While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. Wheat vs eggs seems like a silly debate when people are living off of Coke, Oreos and Capt'N Crunch.
Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while the man sips from 32 oz soda.
In addition to that, having no education in biology, chemistry or any field remotely associated with health and fitness, I do have two eyes. In light of all the contradicting information and conspiracy theories, I'll trust what I've observed. And, what I've observed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier.
I've observed rather different things. The people I know who eat the most meat are the Crossfitters around me. They are, in almost all cases, healthy.
I have a roommate who drinks fat-free milk and eats lots of salad and pasta, who avoids meat like the plague. He's been struggling with his weight for as long as I've known him. I drink coconut milk -- which contains nothing but fat -- and a meal usually consists of some randomly selected fatty cut of meat and vegetables fried in the drippings. That, or cheap canned fish. I lost weight eating like this. I fit in skinny jeans. I may with luck convince my almost-girlfriend to peg me. :3
But the important thing -- I don't advertise. I am not a walking bulletin of the health benefits of coconut and sardines. How do you really know about the diets of the people around you? I would say there are maybe four or five people around me whose diets I actually know well enough to analyze in any reasonable way.
Case A is a twenty-two year old recent Caltech graduate who is obsessed with freerunning and eats nearly-strict paleo. He can do a backflip. No further comments. We grew up together.
Case B is my roommate. He follows all the conventional advice to a T -- chicken, fish, whole grain, salad. Lots of "health food" products. Y'know, healthiest potato chips on the shelf. There is bread, there is soybean oil mayonnaise. It... doesn't seem to be working.
Case C is another good friend of mine. Eats a lot of processed cheap stuff; he's the sort that'll buy three pounds of animal crackers. When I first met him he was rather obese and said he was try'na learn to eat vegetables. He lost a lot of weight after we introduced him to ecstasy... and he's been eating healthier too. He's sloowly coming around; one of his recent facebook statuses involved making hard-boiled eggs. He looks better and seems happy. Score 281,443 for MDMA.
Case D is me. I'm kind of a dick, judging people like this. People who I like. I don't really know any other way to be honest about how I make decisions, though.
When I was eleven my parents tried to force me to switch from whole milk to 2%. I responded by walking two miles to the gas station to buy milk. I'm the only kid in my family who never had weight problems growing up.
Since we are talking anecdotes and make-beliefs, I'll add what I saw with my own two eyes ...
My grandfather was eating between 5 and 10 eggs per day, every day. He also drank at least 1 liter of home-made red whine per day, while being a big consumer of dairy products (also made in-house).
Of course, because my grandparents lived on a farm and consumed what they produced or traded with neighbors, half of a normal week would go by without them consuming any meat. However my grandfather was also a big fan of raw and untreated pig bacon, the kind you never find in stores. It was one of his pleasures that he indulged whenever he could.
My grandfather died at 99 years old, 3 months before his 100 years anniversary. He died out of old age, never having any problems with his heart. He was able to work his land until 98 years old. And in his village, even though people live a really rough life, it's pretty common to see people past the age of 90 with no serious health problems.
So really, your own two eyes are biased by the culture you live in ;-)
Nowadays it's a common belief that living a healthy life means preferring fruits and vegetables ... however, be careful when sampling because it's possible that people taking more care of their health are healthy because they care more about their health, not necessarily because they consume less meat.
"Fruit and veggie eaters" being healthier is just as likely to be a confirmation bias on your part, that you simply not paying attention to contrary examples. But even if it was true and there was a correlation, there is another possible explanation for it:
People who are obsessed with health will do "X" and they will eat fruits and veggies, because both are believed to be good. "X" does a lot of good, while F&V does nothing at all. Since you don't pay attention to "X", not even knowing what it is, you come to conclusion that F&V are good, while in fact "X" is what decides who is healthy.
The point here is be careful with "I do have two eyes...".
I firmly believe diets are like software development methodologies. Doesn't matter which one you subscribe to as long as it isn't universally recognised as junk, you'll still see results because it is better than what you'd be doing by default. Once everyone gets to a certain baseline we can quibble about what's more effective.
