Well, there is me. This is how I ate for quite a while (years actually). Never lost a pound, but it did help slow my rate of gain or stabilize my weight when combined with 1 hour per day of exercise. Of course, being stable at 250lbs isn't exactly what I would call success.

One person does not a study make, but it was enough to convince me that just cutting the white stuff wasn't enough.

As far as the "carb is a carb" thing...once food is digested, you get macronutrients and micronutrients. As for the macronutrients, you end up with either fat, protein or sugar (glucose)...right? It can only be one of those things. So...a carb IS a carb. Some of the carbs you ingest might not be available to you because it is wrapped up in fiber, but any that are become glucose.

While I admit the effect and process is a BIT different depending on the carb source (due to how high the insulin spike is, etc...), the term "a carb is a carb" is MUCH truer than "A calorie is a calorie". Especially for a person with metabolic syndrome.

I haven't ever heard him saying anything much about vegetables. I think he'd point out that they're mostly water and fiber and ok to eat. But he would point out that the starchy ones affect the blood sugar and insulin a lot.

But then again, he would point out there are lots of populations that don't (or didn't) eat them and were quite healthy. I don't think he would make a judgment either way because there is insufficient data to do so. He probably has his own suspicions and beliefs, we all do. But the important thing is that it isn't dogma to him like it is to almost everyone else.

I know there's this sort of "balanced diet" thing we're all programed to believe is best, some sort of middle ground where everyone can meet and agree. But your body doesn't give a damn about a consensus or compromise. If there is an optimal way of eating then that is that. Discussion is over. The hard part is proving it IS optimal. And since we spend so much time and government dollars trying to make the fat, salt, fiber hypothesis be true, when it isn't, it is going to be a long, long time until we get good answers to hard questions.

Also, if you look at that link I posted about The China Study, this guy showed a link between eating wheat versus other grains and various diseases. He found it strongly correlated. Interestingly he found rice had a negative correlation. So again, was it the type of grain? Maybe it was something in the water in the different parts of the country? So because it was a popular notion at the time someone ran off with the notion it was fat and meat, not rice.

That's why I was wondering if, in the book, he did get to the point of offering us studies or references that did include starchy vegetables and whole grains as being deleterious to health in any way. I read somewhere that he admits to offering a one-sided arguement for the carbohydrate hypothesis, but by the same token, I don't find that he's jumping to conclusions and making assumptions nearly as much as believers of any particular theory generally do. I do trust that he's being fairly unbiased in his evaluations.

We've all read Atkins or Eades or someone, and these authors make no attempt to be unbiased, nor would I expect them to. And most of us have had varying degrees of success with our chosen dietary plans so naturally we believe in them. I'll never, ever speak against Atkins, that diet saved my life, I lost 125 lbs on it! But, that doesn't mean it was optimal. It worked, but that doesn't mean it would be the only thing to work or that necessarily it was the best way to do it.

I wasn't even looking for Taubes' opinion on starchy vegetables or grains, I was more just wondering (because it's going to take me a long time to finish the book and find out for myself) whether, if, in later chapters he presents evidence (not opinion) that starchy vegetables, legumes and whole grains, in the absence of refined carbohydrates, are implicated in obesity, heart disease, hypertension and/or diabetes, the Western diseases as he calls them because the studies & populations he's referencing so far seem to indicate that there are some populations where they are *not* implicated in the Western diseases.

To apply his logic of how to go about evaluating data in an unbiased manner, it seems it would be "wishful science" to assume that the whole, unprocessed starches are also part of the problem without any evidence to support it other than a theory that all carbs are metabolized the same way.

If you look at the "China Study" thread on this forum, it discusses a massive study done in China, which made it pretty clear that wheat -- not rice, not veggies, but wheat -- had significant mortality correlation (see that thread for detail). The one factor there is that the Chinese under study were not eating massive sugar like our culture does; so even if they ate the same amount of wheat we could, the rest of their food was different; they were however eating differently in different reginos, and the regional comparisons is what made the study possible, so it's still great stuff.

The interesting thing was actually that rice didn't have the same effect, and you can barely get more carby than rice. It made me wonder if they somehow behave a bit differently in the human body -- or like, if the huge % of people researchers are realizing are at least slightly gluten intolerant, could contribute to that correlation with wheat.

There is a lot of research about how grains are bad for you. Check out Cordain's website for starters. So far as I know, few studies have separated out the effects of any subset of carbohydrates. That research needs to be done. Meanwhile, continue reading Taubes various chapters on insulin and it's effects in the body and brain. From his summary of the biochemistry I conclude that the fewer carbs the better. YMMV.

Well, hopefully you'll understand it better when you get further in, but the book is really about how not to do nutrition research versus making recommendations about what you should eat. I think he wants people to take a critical look at how our current recommendations were made and realize that this is as more about politics and sociology than it is nutrition science. Part of that is going over these old studies that were forgotten or dismissed because they didn't agree with the powerful people leading the dogma charge.

