Twelve Black Code Monkeys

This article appeared today in the Naples Daily News, written by a regular columnist who is a dietician criticizing low-carb in the same tired way. I thought I’d make a few comments.

Without a doubt, the most frequent question I am asked is whether I am in favor of the latest diet fad, which I have dubbed the “low-carb craze.”

Already we see a big bias with the words “fad” and “craze.”

My answer is simply: “How can I endorse any plan that encourages eating cheeseburgers, brimming with saturated fat from both meat and cheese, but not the bun which contains little fat or sodium, has a quarter of the calories and may contain whole grains?”

“May contain whole grains”? Come now, everyone knows that that the buns that are served with hamburgers are almost always pure processed, refined grains, with very little nutritional value. Their glycemic index is so high that it is literally like eating pure sugar instead of bread, because this is how quickly they are converted to sugar in your blood! Greenstein also brings up the dreaded “saturated fat” boogeyman, but we’ll get to that later.

Long-time readers of this column know by now that I do not favor any program that singles out a major food group, or advocates eliminating or severely limiting healthy foods.

If a food group is bad for you – say candy/sweets/baked goods – would that not deserve singling it out? Of course, this was never a concern or criticism of diets that exclude meat, another example of the double standard that is used to judge low-carb diets. Most of these old-guard nutritionists/dieticians think it’s perfectly fine to eat soybeans instead of meat and even fish. Vegetarianism is a completely acceptable way of eating for most of these folks.

Instead I have always focused on balance, cutting out the junk food (including sugar and refined carbohydrates), cutting down the portion sizes and most important of all, the total calories. Upping the exercise is also a given.

Ah yes, “balance,” the catchword of the diet dictocrat! One would think that “balance” would be this wonderful thing. “All things in moderation” as they say. But what IS “balance?” Does it mean eating a little bit of everything, even things that are really bad for you? Does this make sense? Maybe to the vast majority of folks out there who do not want to give up things they enjoy eating but know are not good. Calories are another big bugaboo for the old guard. Everything is boiled down to calories and calories in vs. calories out are what control weight. But these nutritionists don’t realize that the human body is not a test tube or an engine with a single input and output and which runs perfectly efficiently. The human body is amazingly complex machine, one that has many different metabolic “pathways” where foods are broken down and the energy from which is stored, expended for bodily processes or simply when needed by the body in order to do the work of walking, running, or typing. There are studies that indicate that those who ate a low-carb diet of 300 calories more than a similar group of non-low-carb dieters actually lost the same amount of weight. How does this make sense within the nutritionists’ very simplistic mindset of “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie?” The answer is it doesn’t.

First, carbohydrates are not bad for you. Some are better than others, but overall they are an important food group that contain vital nutrients, and are the immediate source of energy for the body.

Some carbohydrates do contain vital nutrients, it’s true. And it’s also true that in and of themselves, carbs are not “bad” for you. The problem arises with the modern diet that favors eating carbs over protein and fat. It is the excess of carbs that’s the problem. Of course what is considered “excess” is up for debate, but there has been enough research done that indicates that the current standard diet that is heavily concentrated in carbohydrates leads many on a path towards insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, and, eventually, diabetes – in addition to a host of other ailments. As far as being an immediate source of energy for the body, sure, it can be, but that doesn’t mean that it HAS to be. Those on low-carb diets generally switch from a metabolism that burns carbs for energy to one that burns fat. Although the actual switch can cause lack of energy, once the switch is made, dieters often find that there energy level is actually higher than it’s been for years. Runners who eat this way don’t experience the period where they become extremely tired after a period only to get the vaunted “second wind.” This “second wind” is actually noted to be when the body switches over to fat-burning.

Carbs not only include bread, rice and pasta — which are the no-no’s in most low-carb plans — but also whole grains, cereals, starchy vegetables and fruit, which contain needed fiber and other vitamins and minerals that protect us against major diseases.

What about non-starchy vegetables? These too contain much fiber and vitamins and minerals. They aren’t mentioned here because they are allowed on low-carb plans. Why a person must eat grains and starchy veggies for such nutrients instead of non-starchy ones is a mystery to me. As for fruits, they are certainly allowed on such plans, with the possible exception of the first two weeks of the strictest of such plans, the Atkins Diet.

Counting carbs usually works because most of the popular diet plans contain fewer calories. It is true that some people on low-carb diets seem to lose weight faster than on traditional diets, but that is due to initial water loss in the short term. As soon as they go off of these plans, the weight usually returns with interest.

Ah hah! The tried and true reasons why people lose weight on low-carb diets! First it’s again the calories. Ok, if this is true, which I don’t think it necessarily is, I don’t see how this is a criticism. If I can eat in a way that lets me have delicious food, but keeps me satisfied enough to where I don’t want huge amounts of the stuff, and thus my calories are in check, why would you not want this? Lots of carbs in the diet and little fat and protein often leads to increased hunger. But Greenstein would rather have us suffer through the challenge of “portion control” in order to maintain a caloric deficit rather than let our food naturally keep us from eating more because of it’s inherent satiating qualities. Greenstein than drags out another old cliché – that of the weight being lost is water weight. As in most diets, this is true during the first week or so, but many experience significant continual weight loss over not just a week or two but for months. This is not water loss! And finally we hear that “as soon as they go off these plans, the weight usually returns with interest.” This is so silly I can’t believe that it is actually printed again and again. No matter what kind of eating plan you are on to lose weight, as soon as you stop doing what you have been that has helped you do this, you will gain weight back. If I go back to eating a diet of pizza, donuts, fried chicken, and ice cream (ok, that wasn’t exactly my diet before I started eating low-carb but you get the point), I will gain weight back. Why is this a criticism? Think about it - because plan A has some beneficial effect, stopping it will stop the thing that it is beneficial. Well, of course! Would you expect that it would simply permanently cause one to have all the benefits permanently no matter what one does after initially getting to one’s goal? Was this ever a criticism of low-fat diets or even “balanced” diets? No! So why just with low-carb plans? This is probably the most blatently ridiculous of the “criticisms” I’ve heard for low-carb plans.