Observations aside, there is actually scientific evidence to the contrary.
The fact is that our bodies require certain types of fats (omega3, omega6, etc..) in order to function properly. Your body is built to break down fats, this is why you have a gall bladder. Diets low in animal fats (not ala omega3's and 6's, which your body has to break down and consequently only gets a very small percentage of usable omegas) cause the body to more easily synthesize fat from other sources, most notably carbohydrates. Diets high in carbs trigger leptin signaling surges which can cause averse reactions like your brain no longer receiving leptin signals. "In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate,the lower people’s serum cholesterol. We found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active." [1].
If you want to have the best brain function (your brain is made up of mostly fats) and body function you should strongly consider cutting out gluten based foods (which interfere with so many things in a bad way [2]) and start eating grass fed and finished beef, and wild game with a side of veggies. Cut out as many tubers as you can get away with as well.
Foods that you cannot eat unless they are cooked are probably not the best for your diet, in my mind this makes perfectly logical sense. We are people of the ice age, our diets for many thousands of years consisted of what could be eaten raw, including meats. While we do not yet have a full understanding of the rate at which humanity evolves; it is understood that the core functioning of our bodies energy system can not completely change in the span of a few thousand years.
[1] Dr. William Castilli, "concerning the possibility of a nut...," archives of internal medicine
[2] Journal: Neurology - Hadjivassiliou 2001
I agree with you entirely. The problem with some of the responses you've received, as well as an issue which Taubes seems to ignore, is that when you look outside the USA, it's a different story. In many Asian countries, rice is a staple and eaten with almost every meal. Noodles are heavily consumed as well. Yet they don't have the obesity issues we do. The major difference being they don't eat heavily processed foods (at least not until recently). They do consume all types of meats but their portions are not astronomical.
Pasta, rice and potatoes are not the culprit, depending on where they come from. But soda is. And its not just the chemicals involved in processing food, it's also the abundance that the technology creates - lots of food for relatively cheap prices.
Dont trust your eyes. You dont see people eating fatty foods at McDonalds. You see them eating a shitload of sugar, salt, and a little bit of fat and proteine.
If fat would make people fat, why are americans the mos obesive nation? Your diets, relatively speaking, consist of less fat than most european diets.
But way way more sugar. In the states, sugar is in everything, including most hamburgers, bread slices and soft drinks.
I've always found the whole diet debate a bit silly and overly complicated. Most people are probably going to be fine as long they eat a varied diet,don't overeat and get enough physical exercise, with emphasis on the physical exercise. The human body is simply not design to sit on a chair 24/7 no matter how incredibly healthy the food you're eating is.
You should see US News' annual survey of dieticians.[1] They agree with you, it's just an odd publication bias that gives these "alternative" diets traction.
not true in the least, the healthiest of my friends from outward appearances eat no fruit or veggies what so ever. Observations on small samples sizes are useless.
> people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier
I have two eyes and that doesn't square at all. The fat people eat packaged food and restaurant food, which are very skimpy on meat and real animal fat.
The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often. Thin people eat moderate meals and don't snack. Fat people continuously have handfuls of crap like nuts and fruit and soy and soda.
Twelve years ago I had read too many peer-reviewed papers to know that low-cholesterol diets were a bad idea, and useless from the point of view of having a good blood-cholesterol profile.
Useless because, for example, population study after population study showed that low-cholesterol diets did not improve blood-cholesterol. Furthermore, it was common to find populations with high-cholesterol diets that had an excellent blood-cholesterol profile, and, conversely, populations with low-cholesterol diets and a bad blood-cholesterol profile.
A bad idea because, among other things, low-cholesterol diets will immediately lower your blood Testosterone. Recall that cholesterol is the most basic steroid; from it, all other steroids, including anabolic androgenic steroids such as Testosterone, are metabolized. A diet with a good amount of cholesterol is a necessary condition to achieve good levels of Testosterone.
