kyrasdad
Mon, Feb-18-08, 09:37
Since I'm off of work this morning, I browsed the nutrition section of the New York Times online. Everyone's favorite clueless, low-fat fanatic has been dispensing advice (http://science.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/a-new-you-jane-e-brody-on-nutrition/#comment-4421) Some of the gems:
I'll start with her conclusion, where she contradicts Gary Taubes. Does anyone else think that it's absurd for a a hack like Brody to argue with Taubes about anything?
Thanks to all who solicited comments and answers about nutrition this week. Many of you really got me thinking.
And since so many queries and comments concerned Gary Taubes, I think a final word is needed. While it is true that the saturated fat/cholesterol hypothesis about heart disease has never been put to an incontrovertible clinical trial, there is at least decades-long experience with it that has found absolutely no hazardous effect and strong indications of benefit.
The idea that carbs (and I don’t mean the refined and sweet ones, at least) are the real cause of obesity and heart disease is thus far just an idea. Although in short-term tests — about a year — the high-fat, low-carb diet has improved measurements of cholesterol and diabetes control, it has never been followed for decades in any population group except the Eskimos and some Greenlanders, whose main source of fat is not from red meat and dairy but from creatures from the sea. So, to my mind, the jury is very much still out on the long-term safety of a diet that gorges on red meat, high-fat cheeses and other sources of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol.
That said, I suggest to all of you: eat good food, exercise regularly and enjoy long-lasting good health as the best advice of the day.
And some other tidbits...
— Posted by CICI: How strong is the link between saturated fat and heart disease?
Jane Brody replies: Very.
[/quote
A thoughtful and useful response there, Jane. Any comment on the recent studies that debunk this dogma?
[quote]
Jack: Let’s talk weight loss. Assume we agree that permanent lifestyle changes are the best way to achieve this.
For the sake of argument, let’s strip away all compliance issues, and also assume enough dietary vitamin/mineral/nutrient content so that homeostasis for a reasonably healthy individual does not go out of whack.
Does it all come down to calories in versus calories burned?
Is all the other noise we hear about low-carb, low-fat, etc diet, and types of exercise essentially important in energy balance, or just a matter of potentially ensuring better compliance?
Jane Brody replies: Calories in equals calories out — or you gain or lose weight. The body knows no other arithmetic.
All popular diets are simply a disguised way of getting you to eat fewer calories. If, say, on a low-carb diet, you cannot eat cake, cookies, ice cream, candy, bread, muffins, most fruits, etc., you will eat less. Also, the high-protein content will help to squelch your appetite, but it could do damage to your kidneys in the process. A low-fat diet helps to control calorie intake because, gram for gram, fat contributes two-and-a-half times more calories than protein, sugar or starch.
Greatly reducing saturated fats and substituting healthier ones like olive and canola oils and fish fat, and filling your plate with vegetables and whole grains, is a smarter, healthier way to eat overall and the best approach to maintaining a diet for life (and living!).
My husband thinks because he is on lipitor that he doesn’t need to follow a low-fat diet very closely. I also take lipitor, and I have found that I am not as careful as before. Do you believe these drugs are help or hindrance to health?
Jane Brody replies: The statins work best if you follow a heart-healthy diet. They are not a license to eat 12-ounce steaks and full-fat cheeses.
Well, since the steak won't hurt you anyway--eat it. :)
Ivan Rivera: What are good carbohydrates? Which are bad? Where do I find the good ones? Which fruits contain good carbohydrates? Which contain bad carbohydrates?
Jane Brody replies: All natural unrefined carbs are good for you. That means those in fruits and vegetables and whole grains. Enjoy.
She got the unrefined part (which she didn't get in the past, even though Atkins told her so). Fruits, ok, Veggies, great, "whole grains", though are only a little better than white bread, and just as bad for weightloss.
Julia: I know that the recommended daily value of fats is 65 grams, that saturated fat intake should be limited in favor of healthier fats, and that fats are necessary for certain bodily functions. What I’m not clear on, however, is whether the human body needs saturated fats at all. Should I be aiming to eat the 20g of saturated fat that is the recommended daily allowance? Or can I be healthy eating almost entirely unsaturated fats? I tend to eat a Mediterranean diet and get my fats from olive oils and fish — no meat and very little dairy. In short, is saturated fat necessary for us to function? Thanks!
