Joedoro, you left out wrong. Nyah Levi

Glad you're still with us Joe . The important aspect in this 'disease' mentality is that it is the environment (ie. food availability) has changed utterly, while our exquisite metabolisms (just love storing excess fatty/carby calories) have not.
By all means bemoan the change in environment. But please stop trying to suggest that it is human metabolism that is defective. And while you're on the subject of arrogance, perhaps it will help if you stop seeing the end result as 'the problem' (ie. undesirable weight gain). Evolution couldn't give a toss about contemporary food availability. We are what we are. The problem is the change in fatty carby food availability environment. Humans are just doing what they are designed to do with that excess. In the wild, and throughout our evolution, excess was rare outside very short seasonal plenty, so we are purpose built to use any excess to good effect. It would be a mockery of the process of natural selection if it were otherwise. Any ongoing plenty would have just resulted in more offspring/more mouths to feed, and BINGO, where did the plenty disappear to?

Metabolically, if humans eat carby fatty food, we burn the carbs and store the fat. I've never seen any evidence that if you eat just carbs protein (and presumably EFA's) you get fat. If you are already fat, eating just carbs and protein sufficiently restricted in calories to set up a calorie deficit to produce bodyfat loss is practically impossible because you are breathtakingly hungry.

Which is hardly surprising, because for most of our evolution, there wasn't a lot of carbohydrate around.

What I find so interesting about this discussion is that people are so tied to the notion that we spent our entire evolution wandering about in some kind of paleo paradise of readily available food. Aren't you forgetting competion? Competition from other humans being the big one. And if a particular individual could store bodyfat more efficiently with any excess calories (remember, they are low carb calories- they all were), then you'd have more time to work on your fighting/playing (most play of the males of any species of mammal is practicing violence, females both violence and nurturing) weapon making skills, courting your mate, or looking out/teaching/being taught by your kids/other relatives.

Population density always increases to meet any long term increase in food availability so that it never really becomes that increase. Seasonal fluctuation certainly occurs, but if your species lives longer than a year, you need the wherewithal to thrive through the bad times as well. Which is why we have a bodyfat storage mechanism at all, and a very good one.

Stuart

But we don't actually KNOW what the heck human bodies were 'evolving' or 'adapting' into 50,000 or a million years ago do we? I mean, isn't it all basically a GUESS at this point, based on what we each find logical from the armchair of today?

If so, how can we make any judgement on what something is or is not, based on a guess about something we don't even know?

Doesn't it make more sense to just take it at face value, start where we are, and see how it's working? It seems like otherwise, it's the same situation Taubes was actually warning against -- having an idea of what the outcome or reasoning "should" be for something before the science is even done/known.

PJ

Answer D, None of the above. When I started with the forum, I had just read Taubes and hadn't spent even a week on a low carb diet. I hadn't bothered to update it since then. I've now changed it to Joe's plan -- just no carbs.

The truth is, I do still drink wine sometimes and eat a few berries, some nuts, some cheese ... but at the moment, I'm usually running on the order of 10 g/day. I like it, actually, though sometimes I do miss chocolate candy (dark only, thank you very much).

Beth

PJ,

Yet again, you and Joe are saying really sensible things.

In the meantime, I just spent 3 days doing a lot of digging. I'm feeling insufferably virtuous, so I shall mellow out now & check back with you all later.

Beth

Absolutely, but that applies equally to anything that Gary is suggesting. All we can do is put our thinking caps on and try to think it all through. Isn't that what we are doing? Don't forget that we can never start from a clean intellectual slate anyway. All of us, Gary Taubes included, are the product of our experiences, research, reading, biases, education, family background, intellectual genetic capabilities....etc. up to this moment.

That's why it's so interesting. And I have never had any doubt that restricting carbohydrate is by far the best dietary approach to optimizing health/bodycomp. But I think Gary's explanation of why, in certain fundamental metabolic details, is flawed. And those flaws will limit its effectiveness at spreading the low carb word to the doubters.

We need the doubters PJ. It's no good just preaching to the choir.

Stuart

Well, I'm not against debate. You and he disagree. It's just that so far the only thing I've seen for your reasoning, and I apologize if I missed something, was basically that he has to be wrong because according to your theory the body has to work like X because of what you assume about evolution. It just seems like as fervently as you comment/debate on every thing that has his name on it, that you'd have something a little more substantial than a subjective theory about a history we don't even know about. What I would like to see is a reference to studies that specifically imply contradiction to some of the points he makes that you most argue. I think that would be more effective as a debate strategy. :-)

PJ

Not just the evolutionary argument. Any humans living right now can easily gain bodyfat right now by eating more energy than their body requires, even lower carb food. But most people don't want to gain much bodyfat, (in the western world at least) so as soon as they start getting fat, they stop eating so much. Which is pretty easy on a low carb diet. Whereas for equally compelling evolutionary reasons (ie there never was much carbohydrate around) if you eat a lot of carbs along with whatever else you are eating, you are constantly hungry, so you go on eating. And if the food you eat also contains a lot of fat, you'll gain a lot of bodyfat very fast. And go on gaining it very fast, because even though you see yourself in the mirror and probably don't like getting fat, you are constantly hungry. And hunger is designed to make you eat whatever food is available. In the modern world, that's more fatty carby food.

