Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Mr. Tutt from Health Hack, posted a link to this lengthy piece on the paleo diet compiled by Sam Hoxie of Creighton University Medical School. I’ve been adhering to a philosophy of eating suggested in Protein Power which generously takes from the theory of the Paleo Diet, which basically asserts that we should be emulating how our prehistoric ancestors ate. The theory goes that our bodies evolved to thrive on the kinds of foods that we were able to eat over hundreds of thousands of years before the advent of agrigulture – mainly hunted animals and with some wild fruits and vegetables thrown in as occasional supplements. In the 10,000 or so years since agriguculture took hold in a large portion of the population, humans have not had the time for their genetic makeup to change enough to handle a very different diet based primarily on grains with meat as an occasional supplement (although today for developed countries meat is now affordable enough to have regularly).

What interested me, of course were the “counterpoints” that are discussed in the piece. In other words the reasons for NOT eating a paleo-like diet. Many of these arguments seem logical on the face of it, but if you think about it, most don’t hold much water, or are just irrelevant. Here are some counterpoints to the counterpoins:

1. Sustainability: this is definitely an interesting dilemma. I often wonder whether organic methods would provide more sustainability, but I don’t know the answer to that. Still, I’m not sure if it is relevant exactly. The question of something being healthy for the individual and sustainable for the planet if everyone ate a particular way are two seperate issues. I wrote recently about new efforts to produce meat in the lab without actually raising cattle, but that’s in very early stages…
2. Plenty of people develop cardiovascular disease and diabetes who are also in the normal weight category. Their premise is that obesity causes these diseases, but the alternate view (of which the Paleo and other similar diets adhere to) is that obesity is simply another symptop of insulin resistance, which is the real culprit that leads to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and host of silimilar problems. While eating less and exercising does lower insulin levels and thus improves these problems, it doesn’t always solve the underlying issue. But also, they never really talk about why one would opt for the caloric control model other than that’s what is recommended by most nutritionists. Why would doing this be “better” than living in a way that, supposedly, our bodies were designed to eat?
3. Study: while they call this study “recent,” I’m curious why in the 5 years since I’ve been low-carbing and reading all the battles in the press about low-carb pro and anti, that I’ve only now heard of this study? I’m curious to actually read what it has to say, but so far this is the only study that I’ve ever heard of that has something bad to say about low-carb. Yet, Atkins has been around for 30+ years, so you would think there would be some more evidence that such diets were bad for you over the long haul. I’m all for having scientific studies on these issues, but as we all know, just pointing to a study doesn’t necessarily mean it holds water. It has to be peer reviewed, and even then often from what I’ve seen the conclusions sometimes ignore the obvious because they preconceptions of the authors refuse to consider a possibility that they don’t want and so dismiss results that don’t fit those preconceptions.
4. McDougall: I’ve heard of McDougall, but I can’t place where exactly. Anyway, a couple of points. First, the Zone isn’t a low-carb diet, as far as I can tell, it is way too high in carbs. It may be higher protein than what is recommended by nutritionists, but the amount of carbs that are consumed on such a diet can be harmful for those who are insulin resistant. Secondly, the whole Japanese issue was tackled I think, in Protein Power. The problem with his argument is that it ignores the fact that when Japanese come here and adopt our diet, they are also adopting a new lifestyle, which may increase stress. They also may be eating a diet that has just as many carbs here, less fish, more junk food, etc. Epidemiological studies that purport to prove what healthy eating is by looking at different populations are notoriously unreliable because they just can’t account for all the variables from one population to another. Much more reliable, but still shakey is looking at the same population and making conclusions based on a range of diet and lifestyle variables. McDougall’s quote “If high-protein diets, which means meat, egg, and dairy products, were so good for us then people who subsist on these foods (most Americans) would be the thin and healthy, and vegetarians would be fat and sick. In general, the opposite is the case.” belies some real problems with logic. He doesn’t seem to understand that people who eat based on the concepts of a “high protein” diet, are also not eating all the refined carbs and sweets that “most Americans” eat. As for vegetarians, I’ve seen many an obese vegetarian. Now, when it comes to vegans (perhaps this is the group he really means to talk about because he includes dairy as part of his collection of “high protein” foods), I would agree that most are skinny. In my mind, though, this is not because their diet is somehow better. Skinny does not always equal healthy and in fact until the latter half of last century it was equated with the opposite!
5. Excess: are you sure excess protein is excreted? My sense is it still needs to be digested and depending on what the body needs, it will be converted up to 50% as glucose, which then, if not needed, will be stored as fat. This is one reason why it’s still debated even in some low-carb circles whether eating too much protein may eventually slow weight loss. But the actual digestive process whereby protein is broken down, is very inefficient. It needs more energy than what protein provides in caloric needs (conversion to glucose), so probably eating just too much protein is not going to do much. Besides, protein has been showd to be a much more “self-limiting” macronutrient than either carbs or fat, so you are much more likely to stop at a “reasonable” level. But the other question we should ask is this - why do we need to limit ourselves to only what our body “needs.” Needs in what sense? To survive or to thrive? And this is going to vary a great deal depending on the individual, their activity level, their size, etc. The nutritionists suggest we only need a very small amount of protein, and we shouldn’t go over that amount but I think it’s much less an issue if we get more than enough because protein helps our body maintain it’s vital functions and parts. There has been no ill effects shown from those eating excess protein, except for the limited cases where a person has preexisting pathologies of the kidneys.
6. Water: yet again, this old saw is brought up. Yes, initial weight loss on most diets is mostly water. But someone who loses 50 lbs over a year (or more) is not losing 50 lbs of water! So why even bring this up when this is true of most diets?
7. Calories in vs. Calories out: again, this is the main battle cry of nutritionists - “The only way to lose weight is to use more calories than you consume. For most people this means a sensible, low calorie diet with regular aerobic exercise.” Says who? The problem with this thinking is that it does not work for “most people.” Or rather, it does not work long-term. Anyone can lower there caloric intake and exercise a lot and lose a bunch of weight. I’ve done this numerous times, but like many, the weight always came back. What this approach does not consider is that what we eat and our digestive process itself has an effect on this caloric balance. In other words, metabolism! Not only do different people burn calories at different rates, but you as an individual will burn at a different rate depending on how much muscle you put on (or take off). The added muscle needs more calories and uses them to maintain the muscle mass. In addition to this, there’s something called the “dynamic action of foods” which I alluded to above. This says that different foods (or really different macronutrients – carbs, fat, and protein), have different energy requirements in digestion. Protein is “inefficient” because it takes more energy to digest it that in provides the body. Carbs and fat are much more easily digested and so most of the calories they contain are used by the body either for energy or stored as fat. So a simple calories in vs calories out is really incorrect and incredibly oversimplified.
8. Toxins: toxins are a problem in our food supply in general, but I’m surprised that it’s brought up in relation to free-range meats. Cattle or other animals that are fed an unnatural diet of grain (and probably genetically modified grain), do not have some of the beneficial qualities of free-range/grass fed cattle. I agree that this is something to be concerned about, but where are the studies or the information about such toxins being in meat? Fat is supposed to be the carrier, but a lot of free-range meat is actually lower in fat than its farm-fed counterparts, and again, where are the studies backing this theory up?
9. Disease: the last point of the counterpoint section shows again a point that is made which really effects a very small number of people:
   

   “One of the strongest counterpoints to the Paleodiet is when the dietary recommendations it contains would directly worsen a pre-existing medical condition. Individuals with conditions like liver disease, renal insufficiency or kidney failure or certain metabolic disorders like phenylketouria (PKU) could be caused significant harm by the high protein content in the Paleodiet. As always, discuss any planned dietary changes with your medical doctor before beginning new eating habits.”