Jane Brody replies: The body needs absolutely NO saturated fats. Feel free to eliminate them from your diet. [\quote]
Didn't you mean carbs?
[quote]
John Buell: Some nutritional experts urge us to reduce our intake of carbohydrates. I wonder if there isn’t a big difference between simple and complex carbohydrates in terms of their effect on blood sugar and lipid levels. Whole populations seem to have subsisted quite well with high intake of brown rice or oat bran foods. It seems to me that the case is much stronger for reducing consumption of white rice, white flour etc than for reduction of oat bran or brown rice consumption. I would appreciate your analysis of the literature on this.
Jane Brody replies: There is a great difference between simple and complex carbs. Stick to those whole, unrefined foods and limit the sweets and refined white ones.
She got it partially right. Mind you, she was dragged by low carb diet doctors to recognizing this--she used to dismiss any carbohydrate difference, even when more learned people were telling her differently.
On January 27 the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Gary Taubes that questioned the link between cholesterol and heart disease. Taubes claimed that we sometimes use faulty logic in assessing risks associated with cholesterol levels, and that we should use more rigorous science to evaluate our long-held beliefs. Do you have a response?
Jane Brody replies: I’m a strong believer in rigorous science and establishing health benefits through randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials. But sometimes realism must prevail. These studies are extremely difficult to perform, VERY expensive, and take decades during which each group must stick religiously to its assigned diet.
The best study of this nature to date is the National Institutes of Health-sponsored DASH diet study, which showed clear heart-health benefits from a diet low in saturated fats, high in vegetables and fruits and containing milk and other dairy products. I doubt that we will ever see another such study strictly on cholesterol.
But do keep in mind: as the average serum cholesterol level of Americans has dropped from 240 to about 210, there’s been a concomitant decline in coronary mortality. Much, but not all, of it was due to reduced smoking rates. Dietary changes in consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol surely played a significant role.
— Posted by Denis Lenoir: In your answer to question 14 you write about “dietary cholesterol intake” and “saturated fat intake”? They sound, if not the same, then at least part of each other, could you please explain a little further. Thanks a lot.
Jane Brody replies: Saturated fat in the diet can raise a person’s serum cholesterol level. Dietary cholesterol may or may not raise cholesterol, depending upon one’s genetics. About 10 percent of the population is sensitive to cholesterol in foods.
I'll start with her conclusion, where she contradicts Gary Taubes. Does anyone else think that it's absurd for a a hack like Brody to argue with Taubes about anything?
Thanks to all who solicited comments and answers about nutrition this week. Many of you really got me thinking.
And since so many queries and comments concerned Gary Taubes, I think a final word is needed. While it is true that the saturated fat/cholesterol hypothesis about heart disease has never been put to an incontrovertible clinical trial, there is at least decades-long experience with it that has found absolutely no hazardous effect and strong indications of benefit.
The idea that carbs (and I don’t mean the refined and sweet ones, at least) are the real cause of obesity and heart disease is thus far just an idea. Although in short-term tests — about a year — the high-fat, low-carb diet has improved measurements of cholesterol and diabetes control, it has never been followed for decades in any population group except the Eskimos and some Greenlanders, whose main source of fat is not from red meat and dairy but from creatures from the sea. So, to my mind, the jury is very much still out on the long-term safety of a diet that gorges on red meat, high-fat cheeses and other sources of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol.
That said, I suggest to all of you: eat good food, exercise regularly and enjoy long-lasting good health as the best advice of the day.
And some other tidbits...
— Posted by CICI: How strong is the link between saturated fat and heart disease?
Jane Brody replies: Very.
[/quote
A thoughtful and useful response there, Jane. Any comment on the recent studies that debunk this dogma?
[quote]
Jack: Let’s talk weight loss. Assume we agree that permanent lifestyle changes are the best way to achieve this.
For the sake of argument, let’s strip away all compliance issues, and also assume enough dietary vitamin/mineral/nutrient content so that homeostasis for a reasonably healthy individual does not go out of whack.
Does it all come down to calories in versus calories burned?
Is all the other noise we hear about low-carb, low-fat, etc diet, and types of exercise essentially important in energy balance, or just a matter of potentially ensuring better compliance?
Jane Brody replies: Calories in equals calories out — or you gain or lose weight. The body knows no other arithmetic.
