I have no idea what to think of the below article. Could be the cognitive difficulties I’m suffering from!!


Low-carb/high-fat diets pose dangerous health risks and may increase the risk of contracting serious chronic diseases.

Studies have linked extreme low-carb/high-fat diets to an increased risk of developing certain disease states, including:
• Alzheimer disease
• blindness and macular degeneration
• some forms of cancer
• cardiovascular and heart disease
• c-reactive protein/inflammation
• metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance
• osteoporosis
• kidney stones

This is due to increased levels of saturated fat and dietary protein in the diet, with inadequate nutrition coming from plant-based phyto-chemicals.

Low-carb diets may increase the risk of birth defects and childhood cancers.
Bread, pasta, breakfast cereals and orange juice — foods that are “off-limits” in a low-carb diet — are fortified with folic acid, a micronutrient essential to the neurological development of fetuses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently requires that enriched grain products be fortified with the essential vitamin folic acid (the synthetic form of naturally occurring folate, or vitamin B-9, found in many leafy green vegetables, fruits and legumes). Since the fortification of grain-based foods with higher levels of folic acid, beginning in 1999, there has been a remarkable 19 percent drop in neural tube birth defects in the United States. Followers of a low-carb diet do not receive the benefits of folic acid fortification.

Low-carb diets may cause cognitive difficulties.
Carbohydrates are the only source of fuel that the human brain — the most energy-demanding organ in the body — can use. Muscle cells can burn both fat and carbohydrates, but the brain does not have the “machinery” to burn fat. Depriving the brain of carbs means depriving it of energy — and the shortfall can affect intellectual performance, such as memory and cognitive processing.
Once the body’s glycogen reserve is exhausted, the brain ends up using ketones, a by-product of the breakdown of fat. Ketones are not the optimal energy source for the brain, and their increase in the body has been shown to impair mental judgment.

Low-carb diets can make people — especially women — short-tempered.
A new study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the brain produces serotonin — which regulates moods and emotions — only after a person consumes sweet or starchy carbohydrates, in combination with very little or no protein. A shortage of serotonin can lead to mood swings and depression. Eating a healthy pasta meal encourages the brain to make serotonin; eating a steak actually stops it from being produced.3

Full article HERE

What a bunch of crap.

Published by a pasta company. No bias there!!




Doreen

I concur. What a bunch of crap. It would be almost funny if it wasn't so stupid.

What else would you expect from a company that,

They would go out of business if people stopped eating their VERY carby products. Reports like this from some place that has a HUGE conflict of interest are not worth the time to read them.

On your low carb journey you will find many, many more ridiculous articles like that one. Keep focused, do your research and you'll be fine.

Funny, they have a link for a glycemic index

Low-carb diets can make people — especially women — short-tempered.

LOL! Personally, I was MUCH shorter tempered when I was dealing with sugar rushes, sugar cravings and the ups-and-downs of a "normal" American diet.

I can think of no better description.

Roz

Here's the really scary thing - every disease above is intimately linked to hyperinsulinemia - I'm posting only one per, but there are more out there...

Alzheimers - Researchers have discovered that poor glucose utilisation, commonly associated with type two diabetes, also plays a role in Alzheimer's disease.

Blindness/ARMD - Age-related macular degeneration ( AMD ), one of the leading causes of vision loss in older adults and a person's risk may partly depend upon diet, could be due to quality of carbohydrates, rather than quantity. Their findings were reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Taylor and colleagues analyzed data from a sub-group of participants in the Nurses' Health Study ( NHS ) who were enrolled in the Nutrition and Vision Program. The researchers looked at the total amount of carbohydrates consumed over 10 years and the dietary glycemic index, which is a measure of the quality of overall dietary carbohydrate.

Cancers - Impaired glucose metabolism in colorectal cancer

CVD - Discordance between insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome: features and associated cardiovascular risk in adults with normal glucose regulation

CRP/Inflammation - Total serum insulin-like growth factor-1 and C-reactive protein in metabolic syndrome with or without diabetes

MetS/IR - The hemorheological aspects of the metabolic syndrome are a combination of separate effects of insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia and adiposity

Osteoporosis - Mice chronically fed a westernized experimental diet as a model of obesity, metabolic syndrome and osteoporosis

Kidney Stones - The metabolic syndrome and uric acid nephrolithiasis: novel features of renal manifestation of insulin resistance

I'd respond to the article, but I'm too stupid. And too cranky.

Rachel

And too forgetful.

Who am I? Why am I here?

???

Regina W, that was spot on. Absolutely.

I read an interesting theory that linked Altzheimers to a possible "Type III" diabetes, where researchers suspected that the brain produces "X" amount of insulin, and Alzheimer's is a result of a sort of "hyperinsulinemia of the brain".
I wish I could find that study. The discovery of insulin producing brain cells would explain a lot...

The article was too stupid to bother reading it all, but this part stuck out even more than the rest.
Fortified means that they have to put the vitamin/mineral into the product for it to have any nutritional value at all. You can buy a bottle of folic acid for less than $3 for 250 tablets at Wal-Mart and don't have to consume a nutrient deficient carb nightmare at all. Besides, I get all the folic acid I need from the spinach and leafy greens I eat. No, I don't get the benefit(???) of folic acid FORTIFICATION--I get mine naturally from food which nature has put in in abundance.

Sunny!

Dr. Boyardee has shown me the light! You're all heretics!



I think it's hilarious the source is a pasta company. The sad thing is, this is what the majority of people believe. I have met folks that were convinced a month on low carb-no carb can kill you for the above reasons.

The depression/mood thing is an old hackneyed standby, but unfounded. Tell that to me a couple years ago when I LIVED on pasta and had horrible depressive sugar lows. Or my friend who was able to get off both Paxil and Xanax due to lack of need after starting Atkins.

I just HAD to write to these idiots. I sent it from my work addy. I cannot stomach this kind of proliferation of misinformation.

You have got to be joking!

So, evolution must have been all magical because apparently "cavemen" had pasta boiling away instead of huge hunks of meat.

I feel spreading this nonsense is raising the awareness of your company's poor ethics, and making your company appear to be a transparent laughing stock.

I will not EVER allow my food editor to include your products in our food section.