   PKU is exceedingly rare, and liver and kidney disease is not very common either. It goes with out saying that if you have a serious illness or condition like one listed above, you should learn as much as possible about what foods you need to be careful about ingesting. But this is like saying that “one of the strongest counterpoints to eating shrimp is that some people suffer allergies to shelfish.” If you go by that logic, than we would have an extremely limited diet, because for almost every food you could probably find someone who is allergic or at least claims to be.

Recently I’ve come across a new blog about low-carbing called Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb. It’s Author, Jimmy Moore, recently lost 180 lbs on Atkins and is writing a book about it. He writes like a fiend and it’s hard to keep up with all of his articles, but I do try to as they can be quite enjoyable. Jimmy does a lot of commentary about articles that come out on a daily basis that bash low-carb usually for illogical reasons or due to incorrect assumptions and just plain wrong information. Jimmy is very passionate about how Atkins and low-carb has led him to success over his eating problems and so sometimes this is translated into some sweeping statements, but mostly Jimmy is completely fair and will cede some of the few points that his opposition has right. Low-carb critics on the other hand, as a whole anyway, seem to want to attack low-carbers as misguided idiots and low-carbing as 100% wrong, no ifs ands or buts.

Recently Jimmy posted a piece about another blogger, Duncan Margetts, who blogs about dieting and wrote specifically about all the low-carb processed foods that for a while were really flooding the shelves only to be taken off a little later.

This is one of the subjects that I think distinguishes Atkins from the plan that I’m on, Protein Power. I do think that Atkins and Atkins followers like Jimmy rightfully warn against eating too many of these highly processed carb-imitation foods. Protein Power really emphasizes eating a diet that is close to what is hypothesized as what our ancestors ate tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago. It does not say you can’t eat such things as protein bars or that you can only eat organic produce, wild game, etc., but it does suggest that there are different “approaches” to eating within a low-carb plan and that you should pick the one that will work best for you, while also suggesting that the optimal diet (a diet even the authors admit they don’t adhere to themselves for the most part) is one that has no processed foods, only organic produce, wild fish, wild game and/or grass-fed/free-range meat and poultry. Obviously not everyone can manage a diet that is 100% natural. Often the less processed a food is, the more expensive it can be, so this becomes a factor. Convenience is another factor, and taste certainly is yet another.

I wouldn’t condemn anyone for choosing to use these processed food products, but I think it’s a sensitive topic because many of these products, like the low-fat ones before them, were simply market-driven concoctions based on the big upswell in perceived demand of low-carb taking off a year or two ago. For those who were unwilling to learn about low-carb, why it works, and how to do it right, these products became staples of a kind. Especially sweets with all their sugar alcahols which were initially being claimed as zero net carbs. Many people were eating these on a regular basis and having difficulty losing weight without realizing that at least some of the carbs in these sugar alcahols are absorbed by most people. They then decided that low carb “doesn’t work” - for them anyway. In other words, I think the availability of these products, while they definitely help add a little veriety occasionally to those who are serious and knowledgeable about low-carbing, have done a lot of harm to low-carbing. This isn’t intentional, of course. It’s not necessarily all the fault of the companies that make them, as they were just trying to fulfill the perceived demand. It was rather the people who saw the headlines that low-carbing was now “ok” and a “new” phenomenon who jumped on the bandwagon without reading the books, or at least not much of them and just assuming that they could eat unlimited amounts of anything that said “low-carb” on it.

The fact is that Duncan, while being a bit hyperbolic, does have a good point when he compares low-carb dieters eating a lot of these products like a heroine addict getting methadone treatments. I think we can all agree that for many people sugar can be an addictive substance. When you try to fool the body into believing its eating sugar, whether that’s with a sugar substitute like Splenda, sugar alcohols, or even the completely natural Stevia, you are still keeping that taste for the real thing alive and well. When I started low-carbing and Splenda was not available or hard to find, I decided to just stop using any sugar OR sugar substitute in my morning coffee. While initially it was difficult to do, the lack of anything sweet woke up my taste buds to the natural sweetness in foods. Almonds started tasting sweet to me and the mixed berries that I once couldn’t eat without some kind of sweetener added became sweet enough on their own. So I think for some people who are highly addicted to sweets and starches, it’s probably most wise to avoid these products altoghether. Keeping a pseudo-addiction going by trying to replicate the thing you’re addicted to with something that may not be as harmful isn’t really dealing with the addiction, right? Then again, if you’re addicted, does it matter? If you’re addicted, won’t you really always be addicted? I guess this is kind of the same debate over alcoholism. AA and similar approaches here in the U.S. make the point that not having any drink is the safest thing to avoid the “slippery slope” that will end in binging and backsliding. But other countries take a much less moralistic view and view alcoholism (and other addictions) as a clinical syndrome. Instead of forbidding anything they let those with this condition ration themselves a moderate amount of alcohol per week (so they can drink a half a glass or so at a meal each day, or they can save it up if they will be having a party that week). This is viewed as a condition where the person simply can’t determine on their own when enough is enough, so putting strict official guidelines in terms of how much they can drink during a given period of time helps them to control this. Of course the effectiveness of either strategy will be debated for a long time and its likely that no one strategy will work for everyone. In any case, the point is that I do think that while sugar may not cause the same problems to society as do drugs and alcohol, there is a parallel here.

If I could, I would eat a 100% natural diet, but I think it’s almost impossible unless you live on a farm and can personally vouch for everything. You never know what is and isn’t natural, even it’s labeled as such. There was an article in the New York Times recently which showed that most of the salmon being sold at various food stores in New York and labeled as “wild” were in fact farm-raised. So really you never know. I think the most important thing is to help your local farmers and ranchers be more profitable against the large factory farms. You can do this by purchasing from these smaller more natural-oriented providers whenever possible. Farmers markets are available almost everywhere and Community Sponsored Agriculture is growing.

If you are just starting a low-carb diet, of course, this is an aspect that may be a bit beyond where you are at. You may say that you want to lose your weight before doing anything else. That’s fair, but I would urge people on any diet or on no diet to consider looking at this important aspect of what kind of food they are eating. You may not be able to get rid of all highly processed foods, but it’s a good goal to limit them as much as possible. You have to be realistic do what will work for you, of course, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make an effort to slowly reduce some of the highly-processed foods you eat and replace them with some more natural equivalents.

Every other day it seems there’s another low-carb food company going out of business. The low-carb critics are rejoicing with their “proof” that low-carb is dead. The mainstream media picks up on these claims because these are the self-proclaimed experts, and hey, if something has appeared to decline in popularity, it is no longer worthy of coverage, and so must be officially declared dead, right?

I’ve written before about this before, but basically I think that the huge explosion in popularity of low-carb is somewhat akin to the internet “bubble” of the late 90’s. It was the hot new thing. People were throwing money at you if you had the most idiotic business plan as long as you talked the lingo, could hype things up to grandiose levels, etc. Companies were becoming valued overnight in the billions while having made absolutely no money. Low-carb really began to build steam in 2003 with a number of studies indicating that not only was it not harmful, but it seemed more effective for losing weight and shockingly actually improved cholesterol numbers despite critics claims that it would cause massive coronaries overnight. The beginning of 2004 was when things really exploded. For the last part of 2003, much of the U.S. had been ignoring diet news and dieting itself as it stuffed itself during the annual tradition known as the exteneded holiday season!. Now that the time of reconning had come, guess which diet was the new trendy one to be on? A new book called The South Beach Diet took advantage of the growing interest and was eaten up by the masses of seasonal dieters. Of course the old stalwart Atkins New Diet Revolution was as well.

