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jimeuxx | 12 years ago
Blaming sugar for everything is no better than what the fat-bashing crowd do. It leads to self-parodying solutions like the "keto-adapted" lifestyle. We don't eat rice or bananas because refined sugar is to blame for all the ills of the world. Those crazy Japanese are probably just lying about their lack of heart disease anyway (when we remember the place exists at all).
As long as people only understand nutrition in terms of reductionist extremes, "alternative" diets are going to continue being a bad joke that achieves little more than inflating the ego and bank balance of people like Lustig.
ynniv|12 years ago
The key for preventing obesity and metabolic syndrome is to avoid consuming excessive energy (Calories)
Maybe this is still debated in the (surely non-profit) exercise world, but I see no evidence that eating too many calories of lean meat would cause metabolic syndrome, or that limiting daily intake to 2000 calories of soda would cause one to become healthier.
Much of Kern's lengthy rebuttal are technical points that are beyond me to evaluate, but I suspect that the book is intended for a non academic medical audience. In fact Kern says
It is possible that the author’s intent was to simplify these processes for the reader, but doing so inaccurately calls into question his knowledge of metabolism, upon which he bases much of his book.
Perhaps one could use other material he has authored for a technical audience. And Kern is pedantic with quotes like "real food doesn’t have or need a Nutrition Facts Label". A casual reader would understand that a mango does not have a complicated ingredient list, Kern says:
While it is true that labels do not need to appear on unpackaged foods such as a produce, the Code of Federal Regulations is clear regarding nutrient labeling for these types of foods. The regulation from the Federal government is that nutrition facts must voluntarily be posted for at least 90% of fresh food items in a conspicuous place by at least 60% of companies that sell food.
Perhaps Kern doesn't understand who the audience of a trade book is. Kern also cites many studies that I'm not going to track down and evaluate for their own biases.
Giving talks, writing papers and selling books is how our world works. If that's the only thing Lustig is doing wrong, then he's doing alright by me.
but if there's one thing he's proven about nutrition, it's that he's no one to be taken seriously when talking about it
If you're going to grind your axe here, please make better arguments.
jimeuxx|12 years ago
I avoided making any ad hominem arguments against a sugar-shunning overweight man who claims sugar causes obesity, or a doctor writing about sugar who can't distinguish between sugar and starch. My mother told me 20 years ago not to pound soda, so why is Lustig relevant?
Yes, I believe that junk food is bad, and sugar is a big part of it. The landscape of obesity is far more complex, however, as Lustig himself helps to show (he mentions his tight schedule and lack of will power as reasons for eating two meals of junk per day). I really don't feel that making sugar the new fat changes anything at all.
mistermann|12 years ago
That is demonstrably false both in the laboratory but more importantly in massive amounts of anecdotal experience by regular folks. Go read some fitness and diet forums, you think all those people who tried various different diets are imagining they're losing 20, 40, 100+ pounds on low carb diets?
snowwrestler|12 years ago
The problem with fad diets is that most of those people gain their weight back after the initial enthusiasm fades.
Without long-term (decades) follow up, it's impossible to distinguish the effect of a particular diet from the impact of simply being on a diet of any kind--which typically induces much closer attentiveness to calories and nutrition, at least in the beginning.
Also, Internet forums are hardly a random sampling.
acangiano|12 years ago
eclipxe|12 years ago
fizzbar|12 years ago
jimeuxx|12 years ago