I've done a couple of background posts on this topic, and I've decided to dub it BabyGate. In doing so, I now have the freedom to launch another unending series of related posts. (Read: I might actually get to posting what I want to in some timely fashion!)  Background posts:   Mammalian Infant Food Macronutrients ~ Especially Human Common Themes: The Chef Evans & Prof. Noakes Controversies, and Robb Wolf vs. North Carolina   (use your browser to search on Tim Noakes for background on this specific situation) Today's Focus:   Tim Noakes, outspoken advocate of Banting (sic) #LCHF diet -- apparently for all! -- has been called to a hearing by the HPCSA.  The issue is a complaint filed by the dietetics board in South Africa alleging inappropriate conduct on social media for tweeting advice to a mother to wean her baby onto a low carb, high fat diet or "real foods".  According to this report : "By implication I was saying that the child...

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...

You're kidding, right? What?  This is a serious question?  Why yes it is! I've got some things to say -- hopefully in the next week or so -- about Tim Noakes running afoul of the Health Professions Council in his country for advocating a woman wean her child onto a LCHF diet.  But I had a Twitter exchange of my own the past couple of days, in which I basically encouraged folks to hijack the  # WeSupportTimNoakes hashtag.  This is being started to, well, support Noakes against his percieved persecution.  Said Twitter exchange took me to a podcast page with a sidebar image showing the Facebook post screenshot below, and leading me to this podcast:   Alcohol and the LCHF Diet: Can you drink when Banting? For Real?? No ... not the Onion website!   [it's a mighty good thing I didn't have an adult beverage in hand when I came across this!]