The big food manufacturers started coming out with low-carb versions of many different products, from candy to yoghurt. Even those foods that had been around for years started carrying “low-carb” labels if they happened to be low-carb. It was all eerily similar to the low-fat frenzy of the early to mid-90’s, which was now largely defunct. But low-fat took a long time to go away, and never really did completely. There are still lots of big low-fat advocates out there. It was rather a steady decline as people realized that the losses were often temporary because eating low-fat meant they were constantly hungry and needing to eat more, thus making maintaining their weight difficult. Likewise health issues sometimes went along with low-fat, like hypoglycemia, low LDL cholesterol, and high triglicerides. With the low-carb movement, it all happened much faster - the bubble began to burst as early as the summer of 2004. Because many new companies had cropped up in 2004 and even started retail establishments specializing in low-carb fair, the assumption was that this big market that had developed overnight would be around for a long time. Unfortunately, this was not to be.

I have my own thoughts on what happened and why, but it seems that the professional low-carb community is trying to make sense of this and sharing their thoughts with the public. This Friday at 3pm, at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California, Low Carb Luxury, a popular online store for low-carb products, is sponsoring a press conference entitled Low Carb Lives, featuring some big names, including my personal favorites, Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades (authors of Protein Power and many other books), Dana Carpender, and Fred Pescatore, and others. Andrew DiMino, owner of another low-carb online (and bricks and morter) store, Carbsmart, is also on the panel and told me that he is hoping to publish an audio version of the conference via a podcast he will be starting up soon. I’ll post more details when I get them. I’m very hopeful that this conference will provide a lot of great insight from those on the front lines as to what happened during the bubble and it’s aftermath.

In addition to the conference, much of the panel will be autographing books at Andrew’s retail outlet in Huntington, CA, the next day, Saturday March 19.

My sense is that just like the Internet bubble, after all the dust has settled, the reactionaries will lose credibility and the valuable lessons will be learned in order to move on. People didn’t just stop using the Internet once the bubble burst, rather people use it more every day. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Mozilla are making headlines in the mainstream press, and it’s not about hype. Likewise we are seeing the stirrings of things that might seem unlikely at best given the supposed condition of the low-carb industry. I still see low-carb products I haven’t seen previously.

Even more surprisingly, The Eades are not only coming out with a new book about staying on your low-carb diet for the long-haul, but they are actually going to have their own low-carb cooking show on PBS. I have long thought that their measured, sensible message of eating a diet rich in natural and organic whole foods that are low in carbs is one that the media has ignored because it isn’t “exciting” enough. PBS, with their lack of a need to sensationalize everything in order to keep massive audience shares that attract advertizers, may be the perfect place for this kind of message. The Eades approach is also very scientifically based. It delves into our genetic, anthropological and evolutionary history as a species. I believe it appeals more to those who are willing to do a lot of reading themselves and not just accept the dogma foisted upon us by the American Dietetic Association and their minions of registered dieticians spouting the party line of low-fat, despite real proof that that approach results in long-term weight and health gains, while they criticize low-carb for not having similar proof and also for a slew of potential risks which are mere theories and have never been proven or indicated by real-world data. With the ability to explain their compelling experiences as doctors as well as some of the real scientific underpinnings of low-carb in a relaxed time-frame (rather than having to give scintillating sound bytes or doing some high-pressure promotion), it might finally sink into some that this approach deserves some attention.

Wow, this Salon.com article is perhaps one of the coolest I’ve read in a while, and the most up my alley in terms of combining different interests:

There’s nothing particularly bleeding-edge about eating the hamburger but not the bun, now that low-carb dieting has gone mainstream. But low-carb diets do appear to hold a special attraction for hackers, programmers and other close-to-the-machine dwellers. For some geeks, the low-carb diet is itself a clever hack, a sneaky algorithm for getting the body to do what you want it to do, a way of reprogramming yourself. Programmers, who are used to making their computers serve their will, are now finding that low-carb diets enable the same kind of control over their bodies.

The article is about how hackers have taken to low-carb dieting for a number of reasons. Who knew that people like Cory Doctorow and Doc Searls were big low-carbers? Not me! Personally speaking most of the people I know who low-carb are not programmers, except for myself of course!

Basically, the article contends that hackers see low-carbing as “hacking” their bodies - to burn calories at a different rate. I think Searls is spot on when he is quoted as saying that he doesn’t think it’s a hack at all, but rather a “feature” - something we are supposed to be doing - eating the way our bodies are meant to. This may sound preposterous to those who are only familiar with the common stereotype (repeated in this article) of low-carbing being about eating a diet of only bacon cheeseburgers without the bun, but if you consider modern hunter gatherers and their overall diets being meat-based, you will get more of an idea of what Searls may be referring to.

The article, as most, only meantions one low-carb diet - Atkins. But Atkins never talks about the evolutionary and anthropological clues scientists have dug up regarding how our ancestors ate, which seem to suggest, as I mentioned, a primarily meat-based diet, such as is discussed in the Protein Power Books, Neanderthin, the Paleo Diet, and others. Since most hackers are scientifically minded, I think they would probably find even more interest in these theories than anyone.

I get these Google alerts for anything with “low-carb” in the title. For months and months, I’ve been seeing headlines “low-carb losing steam” or some such. Some of this was based on the erroneous assumption that just because people aren’t buying the processed low-carb imitation products (protein bars, low-carb candy, bread, etc.), that this means that many fewer people are low-carbing. Couldn’t it be perhaps that when the explosion of these products hit in early 2004, people new (and even some old) to low-carb were curious about them, but eventually lost interest because they either tasted bad or tasted so good that people ate too much and sabatoged their diets? Others are based on random polling.

Now there’s this report (no longer available) that suggests that low-carb has had a new surge after New Years. It has been credited to the usual surge of new dieters during this time of year, but it neglects to relate this to the whole story behind dieting trends and continues to use loaded terms like “craze.” Here’s what seems obvious to me:

1. The low-carb movement came to critical mass at the beginning of 2004. Part of this was due to the growing number of studies that were giving more legitimacy to the method of weight loss. Part of it, no doubt, was due to Gary Taubes’ high-profile defense of the low-carb movement and theory in the New York Times the previous year. Part of it was due to the notoriety of Dr. Robert Atkins death and the controversy created around the misinformation and privacy invasions perpetrated by PCRM animal rights activists. Part of it was due to a new low carb book (which the author continually claims is not a low-carb book) called The South Beach Diet. And finally, part of it was based on food companies finally sitting up and taking notice of a new potential product category that they could get in on the ground level now that low-fat products had by and large sunk to unprofitability.
2. There are constant articles in the press about how popular low-carb is becoming and this just snowballs to create more and more interest. People buy primarily only two books about low-carbing, the Atkins book, or the South Beach book, which may not even be particularly about low-carbing. Some of these people make a genuine effort, lose weight and even adopt truly healthy eating patterns - they aschew most of the processed low-carb foods for the bounty of “legal” whole foods like vegetables, meats, fish, poultry, nuts, eggs, dairy products, and even some fruits. Many more people, though, either don’t read the books, or read only the menu sections, and get a very scewed idea about what low-carb is about. They believe that low-carb is, as the press and critics have painted it, about eating all meat, fat, and cheese, no vegetables, no fruit, etc. Likewise they get the impression that all of these new products labeled low-carb are ok to eat in whatever quantity they want. Actually, anything low-carb (like meat, cheese, etc.) is considered to be an all-you-can eat affair. Despite these misconceptions, some of these people succeed in losing a lot anyway. Many others don’t. Of the people who succeed, eventually they get sick of eating the same thing over and over because they mistakenly believe that low-carb is only about eating a few types of food. They also don’t understand why or how low-carb is supposed to work to make them not only thinner but also healthier, and so their motivation to continue goes out the window.
3. By this point it’s probably the summer, and most people are more active anyway, so the weight doesn’t fly back on, and people aren’t eating huge meals in summer heat either. But neither are they buying anymore low-carb products, and so we start to hear rumblings in the press about low-carb being on its way out.
4. A few months later and even more of the bandwagon-jumpers have jumped back off and then people start gearing up for the holidays. And by gearing up I mean they start to give themselves much more leeway in what they eat. Everyone else is getting lax during this time, so it becomes much easier to let yourself go because you aren’t alone in your guilty pleasures! Even many old stalwart dieters are slackening during this period, but of course the polling taking place makes the argument that this slackening indicates a definite trend in relationship only to low-carb dieting and not an overall pattern for all dieting over many, many years.
5. Finally the New Year comes and many of our resolutions are about getting back on that horse at least for the moment and thus, yes of course, the polling now indicates that.