Why would a hacker care about his Testosterone levels?? Some examples:
Males with high Testosterone perform better in arithmetic and mathematics than males with low testosterone. Males with high Testosterone levels have better short-term-memory. Males with high Testosterone have good mood; whereas low Testosterone causes depression, mood-swings, and angry reactions to minor things.
So, for at least 12 years, I have made it a point to have two jumbo eggs for breakfast. And that's not the only source of cholesterol and saturated fat in my diet. I do, however, make sure that I do not ingest too much saturated fat ... and there are too many more details to my diet to discuss here.
How about we all just eat real food? Stay in the perimeter of the super market -- with the exception of some canned fish -- and you should be okay. You can't go wrong with fruit, vegetables, meat, seafood, tubers, nuts, and seeds. As for wheat...come on, don't kid yourself. A refined white powder that is highly processed is not real food. Drink water, exercise a few times a week, and get some sun. If nothing else, living this way will make you healthier than most Americans.
I do believe you can get fat even if you eat only "real food", the trick is to eat in moderation. If you eat more calories than you use up you will gain weight. It really is that easy. You could loose weight eating pastries only, just as long as you don't eat too much. It wouldn't be healthy though...
Our body doesn't posess the enzymes to dehydrate saturated fats, therefore we can't process them as efficiently,
Additionally saturated fats lead to cell membrane instability and 'crystallisation' due to the straight-line chemical arrangement of the carbon atoms.
Cis - (A type of) unsaturated fats by contrast, have kinks in the chains which induces fluidity into cell membranes. Interestingly Cholesterol is used to maintain membrane stability/'fine-tune' membrane fluidity when there are lots of Cis fats.
I haven't listened to the whole talk yet and take it the poster's angle is that there is a lot more to diet, nutrition and preventable diseases like Ischaemic heart disease than just 'saturated fats and cholesterol'. Yes. No doubt. But they are still terrible for you in high doeses, Epidemiological studies have shown this beyond a doubt and the basic science is sound.
I believe it coincided with converting to a nearly sedentary culture. Nothing is as bad for you as being sedentary and since many/most people refuse to exercise, and you can't buy exercise pills (let alone get people to take them), you have to get people to want to cut down on the stuff their body isn't using.
Cholesterol isn't bad, saturated fat isn't bad, but if you're sitting around all day festering so are they.
Nutrition is far from an exact science and humans from around the world react to foods differently in subtle ways giving any Nutritional conclusions limited relevance.
IMHO, The 2 most important things you can do are exercise and pay attention to your body. Also, a lot of these "mis-conceptions" come from media and laymen thinking that phrases like "a link between saturated fat and heart disease" imply causation.
Remembered one more thing: A lot of shit food is loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol (and salt and sugar). Frozen dinners, snack cakes and fast food are some great examples. These products, which significantly contribute to the fattening of the world, help give their main flavor sources a bad name.
Wow that's a great way of explaining the underlying issue. The way that everyone reacts differently to the same foods is also the reason that thousands of different diet books continue to make money. Its a mess and the internet has only added to the confusion.
The issue gets super complicated once you add chronic emotional stress. A huge problem with all these dietary disease models is they ignore cortisol and stress levels, which may ultimately turn out to be the single-most important variable.
In short, the original findings to do with fat intake -> cholesterol -> atherosclerosis weren't outright invalid. It's just that in healthy, unstressed people the final link to atherosclerosis doesn't actually happen, even in old age. But the situation in the industrialized world is massive numbers of people living in chronic stress, so who knows. Turns out chronically elevated cortisol levels produces the arterial damage that make "bad" cholesterol a problem at all.
At my former company we had free access to beverages (sodas, water, energy drinks, ... even beer). I gained a lot of weight while working there. After I quit I stopped drinking sodas altogether, while mainly keeping my diet (vegetarian, one "big" meal per day + snacking) and level of physical activity. I lost about 18kg (40 pounds) in about 2 months. Went from 103kg to 85kg. I'm 1.84m so that's an ok weight I guess.
Is the link submitted here throwing 403 errors for other HN users? I notice that many comments here on HN could just as well be responding to the bare title alone, whether or not the participant has read the fine article. Until I can read the article (I can't so far after repeated attempts), I'll give some history of how the cholesterol hypothesis was developed.