All popular diets are simply a disguised way of getting you to eat fewer calories. If, say, on a low-carb diet, you cannot eat cake, cookies, ice cream, candy, bread, muffins, most fruits, etc., you will eat less. Also, the high-protein content will help to squelch your appetite, but it could do damage to your kidneys in the process. A low-fat diet helps to control calorie intake because, gram for gram, fat contributes two-and-a-half times more calories than protein, sugar or starch.
Greatly reducing saturated fats and substituting healthier ones like olive and canola oils and fish fat, and filling your plate with vegetables and whole grains, is a smarter, healthier way to eat overall and the best approach to maintaining a diet for life (and living!).
My husband thinks because he is on lipitor that he doesn’t need to follow a low-fat diet very closely. I also take lipitor, and I have found that I am not as careful as before. Do you believe these drugs are help or hindrance to health?
Jane Brody replies: The statins work best if you follow a heart-healthy diet. They are not a license to eat 12-ounce steaks and full-fat cheeses.
Well, since the steak won't hurt you anyway--eat it. :)
Ivan Rivera: What are good carbohydrates? Which are bad? Where do I find the good ones? Which fruits contain good carbohydrates? Which contain bad carbohydrates?
Jane Brody replies: All natural unrefined carbs are good for you. That means those in fruits and vegetables and whole grains. Enjoy.
She got the unrefined part (which she didn't get in the past, even though Atkins told her so). Fruits, ok, Veggies, great, "whole grains", though are only a little better than white bread, and just as bad for weightloss.
Julia: I know that the recommended daily value of fats is 65 grams, that saturated fat intake should be limited in favor of healthier fats, and that fats are necessary for certain bodily functions. What I’m not clear on, however, is whether the human body needs saturated fats at all. Should I be aiming to eat the 20g of saturated fat that is the recommended daily allowance? Or can I be healthy eating almost entirely unsaturated fats? I tend to eat a Mediterranean diet and get my fats from olive oils and fish — no meat and very little dairy. In short, is saturated fat necessary for us to function? Thanks!
Jane Brody replies: The body needs absolutely NO saturated fats. Feel free to eliminate them from your diet. [\quote]
Didn't you mean carbs?
[quote]
John Buell: Some nutritional experts urge us to reduce our intake of carbohydrates. I wonder if there isn’t a big difference between simple and complex carbohydrates in terms of their effect on blood sugar and lipid levels. Whole populations seem to have subsisted quite well with high intake of brown rice or oat bran foods. It seems to me that the case is much stronger for reducing consumption of white rice, white flour etc than for reduction of oat bran or brown rice consumption. I would appreciate your analysis of the literature on this.
Jane Brody replies: There is a great difference between simple and complex carbs. Stick to those whole, unrefined foods and limit the sweets and refined white ones.
She got it partially right. Mind you, she was dragged by low carb diet doctors to recognizing this--she used to dismiss any carbohydrate difference, even when more learned people were telling her differently.
On January 27 the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Gary Taubes that questioned the link between cholesterol and heart disease. Taubes claimed that we sometimes use faulty logic in assessing risks associated with cholesterol levels, and that we should use more rigorous science to evaluate our long-held beliefs. Do you have a response?
Jane Brody replies: I’m a strong believer in rigorous science and establishing health benefits through randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials. But sometimes realism must prevail. These studies are extremely difficult to perform, VERY expensive, and take decades during which each group must stick religiously to its assigned diet.
The best study of this nature to date is the National Institutes of Health-sponsored DASH diet study, which showed clear heart-health benefits from a diet low in saturated fats, high in vegetables and fruits and containing milk and other dairy products. I doubt that we will ever see another such study strictly on cholesterol.
But do keep in mind: as the average serum cholesterol level of Americans has dropped from 240 to about 210, there’s been a concomitant decline in coronary mortality. Much, but not all, of it was due to reduced smoking rates. Dietary changes in consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol surely played a significant role.
— Posted by Denis Lenoir: In your answer to question 14 you write about “dietary cholesterol intake” and “saturated fat intake”? They sound, if not the same, then at least part of each other, could you please explain a little further. Thanks a lot.
Jane Brody replies: Saturated fat in the diet can raise a person’s serum cholesterol level. Dietary cholesterol may or may not raise cholesterol, depending upon one’s genetics. About 10 percent of the population is sensitive to cholesterol in foods.