What I think is important to stress here is that low-carb dieting is not any different in terms of dieting trends than other diets out there. It’s the new kid on the block, or at least newly respected (by many but not all) kid on the block, so it’s going to get more attention. However, the issue, I don’t think, is so much about low carb being something that people can only do for 6 months before getting bored, as critics would say, but that the whole tradition of dieting in this country, and many others, is a very seasonal one. We expect every year to be tempted through much of November and December at Holoween, Thanksgiving, Christmass, New Years, and umpteen holiday parties spread throughout. The weather is getting colder and there’s this sense that it’s more forgivable to put on a little more “insulation” for the cold. Then there’s the obligatory concession of guilt and resolution to be good again once the New Year has arrived. Because this is a pattern that so many of us fall into, it becomes easy to ride the wave so to speak. Sharing your life experience with countless others (whether friends or strangers) even if that is not a healthy one, is a lot less lonely than being one of the few different ones.

Another part of this as I’ve mentioned above, is also that many of us are either to busy to feel like we should really learn how and why to go about eating and/or exercising. We want quick summaries and the most basic information to just “do” the diet. “Just tell me what to eat” I’ve heard from countless people itching to start low-carbing. They don’t want to read a book, even if that means they will have a much better idea of what they can eat, why, and whether eating a certain way actually makes sense to them. Nope, in this world of instant gratification, even dieting falls prey to this mentality of just cutting to the chase to get the most dumbed-down directive about how to eat.

So, in other words, I’m really sick of hearing about how trendy low-carb is or isn’t. The fact of the matter is that it shouldn’t matter! The only thing that should matter is whether low-carb works for you. If it doesn’t so be it, but just ask yourself if you really know whether you know what low-carb is about. Read a whole book, or better yet read a couple or a few and get some different information about the theories and facts behind low-carb eating and decide whether it makes sense and whether if you’ve done it in the past, were you doing it in the best way? Any diet can be adhered to technically, but also not optimally. For example, I could eat a low-fat diet full of lean protein, but I could also eat a technically low-carb diet with almost no protein, no vegetables, or fruit. I could eat just spaghetti with low-fat margarine, low-fat candy, etc. I could also eat low-carb based on the misinformed critics’ idea of mountains of fried pork topped with mounds of cheese with a liter of grease thrown in for effect! But, after reading a couple of books, it became very apparent to me that eating reasonable portions of a combination of different foods including meat, poultry, fish, nuts, eggs, vegetables, and even fruits was just as technically a low-carb diet, just not one that low-carb critics want to admit are allowable.

For years, critics have been painting low-carb diets as “fad” diets, but really most diets are fads to one degree or another. Diets come and go and while there is a diet that is officially recommended by nutritionists and the medical community which has changed over the years, that could never be labeled as a “fad,” right? Fads are bad because they are ostensibly about irrational reasons for doing something. It’s fasionable or popular, but may not have any legitimacy. However, just because a diet is popular or becomes very popular and then not so much doesn’t make it good or bad. What really matters is whether it works to help you lose weight healthfully and actually makes you more healthy. As I’m sure you know by now if you didn’t already, I am very much believe in the data that suggests that eating low-carb (in the healthy way I mention) can be very healthy. But if we keep concentrating on what the critics, the media, or pollsters say is or isn’t popular when that shouldn’t be an argument for or against anything, we will continue to maintain this really skewed understanding of eating and also our wacky and unhealthy traditions of seasonal dieting trends.

Oops they did it again. Well, the USDA has taken a crack at revising their food guide recommendations, as they do every five years, and what has all the latest science provided for in this most recent document? Not much.

Going through the guide, I noticed that much of it was basically the same old advise that we’ve been hearing for year, but which either haven’t worked, or more likely which have only resulted in the U.S. getting even more obese. But let’s look on the bright side for the moment - here are the only valuable additions to the recommendations:

1. Avoid Trans Fatty Acids: hooray, the USDA has finally come out with a recommendation to avoid these harmful things found in processed baked goods, shortenings, margarines, and some dressings. The problem is that no specific recommendation is made. Instead it is just recommended to consume “as little as possible.” But who knows how much is “little”? Of course previous documents have basically said that there is really no safe minimum level, and hopefully the new labeling laws that will require these to be listed on labels will maintain the momentum that is motivating food companies to rid their products of these. The other problem I saw is that Trans Fats were lumped in with saturated fats and cholesterol as items to avoid in order to avoid congestive heart disease. Considering that plant-based saturated fats like coconut oil are now being seen as healthful in many quarters, and the fact that dietary cholesterol has been shown not to be a major factor effecting cholesterol levels in the blood, it’s disappointing that Trans Fats were grouped with these other two.
2. Increase fruits, vegetables, and whole grain consumption. Most people would agree that vegetables and fruits provide a great source of nutrients. With most vegetables these even come without the added risk of large dense carbohydrate or sugar loads that effect insulin levels and subsequently can cause health problems in some who are sensative. Fruits are a bit more prone to having large amounts of sugar. Grains, of course, are high in carbohydrates, but the recommendation is to increase whole grains, which have much more fiber which is not converted into sugar thus raising insulin levels. However, if you look at the recommendations, they basically suggest increasing whole grains by about 200-300% from the 2000 recommendations, and to keep the refined (they call them “enriched”) grains the same. So while you may be getting more fiber, they are actually increasing your total carb load.

And that is one of my big problems with the recommendations. Despite all the recent studies which suggest merit with decreasing carbohydrate levels, at very least refined carb levels, the new food guide recommendations still is basically a low-fat/high-carb diet. Not that I expected anything different. After all, the USDA’s main purpose it to support the agriculture of the United States. That agriculture is primarily grain-based, and so there is an obvious interest in promoting grains – and thus a horrible conflict of interest. The USDA’s food pyramid is nowhere to be seen within the current recommendations, but apparently it is in the process of being modified to match the new recommendations. But I can’t really see how it will change much. The base will still be about grains, the top will still be fats and sugar. Perhaps they will rewrite the portions recommendations so that it doesn’t look like you need to eat 11 bowls of pasta per day in order to meet the requirements for grains, but we’ll see. The previous pyramid has developed a great deal of criticism except for the old guard nutritionists who basically use whatever the USDA puts out as their bible.

The unfortunate thing is that this will do nothing to educate or help those who know little about what to eat. Their recommendations are a set of basic guidelines (misguidelines if you ask me) which don’t really teach people why they should eat a certain way, but just tell them to.