Ancel Keys, a member of the Terman longitudinal study of high-IQ children and inventor of the K ration for United States soldiers during World War II,
He did studies of human nutrition, including starvation, in an intellectual milieu that included some of the first studies (by other researchers) on surgery to treat heart disease. (It was the surgical research that prompted my mother, a nurse, to move to Minnesota after completing nursing training in another state.) Keys hoped to find a dietary explanation for the prevalence of heart disease in industrialized countries, and he thought his regression methods of statistical analysis pointed to dietary fat and cholesterol as the main risks factors for heart disease. He lived to the age of 100, so it's hard to say that he was completely crazy in his ideas, but the idea that cholesterol intake from the diet alone is the whole story in heart disease rates is now generally discredited, and it is especially controversial to say that a diet of the kind he recommended is as good for all-cause mortality reduction as it appears to be for heart disease reduction.
Like all other members of the Terman longitudinal study, Keys was never awarded the Nobel Prize. Two young people who were rejected for the Terman study (William Shockley and Luis Alvarez) because their IQ scores were too low later went on to win a Nobel Prize in physics (in separate years).
Check out Fat Head. A Documentary response to Super Size Me that discusses how what we "know" about fat and cholesterol was the result of a politician lining his pockets by pushing the agenda of one of his friends in the business world http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Fat_Head/70115017?trkid=23...
I defer to Walter C. Willet, M.D., who writes in "Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy" (co-developed with the Harvard School of Public Health):
"There's no question that two types of fat -- saturated fat, the kind that's abundant in whole milk or red meat, and trans fats, which are found in many margarines and vegetable shortenings -- contribute to the artery-clogging process that leads to heart disease, stroke, and other problems...monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats found in olive oil and other vegetable oils, nuts, whole grains, other plant products, and fish -- are good for your heart.... Our bottom line is this: It is perfectly fine to get more than 30 percent of your daily calories from fats as long as most of those fats are unsaturated."
"The term saturated means that the carbon atoms in a chain hold as many hydrogen atoms as they can...saturated fats come in gradations of bad...butter and other dairy products most strongly increase LDL (bad) cholesterol. Those in beef fat aren't quite as powerful at boosting LDL and those in chocolate and cocoa butter have an even smaller impact."
HDL and LDL are lipoproteins: "...fats must somehow get from your digestive system to your cells...like oil and water, fats and blood don't mix. If your intestines or liver simply dumped digested fats into your blood, they would congeal into unusable globs. Instead fat is packaged into protein-covered particles that mix easily with blood and flow with it. These tiny particles, called lipoproteins (lipid plus protein), contain some cholesterol to help stabilize the particles.
"Lipoproteins are generally classified by the balance of fat and protein they contain. Those with a little fat and a lot of protein are heavier and more dense than the lighter, fluffier, and less dense particles that are more fat than protein. The proteins also act like address labels that help the body route fat-filled particles to specific destinations.
"LDL is often referred to as the bad cholesterol...they can end up inside cells that line blood vessels. Once there, LDL is attacked by highly reactive free radicals and transformed into oxidized LDL. Oxidized LDL can damage the artery lining and kick off a cascade of reactions that clog the artery and set the scene for artery-blocking blood clots.
"In contrast, HDL particles sponge up excess cholesterol from the lining of blood vessels and elsewhere and carry it to the liver for disposal."
He goes on to list several studies: Ancil Keys' 1956 international survey called the Seven Countries Study which found a strong link between saturated fat and heart disease; the Framingham Heart Study, which identified high levels of cholesterol as linked to impending heart disease; the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (both very large cohort studies); the Lyon Diet Heart Study; and others. "In the 1950s and 1960s, dozens of carefully controlled feeding studies among small groups of volunteers showed conclusively that when saturated fat replaced carbohydrate in the diet, total cholesterol levels in the blood rose...."
The book also talks about the challenges of practical, large-scale studies of nutrition "in the wild": it's not easy to track and correlate people's eating habits over decades, for any number of reasons.