Evolution just seems to explain what we can see all around us better than the attempts Gary has made PJ. Full marks to him for trying. Maybe he would have done better if he had spent more time thinking it through on evolutionary grounds. Badly interpreted current research isn't somehow 'better' than evolutionary reasoning, but that seems to be the trap so many low carbers, including Gary, seem to fall into.

You do need to try to get away from relying on 'studies' rather than your reasoning ability PJ. Clinical studies are usually far too short to show anything reliable. And epidemiological data is just plain unreliable for entirely different reasons. In fact I would say that most of the studies that have been done on nutrition so far can be interpreted to support whatever preconception you bring to them.

That said, we are both in complete agreement about the advisability of restricting carbohydrate. The question is why it's such a good idea. And Gary's attempts to answer that question got it only partly right, in my view.
Which to the already low carb converted, is of course more than enough. But to a skeptical scientific community weighed down by the same hubris limitations that handicap every field of human endeavour, that just isn't going to be good enough to cause more than a ripple.

Stuart

I think Kneebrace should write a book!

Not so fast, what about the people that have consumed 6,000 cal/day fat, cream etc. for a month and not gained a pound? I don't think I could do it because I am probably below the BF my body wants to maintain. I may try higher calories (3,000 cal) VLC for a few weeks this summer to see if I gain or lose.

Yes there are the exceptions. I personally wouldn't gain a pound even if ate 6000 calories of carbs/fat. Some people just don't store fat very efficiently. I would have perished in the paleolithic pretty fast. I guess low carbers dream of having a metabolism as inefficient as mine .

Stuart

Didn't I just read a million posts with you arguing that due to evolution our metabolism is not inefficient or distorted/disease, but simply works wonderfully and being fat is merely too much wonderful, and now you're using your "inefficient" metabolism as a refute to someone else? That makes no sense at all! You argue Thing Z can't be because of Thing X, and then when it comes around to debating Thing X, you use the reality of Thing Z to refute that in turn. That's silly! It's circular reasoning.

PJ

You're both splitting hairs - Joe IMO is correct here, in that the fat accumulation we see in obesity is "acting just like a disease" within the body system; Stuart IMO is correct here, in that the body is working with the homeostatic pressures it is living with, attempting to maintain "normal"......the "defect" isn't the body systems per se, but the fuel (food) it is given to work with to maintain normal/homeostasis.

Correct the inputs and the outputs theoretically will work themselves out; data does suggest this happens when the dietary changes do two things - increase essential nutrients and reduce carbohydrate to "less than excessive" - a state most people in the US are living, a state of excess carbohydrate coupled with nutrient deficiency.

Rightnow - in the Twilight Zone anything is possible. Sci Fi is fun for awhile but at some point you have to return to reality.

During two weeks of my own little experiment with a high-fat, very low-carb diet - consuming over my AMR - I didn't gain any weight....in fact, I lost 4.5 pounds (attributable to glycogen and water IMO). I'm not the only one who has done such an experiment on self to see what happens either. I can tell you this - it was exceedingly difficult to continue to eat excessive calories when carbohydrate was restricted, protein was targeted to be what I need (no more, no less) and fat rounded out the calories to reach "excessive".

Based on my experience, the experience of others, and some pretty strong data that is published - the idea that our ancestors would just eat and eat to a point where they'd pack on body fat in an environement with little carbohydrate --- well, it flies in the face of physiology.

When adequate protein is available and carbohydrate is limited, the body adjusts intake of calories quite nicely on its own when essential nutrient requirements are routinely met. I've been doing this since 2001 and can say pretty assuredly that I do not routinely count anything anymore.....I just eat, and eat what I know is "good food" and guess what? My weight doesn't fluctuate more than +/- 3-5 pounds unless I stray --- if I take carbohydrate lower, I'll actually lose (still) - if I take carbohydrate higher (specifically with refined carbs), I'll gain - but I've absolutely hit my "sweet spot" when it comes to just enjoying my food and eating as I wish without counting anything. Now, true, I could just be a freak of nature....but I doubt it.

Stuart, here is something to consider - in a metabolic ward study in Japan, researchers wanted to better understand protein in the diet. They first fed subjects a mixed diet with adequate protein with calories provided to meet requirements - no gain, no loss of weight; then proceeded to provide excess calories, but limited protein. The subjects (men) lost weight despite excess calories where protein was inadequate. How would you explain that?