Like many of my readers, I’m sure, I’ve had an ongoing battle with weight, but I also have done extensive reading on the subject. I’m not just talking about diet books, but also studies, articles, and interviews, debates, etc. on diet, nutrition, health, and even anthropology. I can’t call myself a scientist because I don’t have the hard-core grounding in proofs and research skills, but I can at least claim to be somewhat educated on the differing points of view surrounding these topics, in addition to simply being a fairly good observer of attitudes of those around me regarding this stuff. That being said, I thought I would ramble a bit about what I see as the issues we face but more importantly how to try to get around them. It’s a multifaceted topic to say the least. If it were simple we might have already nipped it, but it is complex and fraught with confusing contradictions and competing interests. I hope this litany will at least start to delineate individual items of attention and separate some of the major areas to work on.

The Issues:

1) Mind over Matter? As many of us know from countless attempts to lose weight, only to regain it later, the goal of losing weight and keeping it off is a very challenging one. For those who haven’t had to deal with obesity, a very easy assumption may be to blame the dieter for simply being too “lazy.” There are certainly those who can overcome the desire to slack and keep weight off for extended periods, so these exceptions to the rule are held up as the paragons that everyone could and should strive to emulate. However, despite the desire to simplify issues (which I’ll examine more closely below), it’s not always simply a matter of personal responsibility or will power. This isn’t an effort to make “excuses” but to look at the reasons why things have become so difficult.

a. One part of this is the so-called evolutionary argument that it is in our genes to overeat whenever possible. Hunter-gatherer ancestors dealt with a constant threat of starvation. Up until the agricultural age when humankind learned to preserve food with salt, and eventually bottling, canning, refrigeration, vacuum packing and irradiation, the only way we could “store” food was to eat it and have it accumulate in our personal biological “stores” of fat tissue. Because of this, some would say, we are compelled to eat as much as we can even though there is no threat today of starvation. Some of us have been able to override this urge most of the time, but given the opportunity, as with the “all you can eat” buffets, it can often be incredibly challenging not to stuff yourself.

b. Part of this may be due to simply not doing it “right.” In other words, the effort to work hard at losing may be there, but the results do not show. This may be because the dieter is doing something that they were TOLD was the correct way to eat and/or exercise, but it turns out to actually be deleterious to their goals.

c. Yet another issue is societal and cultural realities. Current U.S. (and perhaps at least some other westernized countries) suburban culture creates lifestyles that make it extremely hard to eat healthfully and get a decent amount of exercise. The car culture of the U.S. makes regular exercise something that one has to make time for instead of being an integral part of one’s day, and the busy lives of many makes this increasingly difficult. The prevalence of fast-food makes it much more appealing than the more time-consuming method of preparing one’s meals from scratch from whole foods, and such meals are not readily available ready-made, or when they are, they are considerably more expensive than the less healthy alternatives. Finally, while we have come to have a much greater awareness as a society of dieting these days, there is still a great adherence to eating things based only on what tastes best regardless of how healthy it is, and this can help erode the will of any dieter.

2) Simplicity

a. We crave simplicity – easy answers to complex questions. We hear about laziness a lot when it comes to people not wanting to do the “hard work” of exercise and eating right that are supposed to make weight loss possible. While there may be a very small subset of those who simply don’t want to do anything “hard,” I think much more prevalent is laziness when it comes to thinking about how to lose. Part of this is an educational issue where people unquestioningly accept whatever crap they read, whether it’s in a supermarket tabloid or the New York Times, without doing any critical thinking of their own. Many simply don’t have the tools to go about such thinking, but others do and simply decide to believe in one dogma or the other without questioning it or trying different approaches.

b. One Size Fits All – thankfully this attitude is slowly starting to change, but it is still something that most people believe applies in one way or another. Certainly we can agree that there are some universal truths that certain things are healthy for 99.9% of us and other things are unhealthy for a similar percentage. But the field of genetics has shown us that people do metabolize foods differently and have sensitivities and other issues particular to their ethnicity/genetic makeup. Instead we are given guidelines that are supposed to work for everyone. Even given one individual, they will react very differently to the same diet and exercise plan at different periods throughout their life based on many factors, such as how many times they have dieted in the past, what kind of health issues they have developed or haven’t, or simply their age. These concepts seem to be too confusing for many, or at least those who write books or articles have decided that they are too confusing, and so they dumb everything down into simple rules that over time harden into unchallengeable “fact” when they are really nothing of the kind.

3) Business and Government

a. We exist in a capitalist society where the “free market” reigns. Many of the large companies in such a system operate with the goal to get bigger which increases their stock and makes them and their stockholders wealthier. In doing so, altruistic motives often become of secondary concern and then only when they can coexist with the goal of making more profit. This situation can lead in more notorious cases to companies like the cigarette companies that profit on the addiction to harmful substances, but just as much to food and beverage companies that profit on the addiction to sugar, fast food, and junk food.

b. The U.S. Government is seen by those on the right and the left as being a spoiler in this area and others. For the right, the Government should have no place in telling people what to eat or how to spend their money. It should not be a “nanny” because it should be up to the individual to exercise their free will and be responsible for their own decisions when it comes to diet and health. For the left, the government is little more than a facilitator for big food companies, giving them corporate welfare and subsidizing huge factory farms that produce way more in the way of food then we can eat or even give away to countries in need. The smaller farmer interested in sustaining the land, producing a product that is healthier and more humane, gets marginalized if not eradicated.

4) Medicine and the Medical Industry

a. Pharmaceuticals have become a huge sector of the economy and due to the realities of the healthcare and insurance industries, the marketplace, litigation, and government regulations; they have turned into monstrosities of a sort. At the same time that they create drugs which prolong life for cancer patients, and even so much as cure other diseases, their drugs are increasingly seen as not having been adequately tested. They basically bribe doctors into prescribing as much of their drugs as possible with the unspoken threat that perks of free dinners and vacations will go away without high enough sales numbers. They need these huge sales numbers in combination with high drug prices that are ultimately paid for by health ever increasing health insurance premiums and the government (and thus your tax dollars), in order to make up for the huge costs of developing drugs and the potential risk of having a dud, or worse something that ends up eventually harming people and thus causing countless legal expenses.

b. Doctors have been accused of not understanding nutrition, and not wanting to pressure patients into eating healthy because they feel their pleas will be ignored. While there are certainly exceptions, many doctors have expectations for patients that are so low, they would rather prescribe drugs or even surgery over really urging a patient to eat better or exercise. Their slavery to the pharmaceutical industry makes it even harder for them to resist the temptation to simply prescribe a drug for a given symptom. Many patients are afraid to do the hard work of figuring out what the underlying cause of a symptom is and experiment with possible solutions (although this is getting easier with the internet and being able to communicate quickly with those who have similar issues), but doctors have much more background in science that should enable them to do this work faster and more efficiently. However, again the realities of the profession mean that it is a lot easier and more profitable to see a patient for a few minutes and sign a prescription for something that will allay some symptoms for a while as opposed to getting to the bottom of the problem.

5) Dieticians, Nutritionists, and “Experts,” oh my!

a. Our growing problem with obesity and obesity-related health issues has not only created a huge market for what most recognize as the today’s charlatan snake oil salesman equivalent of this diet pill or that fad diet, but it also creates a market for those with more recognized certifications and ostensible respect in the professional community. These so called experts dole out advice with confidence and do this in the place of the medical doctor who has largely given up this role.

b. Dieticians and nutritionists, and even personal trainers have generally been giving the public what they have been asking for. An expert to tell them what to do and how to do it. Unfortunately, these professionals practice a “science” which is not hard and fast the way, say, physics is (quantum mechanics not withstanding!). The theories behind weight loss and healthy eating aren’t as simple as these experts make them out to be. Very little if anything has been “proven” in studies, but these studies all the same are used as “proof” to back up the standard party lines. These lines become more solidified and more rigorously defended over the years. As it’s been said, if you repeat anything for long enough, it becomes accepted as fact. When dieters follow the advice of their “expert” but do not see any improvement, the patient is often the one who is blamed for doing something wrong, or even for cheating. Even if the patient convinces their expert otherwise, instead of causing the expert to question their foundation of knowledge (assumptions), they patient is labeled an anomaly (usually genetically speaking these days) and told to pursue a remedy in prescription form. Since their standard advice is useless and they cannot suggest something that goes against that advice.

