Did anyone else got Anthony Colpo's latest email about his disagreement with Dr. Mike Eades over the low carb and calories issue? Anthony has definitely become the leader of the tin foil hat brigade. I used to respect him, but good lord.
Nyah Levi

Could you post it, if it wouldn't be a violation of the terms of signing up for the newsletter? Don't post if it would tick him off.

I take what helpful and useful nuggets I get from Eades and Colpo and don't let their personalities get in the way. I often don't like Colpo's attitude toward those he disagrees with, but that doesn't affect the message for me. I don't agree with Dr. Eades' politics, but he is spot on nutritionally.

Some of the greatest artists, writers, and scientists had less than winning persdonalities, but it doesn't affect their contributions to the world.

Oh, I've got to see this....can you forward the email to me (email is on my blog - or PM me for it)....or post it here?

I'm not sure if this is the same thing as his newsletter, but I found this on his site. An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Eades

He has hostility issues.

I pretty much agree with him on the calorie thing but I really feel like he comes off badly when he gets so riled up. Maybe needs to back off the steroids a bit?

I really need to do a blog post on this one.....so much compelling data to write about that really does open up the discussion that calories are not, in fact, all that matters......but at the same time can matter.

Ohhhhhhh....how do I set that post up so it gets the right points of data across accurately?

I'll be interested to see what you write about it, Regina. Though I do believe in the advantages of low-carbing metabolically, Colpo makes the point that it's never been proven in metabolic ward studies that control for the fudge factor he claims skews results to show that metabolic advantage.

Be sure to let us know here if you do a blog post on it so we can ready your point of view.

If ANYONE can do it, you can. I would quickly put my money on you.

Of course, the body being such a complicated system with all sorts of redundant pathways, it is hard to reduce things to a simple description of how things work. I often think that it is not unlike electronics where there are multiple factors that determine the circuit performance. And it is even so complicated that what works with one parameter at a given value will totally fail for a different value of that parameter.

Then when you chain or link together many circuits, it gets really interesting. The body, likewise, is many different chemical reactions that feed into others. And like in electronics, there are feed back paths that cause one reaction to regulate others. NO, not a simple system at all!

Anxiously awaiting your blog on the subject.

I agree that Colpo can be a total jerk but I am extremely disappointed with Dr. Mike on this one. I was interested to see if he could refute the metabolic ward studies and instead he completely weaseled out of it and attacks Colpo and another commenter on their spelling and grammar while claiming to take the high road.

Very disappointing.

You're not kidding about hostility issues. I just read the post that Val linked to. Maybe it IS the steroids. I always knew he could be childish, but the tone of his post is downright nasty.

I always try to ignore the personalities and read through to the underlying truths. It's kind of hard sometimes to practice this with Anthony.

Actually, I managed to get through the hostility and read it all and clicked the link... for about the most blatant sales pitch of his new book. Sounds like he probably did all this for a publicity stunt.

My view? Eades doesn't need to reply....Anthony's just itching for a fight and Mike won't bite - too bad. JMO of course!

Refuting metabolic ward studies isn't all that difficult - let's see Anthony discuss the overfeeding studies out there, the isocaloric differing macronutrient studies with greater than vLCD calorie levels, or how about just some basic physiology studies on how different macronutrients affect fatty acid liberation for use as energy, or better still, feeding studies intended to overfeed calories with fat and protein which failed because excess calorie intake could not be forced without carbohydrate being the majority of energy....or heck, even let's look at the differences in metabolic ward studies where a single MICROnutrient is the only appreciable difference between groups and did have an impact on weight loss differences!

Anthony won't touch these studies in his tirades and rants....ever wonder why he shuts-down discussions going in those directions?

From what I can tell, the definition of a food calorie is determined by completely burning the material in a bomb calorimeter and measuring the heat of combustion. This is done in conditins of high oxygen to ensure complete combustion, and the material is sometimes spiked with a known amount of combustible material, again to ensure ignition and complete combustion. As such, this test gives the maximum possible amount of heat/energy that can be derived from a material in its conversion to CO2 and whatever other products of combustion result (e.g., NOx if the material contains nitrogen, such as protein). The contribution to heat evolution from the ignition source and the amount of spiking agent is corrected for in the determination, so that the end result is only what comes from combustion of the material being tested.

The human body is hardly identical to a bomb calorimeter. Oxidation to CO2 proceeds via enzymatic means rather than combustion. The process takes some energy input, and different pathways require different relative energy inputs (relative to the amount of energy released, that is). In some instances, in others intermediate products are shunted off to be used in anabolic processes (building cell membranes, using amino acids to build ne proteins, etc).

So the idea that "a calorie is a calorie", seems totally simplistic and at odds with both what is known (and not known) about the biochemistry as well as the complexiy of regulation of all these pathways and the dynamics of the human body. I think you can only say that you can't get any more energy out of a foodstuff, than the calories it represents. But I certainly think you can get less, if you are using some for protein turnover or anabolic uses.

I'll grant that Colpo may be right in saying there have been no rigorous studies showing LC has some advantage in terms of weight versus caloric intake, but that may be as much a consequence of the fact taht LC is only just beginning to be studied and still faces tremendous bias from the mainstream scientific community. He can't say it is untrue, only that it is unproven.

I think the "caloric advantage" makes perfect sense myself. Carbohydrates are closer to a fuel than are proteins or fat. They are only carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and in reasonably short chains by the time they are absorbed by the body. Amino acids must have the nitrogen componet clipped off before the carbon skeleton can be utilized for energy. Fats are more amenable, but the fatty acids must first be clipped free of the glycerol backbone, and even then they are typically longer than your average monosacharide and as such they have to be clipped down in two-carbon increments. Just looking at the steps required to convert one or the other from the form ingested, to CO2 and whatever else is left, would seem to suggest that carbohydrates are going to require the least energy input to get from point A to point B.

I don't now what the practical relevance of the "caloric advantage" is to a LCer. It may be very small compared to things like the effect of greater satiation on ad lib caloric intake or the hormonal advantages that prevent lipid storage. It would certainly be interesting to break these out experimentally, and I'm certain it will be done in the next twenty years.

I, of course, think Dr. Eades had exactly the right response. He did indicate he would get around to the metabolic studies, in his own time, on his own schedule. And that he certainly wouldn't respond to Anthony's childish challenge on his forum.

It comes down to this, they have different interpretations of essentially the same body of evidence. All Colpo needed to write would have been something like:




but that wouldn't be Anthony, and it wouldn't generate all this heat, and hey, he has books to sell!

I feel a bit funny here, since it was my question to the good Dr. that set this all off... I am genuinely curious about those metabolic ward studies AC goes on about, but I refuse to buy anything from that lunatic.