Low-carb dieters also like the meats, cheeses, and other foods allowed on these diets, and thus have a tendency to stick with them without feeling deprived. What they are ignoring is the high intake of saturated fats, which have been well documented as a risk factor for heart disease and other chronic illnesses.

Well documented? Yes. Proven? No. First of all, when one sees the studies that ostensibly link saturated fat intake with disease, one variable has not been looked at – how many carbs there are in the diet. The studies included participants who generally eat a copious amount of carbs. Unfortunately no studies have been done to indicate how carb consumption plays along with saturated fat intake. As stated before, the human body is a very complex mechanism. You don’t always have an a = b relationship. Even vitamins don’t work very well (some may even be harmful) unless they are accompanied by their “cofactors” – other substances that work WITH the main compound of the vitamin. Your health is not just how much of X you eat, but the entire equation of all the different things that you eat and how they work together. Again, we are not test tubes. One thing that indicates to me that their may be some merit in thinking that saturated fat is not bad for those who control their carb intake to a reasonable amount is what has been shown to be a net beneficial effect to cholesterol levels for people who go on low-carb regimens, according to recent studies.

It is also important to remember that many products marketed as “low-carb” are not always “low-cal.” Many people are buying these products hoping that they will help them lose weight, but what is not stated is that many low-carb foods actually contain more calories, and more unhealthy fats than the regular brands.

As Greenstein should know, low-carb diets are not concerned with calories, even though she makes the claim that they are indeed low-calorie diets and this is how they help people lose weight. But she can’t have it both ways, they are either low-calorie, or they’re not. I assume by “unhealthy fats” here she is again referring to saturated fats, which in my opinion have not been successfully proven to be harmful given a controlled carbohydrate diet.

Another area of confusion is a term called “net carbs,” coined by the late Robert Atkins in an attempt to help dieters avoid what he thought were the least desirable type of carbohydrates. Although this term is not recognized by the Food and Drug Administration as a legitimate nutritional factor, it is still widely used on many low-carb products.

Net-carb refers only to the carbohydrates that have a measurable impact on blood sugar levels and cause them to rise. The fiber content of carbohydrates as well as sugar-free sweeteners and fillers — which have only a tiny impact on blood sugar — are subtracted from the total carbohydrates to leave the net carbs. Although it is useful for people to learn the fiber content of the product, if it has only a few of these net-carbs it may still be high in total calories, saturated fat and sodium.

This is one are where Greenstein may have a point, but she can’t really explain it. Net carbs subtract fiber and/or sugar alcohols (her term is “sugar-free sweeteners and fillers”). Again, though, she discounts this whole idea not because it may or may not have some scientific basis, but because it “tricks” dieters into believing a product is ok for them to eat when it is not. But this isn’t true because the qualities she is using to determine whether something is ok for one to eat (saturated fat, calories, and sodium) are irrelevant to the low-carb dieter. So she misses the point that while fiber can and should be subtracted from foods because it is not converted to energy and does not have an effect on blood sugar, many sugar alcohols can have an affect and at least are partially converted to energy.

As I’ve discussed before, low-carb critics, at least those among the old-guard nutritionists and dieticians, seem to have an almost religious antipathy for these plans. One possible reason is that they fly in the face of what they have been taught and what they have preached for decades. Schools of nutrition teach these tenets and there is no room for debate in most, from what I have heard from people I know who’ve studied the subject in academic settings. There is a set philosophy, a dogma if you will, that does not change despite recent studies that fly in their face. It becomes almost a personal issue for those who have been recommending a certain way of eating. They must feel that they have to demonize the opposition or else their recommendations will be completely invalidated. And so instead of telling people about the good aspects of low-carb plans and how to eat in a healthy way while within the constraints of such plans, they throw out the baby with the bathwater and simply say that it’s their way or nothing. I would agree that as with most eating plans, people who don’t know much about nutrition in general and are unwilling to carefully read the books, but instead just jump on a the latest diet that they’ve heard hyped in the mainstream media, will not get much out of them. They may lose some weight, but unless they understand why they are losing and figure out an optimal way not just to lose weight but to get in all the nutrients (and avoid trans fats and other harmful items), in the end they may eventually go off as soon as the weight loss stops. Instead of criticizing all of these plans in a broad brushstroke and complaining about things that are irrelevant, it would be so refreshing for a nutritionist to actually read a bunch of the plans and say – “ah, this one seems the best nutritionally because it emphasizes eating lots of veggies.” Or “if one is to go on a low-carb plan, try to get lots of veggies, eat lots of fish, etc.” But even to suggest that there’s a shred of usefulness in these plans, it seems, would be admitting defeat.