The more interesting debate is about overall health outcomes. Even the most ardent low-cholestrol folks are forced to admit that this link between higher LDL (particularly the big "fluffy" stuff) and heart disease exists.
There are two really interesting things, however.
1. The link between dietary saturated fats and increased LDL isn't nearly as strong as those earlier studies suggest. This is certainly supported by my own anecdotal evidence: My LDL levels went way down when I moved to a higher fat diet.
2. Some studies have suggested that controlling for all natural deaths that OUTCOMES on higher fat diets are better, meaning people on those diets tend to live longer. It appears that cancer rates are reduced for those eating higher saturated fat diets for one thing.
This is all outlined in "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and there is a wealth of study to support the idea.
I recently was seated with a prominent nutrition researcher at a local university. His take was interesting. Essentially he laid out why these studies are very difficult (as your cited book did). He said there are two clear things that comes up in research time and time again:
- Many preservatives, particularly the high sodium nightmares found in processed foods, are pretty bad for you.
- Sugar is the devil. Studies have suggested time and time again that it's sugar that is responsible for elevated LDL levels. Worse yet sugar promotes higher levels of very dense LDL which is a huge risk factor for heart disease.
He recommends a whole food diet. Basically don't worry so much about what your eating and more about how fresh it is. The shorter the time between something living and the time you eat it the better. The fewer steps it takes for something to be prepared the better.
Calories still count of course, but I've essentially been following that idea for awhile. I eat more fruits and vegetables and I've drastically cut my sugar intake. I eat more steak and pizza (made from high quality and fresh ingredients) than the ADA would like. My blood chemistry levels have been amazing ever since.
[+] [-] latch|13 years ago|reply
Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while the man sips from 32 oz soda.
In addition to that, having no education in biology, chemistry or any field remotely associated with health and fitness, I do have two eyes. In light of all the contradicting information and conspiracy theories, I'll trust what I've observed. And, what I've observed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier.
[+] [-] scythe|13 years ago|reply
I have a roommate who drinks fat-free milk and eats lots of salad and pasta, who avoids meat like the plague. He's been struggling with his weight for as long as I've known him. I drink coconut milk -- which contains nothing but fat -- and a meal usually consists of some randomly selected fatty cut of meat and vegetables fried in the drippings. That, or cheap canned fish. I lost weight eating like this. I fit in skinny jeans. I may with luck convince my almost-girlfriend to peg me. :3
But the important thing -- I don't advertise. I am not a walking bulletin of the health benefits of coconut and sardines. How do you really know about the diets of the people around you? I would say there are maybe four or five people around me whose diets I actually know well enough to analyze in any reasonable way.
Case A is a twenty-two year old recent Caltech graduate who is obsessed with freerunning and eats nearly-strict paleo. He can do a backflip. No further comments. We grew up together.
Case B is my roommate. He follows all the conventional advice to a T -- chicken, fish, whole grain, salad. Lots of "health food" products. Y'know, healthiest potato chips on the shelf. There is bread, there is soybean oil mayonnaise. It... doesn't seem to be working.
Case C is another good friend of mine. Eats a lot of processed cheap stuff; he's the sort that'll buy three pounds of animal crackers. When I first met him he was rather obese and said he was try'na learn to eat vegetables. He lost a lot of weight after we introduced him to ecstasy... and he's been eating healthier too. He's sloowly coming around; one of his recent facebook statuses involved making hard-boiled eggs. He looks better and seems happy. Score 281,443 for MDMA.
Case D is me. I'm kind of a dick, judging people like this. People who I like. I don't really know any other way to be honest about how I make decisions, though.
When I was eleven my parents tried to force me to switch from whole milk to 2%. I responded by walking two miles to the gas station to buy milk. I'm the only kid in my family who never had weight problems growing up.
Eyes optional.
[+] [-] bad_user|13 years ago|reply
My grandfather was eating between 5 and 10 eggs per day, every day. He also drank at least 1 liter of home-made red whine per day, while being a big consumer of dairy products (also made in-house).