Solutions

Ok, so, as you can see, the situation is a complicated, convoluted mess. Can we make any sense out of it? As cynical as I may sound above, in the sense of the upcoming New Years’ resolutions, here are just a few personal and collective goals I can suggest. Some of them will be hard, if not all but impossible but I don’t see anything wrong with having such goals as long as there are others that are more achievable or achievable faster. The harder ones give you something to work towards after all the easy things are out of the way!

Suggestions for the individual:

1) Stop following and start thinking.

a. This really relates to a lot of the issues above. Really all I mean is to not just listen to what the so-called “experts” are saying, but to do your own thinking. Think about what makes sense regarding what they tell you, and what doesn’t. You’re smart enough and at least have common sense to know that some things that “experts” tell you to do don’t make sense, or at least don’t for you.

b. Get other opinions. Just as with politics, diet, nutrition, and exercise have their fare share of differing camps. Low carb vs. low fat vs. calorie counting, aerobics vs. weights, etc. Read about the different approaches, but more importantly try them out. If something doesn’t work, after giving it a fair chance, try something else. Is this going to be hard for some people? Sure! But there are plenty of communities on the internet that will help you understand the different issues. Instead of relying on a “expert” to tell you what to do because that’s been drilled into them as a party line, talk to your peers and ask them what works for them. Get suggestions and have a dialogue, not a one-way list of orders that you can’t stray from at the risk of dire punishment.

2) Don’t listen to the Government.

a. At least don’t listen to what they tell you as far as dietary advice. Our society, economy, and government are centered on money and commerce. Officials rely on campaign contributions from wealthy individuals or large companies in order to get reelected and so are lobbied incessantly and successfully by factory farms and big food companies, and even by non-profit special interest groups, who all have their own agendas. The part of the government that currently makes dietary guidelines (the much-maligned food pyramid included) is the USDA. That is the US Department of Agriculture. Agriculture as in farmers. The USDA’s raison d’etre is to promote the interests of farmers and the agricultural industry in the U.S. There seems to be an inherent conflict of interest here!

b. The current administration is very pro-big-business at the moment and so they have a bias towards promoting things that help those big businesses, whether they are big food and beverage companies, pharmaceutical companies, or fast-food chains. So we will necessarily see recommendations and even laws supporting these businesses right now. That doesn’t mean you have to support them as well.

3) It’s not simple!

a. It’s not all about weight. Most experts would have you believe that weight is the paramount issue here, but that simply isn’t the case. Excess weight may be perfectly healthy if it is in the form of muscle and not fat. Most scales only measure total weight, at least until recently, and that one measurement has also been simple and convenient for the “experts” to obsess about. Body fat percentage is a much more telling measurement. Even with excess fat, there’s some evidence to suggest that maintaining a steady, albeit above average weight (with that excess weight being fat) over the long haul (especially if regular exercise is part of the picture) is much healthier than gaining and losing over and over even if half of your time is spent at some mythical “ideal” weight.

b. Don’t let the scare tactics get to you when it comes to cholesterol. Very often doctors will urge their patients to go on cholesterol medication because their LDL is too high or even just their total cholesterol is too high. However, there are pleanty of layman, scientists, and even doctors who have come to the conclusion that the current standard methods of measuring cholesterol are at best misleading, and at worst completely meaningless. Given the risks of taking serious medications like the cholesterol-lowering Statins, it’s extremely important to know whether there is a really good reason to take these.

Suggestions for the medical industry, dieticians, etc:

I’m not sure whether such suggestions (even coming from someone other than myself who has credentials and real influence) could ever affect significant numbers within these professions because of the inherent forces within them that have caused the current status quo. Perhaps the only way of changing things in some cases would be to create competing bodies or professional associations that could somehow challenge the more mainstream ones. Such bodies exist currently in some forms, but sometimes these have their own issues because they are blinded by their own ideology as opposed to real science. In any case, here are my suggestions:

Look at the opposing point of view and look at it dispassionately. Those in the medical industry are supposed to be practicing science, but like scientists in other fields, a status quo is developed and anyone who challenges the ideas of that status quo is ridiculed, but, if their ideas truly have merit there may eventually be grudging acceptance and finally adoption into the accepted tenets of that science. Scientists are supposed to weigh (no pun intended) things dispassionately, but they are still human and as such unavoidably have biases and turfs they feel they need to defend. The growing amount of litigation and cost of insurance only make it harder for Doctors to go against the grain, and the “standard of care” solidifies this practice. But I would argue that doctors also need to look really hard at their Hippocratic Oath and ask themselves whether doling out pills and not suggesting anything that goes against standard orthodoxy is really helping patients, and if it’s not helping patients are you are in fact hurting them because you are preventing them from getting the advice that really would help?

Likewise, nutritionists and dieticians need to look beyond their training which accepts only a narrow dogma with little flexibility. Admitting that things we thought were true are subsequently shown to be false is much less painful than clinging to an argument that has really been proven false over time. It smacks of fear of losing one’s place as an authority and one’s job. With adherence to dogma comes inevitability of obsolescence since with progress we often learn new things that contradict what we thought we knew. Refusing to accept new evidence staring one in the face will only worsen an individual’s or entire profession’s reputation and hasten it’s demise. An old guard defending itself is never to be trusted to advance the interests of anyone but its own.

Finally, to the medical industry, I would suggest creating studies that actually mean something. So many of the “studies” that come out today really don’t prove anything. Part of the fault here goes to the mainstream media who sees a preliminary study on mice and extrapolates it to be proof or at least a strong suggestion of how things work in humans. But scientists should know this and refrain from talking to the mainstream press about studies they know are only going to get hyped into ridiculous simplified generalizations. Even aside from animal studies, there is simply a lack of good human studies especially when it comes to diet and health. Many of the studies I’ve seen are with very small groups for short periods of time, or they aren’t even studies themselves but rather “meta studies” which simply look at other studies and try to argue a point based on hand-picked literature that supports their cause – while ignoring those that don’t. If we really and truly want something approaching objective “proof,” we need to spend lots of money, and not the money of special interests. Perhaps a large fund, like that of Bill and Melinda Gates, could support something that would not allow for special interests to influence the results to any significant extent. Doctors would have to resign themselves to any conclusion, instead of starting with a conclusion in mind and writing off an unexpected result as some anomaly. The numbers of participants should be very large – in the thousands or even tens of thousands. All variables should be plotted, not just weight, height, gender, and age, but body fat percentage, previous dieting and exercise experience, ethnicity, medications, smoking, etc. Ideally participants would have to be confined to an area where there would be a fair degree of confidence as to what the participants reported were true. In other words, all exercise could be monitored and all food intake as well. Not just monitored so much as allocated. Different levels of macronutrients would be allotted to different groups. There wouldn’t be just a “standard group” and a group that differed to a moderate extent in one of their macronutrients like carbohydrates. Instead you would have a group that took in 80% of their calories as carbs, 10% as protein, and 10% as fat, another group which took in 5% of their calories as carbs, 65% as fat, and 30% as protein, and all the different combinations in between. The study would also follow the individuals over at least a three year period, but as many as seven years. As I implied, this would not be an easy or a cheap study, but satisfying all or most of these strictures will be the only thing that will convince the majority of people (experts and laypeople alike) that a particular method of weight loss works best for a person given their very particular makeup (ethnicity, dieting experience, medications, etc.). Perhaps computer modeling and genetic profiling will take a lot of the work out of this in the future, but for now, anything short of this full-on approach will be, as it has been in the past, meaningless except as something for scientists, doctors, universities and/or hospitals to get their names in print.

