She could have had two whole pounds of green beans and remained under 50 grams of non-fiber carbs!

http://cronometer.com/food.html?foo...&measure=366337

Too many people assume that low carb = VLC, or zero carb. Not that the latter are bad. It's just a wrong impression that turns some people off.

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a common theme with the anti-Taubes argument. The theme goes, Taubes is too simplistic and ignores a mountain of contradictory evidence. And I say, how's that any different to the conventional wisdom that says it's all about calories in and calories out? I mean, that's the basis for all the other stuff derived from it. For example, eat less and exercise more, or control portion size, or skip breakfast, or don't eat after 6 PM, etc. If we've read Taubes' GCBC, we clearly see that the conventional wisdom ignores a mountain of evidence too. If the same argument can be used to refute both sides, then the argument is effectively rendered nul and void.

On the one side, we have the conventional wisdom saying it's all about calories. But on the other side, Taubes never said "it's all about carbs", in spite of what opponents say. So we have another argument that goes, the anti-Taubes argument is too simplistic such that it misinterprets Taubes' own argument. You can't win a debate if your argument is a strawman, and exposed as such. However, this particular strawman is useful in case you want to draw attention to other factors. And that's exactly what's happening in the blog post and the comments. Processed seed oils, sleep, TV, etc. It's useful, but unnecessary. The same counter argument can be made without making a strawman. Here, I'll try.

"While I agree that carbs might be the primary driver of obesity, we must not forget all the other factors that also seem to be involved such as chronic low-grade inflammation, pathogens, epigenetics, drugs and many others."

But you see, it doesn't have the punch of the counter-argument that starts with a strawman. Anyway, Taubes does not ignore a mountain of evidence. On the contrary, he includes all evidence. Here's one example of that. Taubes often says low-fat diets work for the same reason low-carb diets works - they cut carbs. It's easy to see, it's almost childish. It goes, low-fat diets already contain so little fat, so when we cut total calories, the bulk of calories cut invariably must come from carbs. But since low-fat diets still contain more carbs than low-carb diets, they are less effective, and that's exactly what experimental studies show. If Taubes really ignored a mountain of contrary evidence, he wouldn't even look at low-fat diets, he wouldn't even look at evidence that looks at low-fat diets. I mean, seriously, how could Taubes have ever come up with a hypothesis in the first place if he'd never looked at all the evidence he could?!? And if we look at all the research that followed Taubes' original NYTimes article, we could conclude that it's not just an argument, it's a compelling argument. In fact, compelling enough that really big names wrote multi-page counter-arguments and rebuttals just to try and shut him up. Heck, we're still discussing it today, more and more, and some with an almost hateful fervor I might add. On a side note, I'm playing a game called Inquisitor and I can't help but draw a parallel between heresy and compulsion. The Taubes argument has often been called heresy, often by Taubes himself. But here again, I can't help but see a parallel, heresy is inherently anti-authority. In fact, that's one of the arguments from the NuSI website - anti-authority. If it wasn't compelling, we wouldn't go that far in our characterization of it, would we. We'd just shrug and laugh, and go on our merry way. We can't blame Taubes the man for the compelling aspect, I listened to many of his lectures and if anything, he's not particularly seductive. It must be what he says, the evidence he presents, not the way he presents it. Heck, Taubes is called "too simplistic and boorish" in one of the comments, that's totally not indication that he's compelling. Yet, by all appearances, his argument is.

I agree. I think it's time we start working to change that perception.

Martin how can you say Taubes isn't seductive. I find him to be extremely sexy. Now if he was at least 10 or 15 years older, he wouldn't stand a chance!

Hehe, I can understand a certain handsomeness to him. But if somebody was trying to seduce you, he wouldn't contradict everything you said, no matter how handsome he was. Cuz that's what Taubes has been doing since the start. He's been contradicting everything that's ever been said about nutrition and health by anybody in the last 40 years.

This diet doctor links to a Stephan Guyunet post, where they studied some people living primarily off of cassava. They were almost universally lean, with no diabetes. The idea is, show a population that eats lots of carbohydrate, that isn't fat, and you've disproven the carbohydrate hypothesis--or at least given strong evidence against it. This isn't strictly the case. Entirely aside from questions of genetics, or carbohydrate quality or type, there's the question of whether the modern form of obesity, that we're suffering from today, has carbohydrate intake in one form or another as a prerequisite. This might seem unfair... but you almost have to show obesity developing in the near absence of carbohydrate to disprove the "carbohydrate raises insulin which increases fat storage which causes obesity" part of the hypothesis. This has almost been shown in rodents... except that the protein intake is so low in these ketogenic studies that the increase in bodyfat is only relative, it's as a percent of bodymass where lean mass has decreased rather than fat mass increased.

And if it's a matter of palatability... you're going to have to show that palatability will make a non-fattening diet fattening. To show that a low carbohydrate diet specifically is non-fattening (I'm talking in the initial development of overweight here) only because of palatability, you'd have to show that palatability will make this particular diet fattening.

Is an all-cassava diet particularly healthy? We need a diet that reduces obesity and diabetes... and is also good for us.

If you think of a homicide, one man shoots another in the head with a gun. No gun, no murderer or no victim, and the event can't happen. All three are absolute causes, in a sense. Remove any one, and the other two are no longer causes of this particular event.



So... there's more than one cause. Which is the easiest one to remove, and results in a diet that's healthy in a general sense, and not just for weight loss?

Here's one way to look at the difference between fat, carbs, and calories, with regards to their metabolic effects, with regards to the graphs.

If we eat 2,000 kcals, made up of 40% fat, 40% carbs, and 20% protein, then add 25% more calories mostly in the form of carbs, we end up with a difference in the significance of those differences. The difference in calories is 25% (2,000 kcals vs 2,500 kcals). But the difference in carbs is 62.5% (200g vs 325g). Or 2.5x that of calories. If only one plays a role, then it's obvious that carbs is the most likely culprit. If both play a role, it's just as obvious that carbs play the biggest role.

If we add 25% calories in the form of fat, we still end up with a difference in fat of 62.5%. But, that's 55g. Carbs is 125g. Or 2x that of fat. Here again, it's more likely that carbs play either the only role, or the biggest role.

I've simplified for the sake of argument. But even from such a simplified model, it's obvious to me that it's unlikely that serious research will show it to be untrue, i.e. that a difference of 25% calories will be more significant in its metabolic effects than a difference of 62.5% carbs.

The problem there is that populations (however lean and healthy) who live off of staples like that often eat ENORMOUS amounts of fat. Think coconut fat!

Asians eat lots of rice but remain lean and healthy- but they also have a larger pancreas.

Anyone else think that the commenter "Anonymous" may be someone we are already familiar with? Initials AC... ?

Asians don't eat a lot of rice to be frank with you. Just wanted to share that with you guys here.

I changed my mind. Dr Freedhoff may not be the idiot I thought he was. He allows open discussion on his blog. He didn't censor my comments. That's a good thing.

I completely agree. To each his own. I don't understand that hostility.

Hi Alex You have dragged up a thread from 2012 from Search, watch the dates (I have yet to figure out how to date limit!).

Now everyone is in love with the Ketogenic diet. Magic words, even if most people don't do a true Keto diet and are eating a standard low carb.