Of course, because my grandparents lived on a farm and consumed what they produced or traded with neighbors, half of a normal week would go by without them consuming any meat. However my grandfather was also a big fan of raw and untreated pig bacon, the kind you never find in stores. It was one of his pleasures that he indulged whenever he could.
My grandfather died at 99 years old, 3 months before his 100 years anniversary. He died out of old age, never having any problems with his heart. He was able to work his land until 98 years old. And in his village, even though people live a really rough life, it's pretty common to see people past the age of 90 with no serious health problems.
So really, your own two eyes are biased by the culture you live in ;-)
Nowadays it's a common belief that living a healthy life means preferring fruits and vegetables ... however, be careful when sampling because it's possible that people taking more care of their health are healthy because they care more about their health, not necessarily because they consume less meat.
[+] [-] DenisM|13 years ago|reply
"Fruit and veggie eaters" being healthier is just as likely to be a confirmation bias on your part, that you simply not paying attention to contrary examples. But even if it was true and there was a correlation, there is another possible explanation for it:
People who are obsessed with health will do "X" and they will eat fruits and veggies, because both are believed to be good. "X" does a lot of good, while F&V does nothing at all. Since you don't pay attention to "X", not even knowing what it is, you come to conclusion that F&V are good, while in fact "X" is what decides who is healthy.
The point here is be careful with "I do have two eyes...".
[+] [-] pauljburke|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ldehaan|13 years ago|reply
If you want to have the best brain function (your brain is made up of mostly fats) and body function you should strongly consider cutting out gluten based foods (which interfere with so many things in a bad way [2]) and start eating grass fed and finished beef, and wild game with a side of veggies. Cut out as many tubers as you can get away with as well.
Foods that you cannot eat unless they are cooked are probably not the best for your diet, in my mind this makes perfectly logical sense. We are people of the ice age, our diets for many thousands of years consisted of what could be eaten raw, including meats. While we do not yet have a full understanding of the rate at which humanity evolves; it is understood that the core functioning of our bodies energy system can not completely change in the span of a few thousand years.
[1] Dr. William Castilli, "concerning the possibility of a nut...," archives of internal medicine [2] Journal: Neurology - Hadjivassiliou 2001
[+] [-] dr_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ralfn|13 years ago|reply
If fat would make people fat, why are americans the mos obesive nation? Your diets, relatively speaking, consist of less fat than most european diets.
But way way more sugar. In the states, sugar is in everything, including most hamburgers, bread slices and soft drinks.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] danielwarna|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unreal37|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xodarap|13 years ago|reply
1. http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/
[+] [-] MBlume|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethermal|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubashov|13 years ago|reply
I have two eyes and that doesn't square at all. The fat people eat packaged food and restaurant food, which are very skimpy on meat and real animal fat.
The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often. Thin people eat moderate meals and don't snack. Fat people continuously have handfuls of crap like nuts and fruit and soy and soda.
[+] [-] blueSky1989|13 years ago|reply
Useless because, for example, population study after population study showed that low-cholesterol diets did not improve blood-cholesterol. Furthermore, it was common to find populations with high-cholesterol diets that had an excellent blood-cholesterol profile, and, conversely, populations with low-cholesterol diets and a bad blood-cholesterol profile.
A bad idea because, among other things, low-cholesterol diets will immediately lower your blood Testosterone. Recall that cholesterol is the most basic steroid; from it, all other steroids, including anabolic androgenic steroids such as Testosterone, are metabolized. A diet with a good amount of cholesterol is a necessary condition to achieve good levels of Testosterone.
Why would a hacker care about his Testosterone levels?? Some examples:
Males with high Testosterone perform better in arithmetic and mathematics than males with low testosterone. Males with high Testosterone levels have better short-term-memory. Males with high Testosterone have good mood; whereas low Testosterone causes depression, mood-swings, and angry reactions to minor things.
So, for at least 12 years, I have made it a point to have two jumbo eggs for breakfast. And that's not the only source of cholesterol and saturated fat in my diet. I do, however, make sure that I do not ingest too much saturated fat ... and there are too many more details to my diet to discuss here.