Katherine from Low Carb Freedom has a nice piece on a recent study presented by Brown University that purports to show that low-fat diets are more effective at weight loss for the long haul. I saw this article (article no longer available) yesterday but hadn’t gotten around to commenting about it I guess because it comes with the refrain that we’ve been hearing for months now - “low carb diets are on their way out.” There are so many articles with those headlines and yet all the people I know who have been doing low-carb plans are still doing them.

The problem with these studies is that they are flawed from the get go, and so whatever they allegedly show is really nonsense. As Katherine mentions, they often deem “low carb” as simply being lower then the ridiculously high average that has been the case in the American diet, at least until recently. So instead of 300 grams of carbs per day, the dieters are consuming 100 grams. But as anyone who has read a low-carb book knows, 100 grams is much higher than what a low-carb dieter would eat unless he or she were on the maintenance phase after losing all their weight. This is doubly dumbfounding because so many critics basically paint low-carb as NO-carb diets. This all may seem like an abstraction, but the fact of the matter is that much of low-carb theory is based on keeping the level of carb consumption at a point where it has minimal effect on insulin. If you go slightly over, you end up with it not being that effective. Sure eating 100 grams of carbs is better than eating 300 grams, but for many it’s not going to allow them to lose much weight, if any.

As Katherine notes, the actual text of the study is not available and so we don’t know whether they accounted for various variables. Let’s look at just a few of these. Did the dieters all have the same level of exercise? Exercise (what type and how long) play a significant role in how a person loses weight. Did they all start at roughly the same weight? Those who have more to lose to begin with tend to lose more weight on average, no matter the diet. What was their dieting history prior to this study? Frequent, “yo-yo” dieters often have a much harder time losing weight because, it is though, they have conditioned their metabolisms to hold onto more excess fat for longer. What were the dieters eating? While the news report notes the macronutrient levels and caloric totals, the types of fat (MFA vs. SFA, etc.), and the vitamins and nutrients in natural food as well as the chemicals and preservatives in processed food, all have effects on the overall picture. Dieters studied from similar ethnic and racial groups? Genetics have been shown to effect how the body metabolizes things. Those whose ancestors are from hot climates generally have a much greater potential towards insulin resistance for example. Was the amount of water among the two groups tracked? In terms of weight loss, was only the actual weight measured or was their any effort to determine how much of that weight was fat and how much was muscle, water-weight, etc.? And we haven’t even talked about the murky waters of psychology and how a person’s attitude effects how well they adhere to the diet, stress levels, etc.

The dieters were participants in The National Weight Control Registry, which is a voluntary and open registry, but you need to have maintained a 30-lb loss for over a year. So this eliminates anyone who has lost under 30 lbs, even if that’s all they needed to lose. None of the results are verified by doctors, they simply ask participants to fill out a form, so even the validity of the data is in question.

The ONLY way, as far as I can see, to get anything approaching usable data is to take many individuals and isolate them in a setting where you can completely control as many of the variables as you can. You compare only individuals who are about the same age, race, ethnicity, diet history, and starting weight. You give each participant within each group the same exact food. You make each of them do the same exercise routine, etc.

Even doing something like this you’re going to run into differences based on genetics which for the time being we won’t be able to easily differentiate. Mapping the Human genome will eventually produce a much tighter understanding of at least that one facet. Sleep levels have also shown to be important in weight loss and you can’t make people sleep the same amount necessarily. Stress can also have an affect and while you can remove stress from an environment, you can’t control what inherent issues may crop up from a participant being away from their family, or being with other people that they may not get along with, or simply other emotional issues people will bring with them to such a study.

Studies of the kind I mention have been done, but they are few and far between and relatively small due to their expense. If we are really serious about getting to the bottom of some of these questions, though, such studies with larger numbers need to be funded more because it will be the only way to get close to having some degree of confidence in what the best way to eat is, and I suspect even if this were to happen we would get conclusions that were open to interpretation and which varied based on one’s age, heritage, and dieting history. In the mean time, my advice would be to just read as much as you can about different diets and fitness plans and try each, recording how easy it was to lose weight, how long you are able to keep it off, how the diet impacted your energy level and other health factors that are measurable (blood sugar, insulin, triglycerides, etc.), and how it changed your body fat percentage, not just your weight. Ultimately we all have to be our own study – both the researcher and the participant – in order to come up with what works best for us. Getting bent out of shape or even taking at all seriously a “study” such as the one Brown University presented, is pretty much pointless.

UPDATE: There was a press release today from Catherine LaCroix of Low Carb Living Magazine in which she got a comment from the presenter of the study, Suzanne Phelan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Human Behavior at Brown University, that the headlines stating that the study showed that low-fat was more effective than low carb was “misleading.” Additionally, LaCroix uncovers that the differential in calories that may have caused less weight gain was not from fat per se but from “junk food.”

It’s been a while since the orange juice industry and potato industry decided to go after the low-carb diet movement because of its threat to their business. I haven’t heard much since, except for some in these industries making a decision that instead of or in addition to bad-mouthing low-carb, or even suing it proponents; they needed to adopt a fall-back plan of some version of developing a version of their product that might appeal to some low-carb dieters.

Just a few minutes ago I learned of an organization “dedicated to promoting the health benefits of fruits and vegetables with regard to weight management and disease prevention” which has conducted a poll about low-carb dieting. Their name, Dole Nutritional Institute, gave away who they were – Dole, the huge conglomerate that sells canned and fresh fruits and veggies, as well as other products that use fruits or veggies as at least one of their ingredients – sugar probably being a bigger share on some of these!

So, you can’t blame me for being just a tad suspicious that this “Doll Poll” as they call it, might be a little, shall we say… biased? And reading through their press release, it amazes me how blatant this bias is. Let’s go through just a few things that should make it clear to most people who can think for themselves that Doll is out only to vilify low carb because it is a threat to their bottom line.

“The brand new “Dole Poll” found that half of all Americans reported that no amount of weight loss from a low-carb diet would be worth the potential negative health impact. According to a recent national poll of 801 adults, the possible side effects of a low-carbohydrate diet such as high cholesterol, constipation, kidney stones, and increased risk of some cancers, “tip the scales” against following such a diet for a full 50% of Americans. In contrast, more than one-third (36%) say they are willing to take the chance to realize some weight loss, with 4% reporting any amount of pounds shed would be “worth it.”

This is the definition of “leading question” and has been used by politicos to plant a seed in people’s mind without actually coming out and accusing an opponent of the thing. “Would you vote for so and so if it turned out he embezzled money and fathered an illegitimate child”? The point is that none of these so called side affects have ever been proven to be associated with low-carb dieting. Please, Doll, anyone, name one study that showed an increased incidence of any of these things among actual low-carb dieters. Maybe some are logical extractions based on faulty assumptions, I grant you that, but faulty assumptions don’t lead to valid conclusions!

