The Carb-Sane Asylum

I recently stumbled across this video.   It's a tough watch, but *this* epitomizes ALL that is wrong with the low carb weight loss industry.     For starters, diet really is religion for these folks as this get-together, marketing stunt for Dr. Eric Westman's HEAL Clinics/care, was held in a church.  There was prayer, there were references to God, and a collection, and paying it forward.   If you can't stomach too much of it (I don't blame you), I'll list a few time-stamps.  If anyone cares to give time stamps for various gems and ridiculous claims, please do so in comments! 11:35 Prayer ... 17:25 Melanie Miller takes the stage ... 17:33 Introduces Dr. Mark Cucuzzella ... 20:36 Dr. Mark speaks, thanks Jimmy Moore, talks about the movement, calls obese people in audience paradoxes! ... 23:30 Dr. Mark shares analogy that losing weight is like holding a beachball under water, don't try to hold it too far down!  ... 30:00 Success Story parade up on...

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...

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 ...

gratuitous image of the Drs. Eades, early 2015 A little while back I wrote  Nutritional Ketosis is an Oxymoron .  I was taken to task a bit in comments for the inappropriate use of oxymoron, but I'm going to plead for leniency in the spirit of the use of the term.  The crux of that post was that the terms nutritional (as in being in a calorically sufficient, weight stable state) and ketosis are metabolically contradictory.  This is perhaps evidenced in no more profound manner than the extremes required to produce and sustain such a state, and the ease with which it is abolished. Ketowars rage on as the standard bearer appears to be imploding on the sidelines ...  I got into a discussion on Twitter with Dr. Eades about a side issue, and here you go ... SUMMARY: Starvation ketosis is distinctly different from nutritional ketosis. No human populations in sustained nutritional ketosis (not even the Inuit). Dietary reasons why the Inuit weren't in nu...

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.

This is going to be a rather short post, and I'm not going to reference it.  I simply don't have time.  (As always, feel free to contest any claims you feel are erroneous in the comments.)  But something has been bothering me for a long time about the whole nutritional ketosis thing, or what I call NuttyK, and I just couldn't put my finger on it.   And then it hit me, as I was looking into the buffalo hunting thing ... Humans likely  do  have a long history of being in ketosis for periods of time.  Ketosis ... as in the metabolic adaptation to starvation to preserve lean mass and reduce glucose consumption by the brain by providing a fat-derived alternative fuel.  These humans were in prolonged periods of caloric deficit without a "need" to be ... in other words they weren't overweight dieters getting most of their energy from surplus stores.  They were in  starvation ketosis .

Hello all!  I have two items to announce/alert you to. 1.  I did a webinar for Richard Sennewald who runs a group called The Carbophobe Rehabilitation Group.   I put this one first, as it will only be available free to the public until Wednesday (tomorrow) I believe, so if you're interested, hop on!   Carbsanity 101 ... if that link doesn't work, try this one .   Just some commentary on the experience.  This is the first time I've ever done something like this.  Note to self:  Mount large clock on wall ;-)    I ran quite a bit over the initial time, so it is a bit long.  I didn't practice this out loud due to time constraints and my predictions were obviously a bit off.   It is VERY strange talking into a headset w/o seeing the audience.   I'll probably pre-tape sections of any future webinars I do to keep things going.  Also, I went "off script" here and there, but this was probably a good thing to ke...

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 ...

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.

.... it means that Mighty (Meta)Mouse is on {cue record scratch sound} A couple of years ago I wrote the following blog post:   Mighty Metabolism Mouse   discussing this study:   A high-fat, ketogenic diet induces a unique metabolic state in mice .  

Remember "safe starches"?   This whole SuperStarch thing reminded me of that for some reason.  It was just a little over a year ago that Jimmy Moore sent out the email to all of the experts he considers experts to inquire over the safety of consuming starches.  It mattered not the quality of the response, he published them all up .  This post put the pry bar in whatever cracks there were in the community along carbohydrate lines and was the source of much of the antagonism Jimmy decries.  Some responses of interest: Jeff Volek : Claiming you need carbs to prevent scurvy is a red flag this guy is a nut job. Tell him to eat a red pepper. There is no evidence what so ever the human body has any dietary requirement for the nutrient class of carbohydrate (i.e., there is no defined condition associated with not consuming carbs). This comment just demonstrated that UCAN be an asshat in LLVLC-land so long as it's not against a low carber.   Next up, the othe...