[+] [-] bitsoda|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Blara|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbiep|13 years ago|reply
I haven't listened to the whole talk yet and take it the poster's angle is that there is a lot more to diet, nutrition and preventable diseases like Ischaemic heart disease than just 'saturated fats and cholesterol'. Yes. No doubt. But they are still terrible for you in high doeses, Epidemiological studies have shown this beyond a doubt and the basic science is sound.
[+] [-] fhoxh|13 years ago|reply
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&#...
[+] [-] user49598|13 years ago|reply
Cholesterol isn't bad, saturated fat isn't bad, but if you're sitting around all day festering so are they.
Nutrition is far from an exact science and humans from around the world react to foods differently in subtle ways giving any Nutritional conclusions limited relevance.
IMHO, The 2 most important things you can do are exercise and pay attention to your body. Also, a lot of these "mis-conceptions" come from media and laymen thinking that phrases like "a link between saturated fat and heart disease" imply causation.
Remembered one more thing: A lot of shit food is loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol (and salt and sugar). Frozen dinners, snack cakes and fast food are some great examples. These products, which significantly contribute to the fattening of the world, help give their main flavor sources a bad name.
[+] [-] ladzoppelin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubashov|13 years ago|reply
The issue gets super complicated once you add chronic emotional stress. A huge problem with all these dietary disease models is they ignore cortisol and stress levels, which may ultimately turn out to be the single-most important variable.
In short, the original findings to do with fat intake -> cholesterol -> atherosclerosis weren't outright invalid. It's just that in healthy, unstressed people the final link to atherosclerosis doesn't actually happen, even in old age. But the situation in the industrialized world is massive numbers of people living in chronic stress, so who knows. Turns out chronically elevated cortisol levels produces the arterial damage that make "bad" cholesterol a problem at all.
[+] [-] waivej|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shakesbeard|13 years ago|reply
So that worked for me ... drinking water.
[+] [-] tokenadult|13 years ago|reply
Ancel Keys, a member of the Terman longitudinal study of high-IQ children and inventor of the K ration for United States soldiers during World War II,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7213-2004Nov2...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/obituaries/23keys.html?_r=...
was active at the University of Minnesota in some key years of his career.
http://mbbnet.umn.edu/firsts/blackburn_h.html
He did studies of human nutrition, including starvation, in an intellectual milieu that included some of the first studies (by other researchers) on surgery to treat heart disease. (It was the surgical research that prompted my mother, a nurse, to move to Minnesota after completing nursing training in another state.) Keys hoped to find a dietary explanation for the prevalence of heart disease in industrialized countries, and he thought his regression methods of statistical analysis pointed to dietary fat and cholesterol as the main risks factors for heart disease. He lived to the age of 100, so it's hard to say that he was completely crazy in his ideas, but the idea that cholesterol intake from the diet alone is the whole story in heart disease rates is now generally discredited, and it is especially controversial to say that a diet of the kind he recommended is as good for all-cause mortality reduction as it appears to be for heart disease reduction.
Like all other members of the Terman longitudinal study, Keys was never awarded the Nobel Prize. Two young people who were rejected for the Terman study (William Shockley and Luis Alvarez) because their IQ scores were too low later went on to win a Nobel Prize in physics (in separate years).
[+] [-] fhoxh|13 years ago|reply
"We're being kicked off HostGator for crashing their server due to volume. Working to get a dedicated server. Sorry for inconvenience!"
In the meantime, Google's cache of this article is here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&#...
And the direct link to his talk [video] is here:
http://vimeo.com/45485034
[1] https://twitter.com/EatLikePete/statuses/225822001154117632
[+] [-] zader|13 years ago|reply
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tAI5zmC...
But the meat of his presentation appears to be this video, available on Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/45485034
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bhauer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangrossman|13 years ago|reply
Though all it'd take to fix is 3 clicks to install a caching plugin, usually.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mbrown77|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] schultkl|13 years ago|reply
"There's no question that two types of fat -- saturated fat, the kind that's abundant in whole milk or red meat, and trans fats, which are found in many margarines and vegetable shortenings -- contribute to the artery-clogging process that leads to heart disease, stroke, and other problems...monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats found in olive oil and other vegetable oils, nuts, whole grains, other plant products, and fish -- are good for your heart.... Our bottom line is this: It is perfectly fine to get more than 30 percent of your daily calories from fats as long as most of those fats are unsaturated."