“We’ve turned a corner in public awareness,” observed Jennifer Grossman, Director of the Dole Nutrition Institute. “The more people learn about low- carb health risks, the less appetite they have for such dangerous fad diets.” Coming on the heels of The Lancet medical journal’s survey suggesting such side effects as headaches, fatigue and foul breath are more frequently reported by low-carb dieters than those on conventional regimens, the Dole Poll findings are more evidence that the Atkins bubble has burst.”

Hmmm, I see something about “headaches, fatigue, and foul breath” but where are all the other supposed side effects? The side effects that the Lancet describes have been criticized because they are widely known to anyone familiar with such diets as the common symptoms of carbohydrate “withdrawal” during the first two weeks of the diet, after which they subside and in fact a great increase in energy is often noted.

“This backlash is already affecting the grocery industry, with less than half the numbers of low-carb products introduced in 2004 than in 2003, and sales figures showing that many of these products are discounted or off the shelves weeks after introduction. Some industry experts even project that two-thirds of the products introduced this year will be off the shelves by 2006.

We’ve been hearing about the supposed death of low-carb for months now. Part of this is based off the argument that some low-carb products aren’t selling at the incredible rates they were during the first four or five months of this year. Let’s see, could it be that this “fad” is over, or could it be that only those who adopted the diet as the 2004 diet of the year will go back to their old ways? People who aren’t necessarily serious about finding what will work for them and sticking with it, but rather more interested in doing something that’s trendy, and once it’s not new it gets tossed out. Sure, there are a lot of bandwagon jumpers, but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s stopped low-carbing. Aside from this, it ignores the fact that the drop in sales for these products may have absolutely nothing to do with overall numbers of people following low-carb diets. All it says is that fewer people are buying these products! But despite what the critics might try to convince you of, you can, and really you SHOULD do low-carb without any of these. Low-carb can be accomplished with simple whole foods, such as meat, fish, veggies, fruit, nuts, and dairy. In fact, I would argue that it’s even easier to avoid processed foods with a low-carb plan than low-fat, because all dairy and much meat is naturally not low-fat, but needs to have that fat “processed out of it” and in its place, at least as far as dairy is concerned, goes other fillers, particularly sugar, in order to hide the lack of taste that the fat used to provide.

Other questions and results included:

Question: As you may be aware, some Americans are trying to lose weight by eating fewer carbohydrates. This is often referred to as the “Atkins” diet. Which of the following aspects of a low-carbohydrate diet do you find most appealing?

27%  SIGNIFICANT WEIGHT LOSS

18%  FACT THAT YOU CAN EAT BIG PORTIONS OF MEAT, CHEESE, AND CREAM AND

STILL LOSE WEIGHT

13%  SIMPLICITY OF THE DIET/EASY TO FOLLOW

2%  THE POPULARITY OF THE PROGRAM/OTHER PEOPLE DOING IT

25%  DEPENDS/UNSURE/DON’T KNOW (VOLUNTEERED)

7%  TOTAL OTHER (VOLUNTEERED)

7%  REFUSED (VOLUNTEERED)

Wow, Dole was brave enough to actually publish one of their questions. Let’s see, where is the answer “It makes me feel good” or “It improves my health”? Of course, they couldn’t have asked that because that might have actually created results inconsistent with what they aiming for. Instead, they give the option that you can eat “big portions of meat, cheese, and cream” – you know the very stereotypical view that critics have of these diets that they only consist of fatty meats and cheese. Also we have “popularity” as a factor, which is not a positive at all. Who is going to admit to doing something only because it’s popular? Obviously not many!

Question: Which of the following aspects of a low-carbohydrate diet do you find to be least appealing?

39%  SIDE EFFECTS LIKE KIDNEY STONES, HIGH CHOLESTEROL, AND INCREASED RISK OF HEART DISEASE

17%  DIFFICULTY TO KEEP WEIGHT OFF OVER THE LONG TERM

13%  BOREDOM WITH THE SAME ROUTINE IN THE FOODS EATEN

8%  SIDE EFFECTS LIKE CONSTIPATION, BAD BREATH OR DEPRESSED MOOD

15%  DEPENDS/UNSURE/DON’T KNOW (VOLUNTEERED)

3%  TOTAL OTHER (VOLUNTEERED)

4%  REFUSED (VOLUNTEERED)

Here we go again! The question is framed as if these “aspects of a low-carbohydrate diet” are proven fact. Please, show me any scientific study that shows an increased risk of heart disease with a low-carb diet. This is something that nutritionists and the medical community have accused Atkins of for over 30 years, so you would think by now they would have proof, right? Cholesterol is often decreased with a low-carb plan as well.

Notably, a full 25% of those surveyed said that they were “unsure,” “lacked information,” or simply “did not know enough” to respond to this question and choose among the four aspects. This suggests the limited popularity of low-carb diets, which have achieved “mainstream” status (available and known to a majority of Americans) but which have failed to realize a critical “mass” in its subscribership (actually followed by a majority of Americans).

Or…. It could just mean that you didn’t give these people an adequate answer which they would have picked, since you loaded it all to make the diet look bad. How they extrapolate this data to determine that there is no “critical mass” in low-carb diet popularity is really unfathomable.

That’s the problem with such a poll. When you have an actual agenda, it no longer is a poll, but a political or marketing propaganda mechanism. And wouldn’t you know it, the company that conducted the poll, “the polling company“, is headed by a conservative talking head (the company also does political consulting), someone used to trying to present a specific viewpoint, not objective truth.

I am no big fan of low carb food products that try to mimic high-carb foods like bread, candy, pancakes, and countless others. They tend to be highly processed with dubious claims based on the iffy status of sugar alcohols. Nevertheless, the recent decision by Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to outlaw any kinds of supplemental labeling that denotes the Atkins approval or even signaling that the product is low in carbs is, in my opinion, just unfair.

Has labeling signaling the lack of fat (even in nutritionally bereft foods like candy) been banned too? If not, then to be fair, it should be as well. As it stands, manufacturers will have to relabel lots of product and what’s on shelves now will become illegal to sell. Will manufacturers decide that it’s worth it to take the effort to relabel their product and then try to sell it when they can’t even advertise what is admittedly a major selling point for the millions of low-carb dieters out there?

Perhaps the end effect, even if it does strip Canadian consumers of options, is a double-edged sword. Low-carb dieters, especially those fairly new to it and who haven’t bothered to understand the mechanics behind a healthy low-carb plan, often tend to use these products as a crutch to continue to eat the way they feel accustomed to instead of truly adopting a new way of thinking about food and nutrition – a more holistic and natural way that involves few processed foods and mainly whole foods like veggies, fruits, meat, fish, poultry, nuts, etc. On the other hand, these products do have their place as an occasional treat instead of the full-carb alternative. The danger is that consumers see “low-carb” and decide this means they can eat as much as they want, just as consumers did with low-fat products.

What gets me is that these Canadian Agencies just used a U.S.-based entity, the Institute of Medicine (this was the first time I’d heard of them) to make this decision. Not only that but the recommendations from this institute that they are following came out a couple of years ago, before many studies supporting a controlled-carbohydrate regimen were published. So the science backing this not only is unoriginal, and only coming from one point of view, but in addition is old! Plus it almost seems like these agencies are renouncing responsibility for doing any work themselves by using someone else’s recommendation.

The regulations are said to take affect in December of 2005, by which time there will be even more studies out, and the recommendations that are the basis for these regulations will then be over three years old! It will be interesting if, as has happened over the last year or two, even more nutritional and medical experts start looking critically at the old assumptions of carbohydrate-centric diets as the model and decide that there may just be some benefits to controlling carb intake.

Update: Katherine Prouty at Low Carb Fredom also posted a piece about this (thanks for the link, Katherine!), with links to lots of scietific studies that support a reduction in carbs for health and weight loss.