You're probably reading about the diseases of civilization right about now and all the research that was done showing how our most common diseases were absent in non-westernized regions. The poor guy that did all the research kept having it high jacked by people with their own agendas to push.

We're just hacks here. None of us are scientists, we're just interested in seeing some sunshine illuminated on the nonsense we've been told for years and years. I'm hungry for real answers. Sure, I'd like to know if rice is good for me and wheat is bad. Or is wheat ok and sugar bad? But dear god, don't use epidemiology to prove your point about diet, it is a complete waste of time most of the time. Use clinical studies.

He wouldn't be nearly as good a science writer as he is if he did. We're not scientists here and we are pretty passionate about low carb. Sure, we treat it like a football team sometimes. But seriously, when you get down to clinical trials comparing "mediterranean diet" with low carb diets... our team is going to the Superbowl.

Well, as for rice...sumo wrestlers eat a lot of rice...LOL

Taubes sums up his "dietary recommendations" on page 454, based on the research he has done. He says that, according to that research, the "chronic diseases of civilization" are caused by dietary carbs, "the more easily digestible and refined," the worse.

He then goes on to say that, because long-term, randomized trials on carb-restriction have not been done, we don't yet know whether carb restriction is, in fact, optimal. In other words, we need proper, long-term studies to verify whether his conclusions drawn from research are, in fact, correct. Since we don't yet have those basic studies, there's not yet any evidence that some carbs (refined) are worse than others (unrefined).

The evidence, so far, suggests that ALL carb are suspect. However, it's possible that potentially negative effects can be lessened by calorie restriction and/or limiting carb consumption to the low-glycemic ones. We simply don't know enough yet.

Rachel

I have a question for Taubes-ites:

Throughout the book, Taubes implies that atherosclerosis is directly implicated in heart disease - that many, if not most, people with heart disease also have atherosclerosis, that atherosclerosis is something to be avoided, and that reducing or eliminating carbohydrates (especially refined carbs) is the way to avoid or reduce atherosclerosis.

However, on p. 26, Taubes points out that the Masai, on their traditional diets of mainly milk and blood, with low cholesterol, few or no deaths from heart attacks or coronary heart disease, have "extensive atherosclerosis."

WHAAAAT? Is there something here I don't understand? Is it possible to eat low carb, have low cholesterol, no heart disease, and yet have atherosclerosis? This seems contradictory to me. Why is atherosclerosis a problem if people eat high-carb, but not a problem if they eat low-carb? Am I misunderstanding something here?

Rachel

It seems their arteries expanded to let the blood through instead of becoming clogged. I don't think anyone knows how they got atherosclerosis in the first place, could be saturated fat will do that, could be that it was damaged sat fat, could be anything.

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeez. That brings up a perfectly good question of course. Blood vessels are soft. Blood running through them is a constant pressure, no matter how small. Why DON'T they NORMALLY expand/stretch when deposits clogging them start raising pressure??

Yah, I don't get it. If eating high carbs causes high VLDL, which seems uncontroversial, and if high VLDL sticks to arterial walls to form plaque, and if plaque leads to artery and heart disease, why do the Masai have atherosclerotic plaque? And why don't they get heart disease?

Maybe the Masai diet is not all that low-carb. After all, 7 litres of milk (I think that was the figure - wish Taubes had a better index!) is somewhere around 300 carbs a day. OK, NOT low carb. Maybe that explains the plaque, but it doesn't explain why they are healthy, without heart disease, nor does it answer RightNow's question.

Rachel

Just did a cursory internet search. Apparently arteries will expand around a deposit of plaque to let blood through, until the plaque reaches a certain size. So for some reason, maybe the plaques in the Masai never get large enough to cause problems. Maybe because they're physically fit, maybe something to do with their diet, maybe another reason.

I'd assumed up until now that the Masai were getting plaque despite eating low carbs, which was a worry, until I did the math! They eat high fat and high animal products, but not particularly low-carb.

Feel better now.

Rachel

Maybe they don't rupture? He mentioned in that BBC interview that milk is full of lactose (sugar).

Gosh, wouldn't it be neat to have an hour with Gary Taubes?

Yeah, some cultures use it too fatten women before marriage.

I just remembered watching a program years and years ago about an African tribe that has a competition between men to see who can get the fattest. I think it had something to do with the right to become a father/getting married, something like that. Anyway, the contestants laid down and stayed still for a long time (months maybe) and drank a LOT of milk to try to get big. They just sipped it from leather bags, not moving, while their families helped to bring them more and take care of them. Men who couldn't gain well or correctly were looked down on as unattractive, like the poor guy who ended up with a giant ass and legs and a muscular torso instead of full body obesity. I don't remember if they had much more than milk to drink or eat, or what animal the milk came from. I think honey might have been involved, can't say for sure.

The winner that year, by default, was a fellow who drank so much his stomach burst.