"The term saturated means that the carbon atoms in a chain hold as many hydrogen atoms as they can...saturated fats come in gradations of bad...butter and other dairy products most strongly increase LDL (bad) cholesterol. Those in beef fat aren't quite as powerful at boosting LDL and those in chocolate and cocoa butter have an even smaller impact."
HDL and LDL are lipoproteins: "...fats must somehow get from your digestive system to your cells...like oil and water, fats and blood don't mix. If your intestines or liver simply dumped digested fats into your blood, they would congeal into unusable globs. Instead fat is packaged into protein-covered particles that mix easily with blood and flow with it. These tiny particles, called lipoproteins (lipid plus protein), contain some cholesterol to help stabilize the particles.
"Lipoproteins are generally classified by the balance of fat and protein they contain. Those with a little fat and a lot of protein are heavier and more dense than the lighter, fluffier, and less dense particles that are more fat than protein. The proteins also act like address labels that help the body route fat-filled particles to specific destinations.
"LDL is often referred to as the bad cholesterol...they can end up inside cells that line blood vessels. Once there, LDL is attacked by highly reactive free radicals and transformed into oxidized LDL. Oxidized LDL can damage the artery lining and kick off a cascade of reactions that clog the artery and set the scene for artery-blocking blood clots.
"In contrast, HDL particles sponge up excess cholesterol from the lining of blood vessels and elsewhere and carry it to the liver for disposal."
He goes on to list several studies: Ancil Keys' 1956 international survey called the Seven Countries Study which found a strong link between saturated fat and heart disease; the Framingham Heart Study, which identified high levels of cholesterol as linked to impending heart disease; the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (both very large cohort studies); the Lyon Diet Heart Study; and others. "In the 1950s and 1960s, dozens of carefully controlled feeding studies among small groups of volunteers showed conclusively that when saturated fat replaced carbohydrate in the diet, total cholesterol levels in the blood rose...."
The book also talks about the challenges of practical, large-scale studies of nutrition "in the wild": it's not easy to track and correlate people's eating habits over decades, for any number of reasons.
[+] [-] enjo|13 years ago|reply
There are two really interesting things, however.
1. The link between dietary saturated fats and increased LDL isn't nearly as strong as those earlier studies suggest. This is certainly supported by my own anecdotal evidence: My LDL levels went way down when I moved to a higher fat diet.
2. Some studies have suggested that controlling for all natural deaths that OUTCOMES on higher fat diets are better, meaning people on those diets tend to live longer. It appears that cancer rates are reduced for those eating higher saturated fat diets for one thing.
This is all outlined in "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and there is a wealth of study to support the idea.
I recently was seated with a prominent nutrition researcher at a local university. His take was interesting. Essentially he laid out why these studies are very difficult (as your cited book did). He said there are two clear things that comes up in research time and time again:
- Many preservatives, particularly the high sodium nightmares found in processed foods, are pretty bad for you. - Sugar is the devil. Studies have suggested time and time again that it's sugar that is responsible for elevated LDL levels. Worse yet sugar promotes higher levels of very dense LDL which is a huge risk factor for heart disease.
He recommends a whole food diet. Basically don't worry so much about what your eating and more about how fresh it is. The shorter the time between something living and the time you eat it the better. The fewer steps it takes for something to be prepared the better.
Calories still count of course, but I've essentially been following that idea for awhile. I eat more fruits and vegetables and I've drastically cut my sugar intake. I eat more steak and pizza (made from high quality and fresh ingredients) than the ADA would like. My blood chemistry levels have been amazing ever since.
[+] [-] waivej|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] activepeanut|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerbinns|13 years ago|reply
The answer is simple: Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.
[+] [-] Shorel|13 years ago|reply
(Those are subrreddits.)
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