Interesting new book on the main culprit behind weight gain and obesity:

Why Diet and Exercise Fail: How Current Research Contradicts Conventional Wisdom about Weight Loss

http://www.whydietandexercisefail.com/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...KX0DER&v=glance

I am the author of this book, and I am getting ready to release a second edition. One my theories about the effectiveness of the low-carb diets is that it is not only due to blood sugar effects, but to vitamin content as well.

One of Dr. Atkins theories was that refined carbohydrates and simple sugars were causing blood sugar spikes, and these spikes were a key factor in obesity. By eating a diet high in protein, fat, and unrefined carbohydrates, these spikes could be avoided, there would be less hunger, and weight loss would be achieved. Many people following the diet have lost weight, but many have not lost all the weight they wanted to. So the question is, what is missing from this theory?

I think I can answer this question. Experiments have been done where two groups are fed equal amount of calories and fiber. However, one group gets their calories from fruits and vegetables, and one group gets their calories from grains. The group who ate fruits and vegetables ends up being less hungry, and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption results in lower body weight. As we said, this effect can't be totally explained by the fiber content. So what is the missing factor?

Well, it is probably the presence of certain vitamins and minerals. Vitamin and mineral content of food has been shown to effect hunger. If you think about it, we generally notice that people who eat junk food are more likely to gain weight than people who eat healthy food. Health food is not only high in fiber, it is richer in nutrient content. The revised first edition of my book will cover this in detail. It will be released in about a week. One of the factors that I identify as a culprit in obesity in the first release is known to cause hunger, and part of the mechanism by which it does this may be by causing us to be deficient in vitamins. Overweight people tend to have deficiencies in B-Complex vitamins that are used to convert stored fat to usable energy. This is not the only mechanism by which we gain weight, but it is likely an overlooked factor as to why we have difficulty losing weight.

If anyone is interested in receiving a free electronic copy of the revised book in exchange for writing a review on Amazon, please go to the feedback page of the book website for Why Diet and Exercise Fail.

Gary Taubes states that exercise does not help with weightloss.

Thats interesting. It makes sense if hunger is indeed caused by a relative lack of nutrients on a cellular level. Which is what some researchers in Taubes book that he cited believed.

Grains are an 'anti-nutrient' or possibly worse if one is allergic to gluten-- eating grains requires more vitamins and minerals to counter some of the degradation going on. So IMO "healthy grains" is an oxymoron.

Exercise has only a moderate effect on weight loss. Initially, exercise causes weight loss. Many of us has seen this personally when starting exercise routines, but it then slows or stops. An explanation for this would be that increased fat oxidation requires use of certain nutrients, including B-Complex vitamins and vitamin C, and as we deplete our stores of them, the body can't lose and more weight.

This would be why studies show that diet and exercise is only moderately more effective than diet alone. It would also explain why lower blood levels of the B-Complex vitamins and vitamin-C are associated with higher body weight. It would also explain one of the reasons refining carbohydrates causes obesity, other than the effects on blood sugar, these nutrients, and likely others related to obesity that we haven't identified, are mostly lost during the refining process.

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Humans have eaten grains for thousands of years. You are familiar with the name of the biblical city of Bethlehem? It comes from Hebrew, beit-lehem, and it means house of bread, or place where bread was made. So humans have been eating bread for thousands of years, but it is only recently that obesity has become prevalent. In America the Beautiful, we refer to "amber waves of grain," that were a feature of our country during the founding. These were used for making bread.

Yet in the year 1900, obesity was present in less that 1 / 150 people. So it is not all grains that cause obesity, it is the grains present in our current diet. 100% whole wheat bread spoils quickly because of the presence of wheat germ oil. One of the reasons food processors like to remove so much of the germ is to get rid of this oil. Unfortunately, this oil is also where most of the nutrients in wheat are contained. So the vast majority of our wheat is nutritionally empty to increase it shelf life, which has inadvertently increased out weight size. The process is similar for white rice vs. brown or whole grain rice. Food companies prefer whiter rice to brown or whole grain rice because it lasts longer. However, the process of making it last longer decreases its nutrient content.

So their are healthy grains. We have been eating grains for thousands of years. It is just that 90%+ of the grains in our diet are unhealthy. It is almost impossible to find 100% whole wheat or stone ground wheat bread or pasta in a restaurant, unless it is a health food restaurant. You can find brown rice, but it is much more difficult. Also, many food additives require nutrients to be removed from our bodies, further depleting our reserves. Refined carbohydrates are also much more likely to have food additives. Remember the commercial for ice cream where the kids try to read the ingredients on the box? Anything you can't pronounce on food carton is likely a food additive, and you shouldn't be eating it. It has no nutritional value. This is a good reason to shop at health food stores.

No, grains are not all that healthy. Go read about ergotism. Grains have been killing people for thousands of years. Why use the word grains, lets focus on wheat, rye barley. Some peoples have eaten bread for thousands of years, and are probably the best adapted to wheat. Other peoples have only been introduced to wheat far more recently. Go read the article in Wikipedia on fructose malabsorption, then realize 35-40 percent of Central Europeans suffer from this, and wheat has fructose like chemicals according to the article.
The argument over white vs whole wheat bread has gone on since the ancient Greeks. There are strong arguments that white bread is better than whole wheat bread by getting rid of the most allergenic part of wheat. You just haven't come across them yet.
Go read about John Kellogg in Wikipedia, or elsewhere. This whole grain nonsense is stupid propaganda. This idiot, in addition to promoting whole grains, applied acid to young girls genitals, so they would never have a desire to have sex.
There is a book, Dangerous Grains, the review is at Amazon. So much could be written on this subject, so little time.
Aflatoxin, mycotoxins. Not regulated on grains in the US until 1966.
Try a gluten free diet, even if one is not a celiac, and see how much their health improves.

Gary Taubes recent Dartmouth lecture has section both on exercise and the mechanism of fat accummulation.
Slide 48 in particular deals with glyerol-3-phosphate and makes the point the more carbohydrates consumed the more glyerol-3-phosphate is available and the more fat can be fixed in fat tissue.
The most sources of glycerol-3-phosphate converted most effectively is fructose and if you listen carefully after reading that slide you hear him say
"it might be 90% of the problem"

While it is true we have eaten grains for many generations we have not eaten the modern nutritionally bankrupt forms developed for speedy growth and higher yields. Similarly it is only in more recent times commercial foods have included large amounts of HFCS and it's derivatives.

I think we will find that fructose is far more dangerous than we currently imagine.

Is Fructose Dangerous?Fructose-Induced Changes of Gene Expression and Carbohydrate and Lipid Metabolism

The article concludes with
Although the underlying mechanisms of these fructose effects are yet to be elucidated, these discoveries have several implications. First, they reinforce the idea that high consumption of dietary fructose leads to high level of liver glycogen and triglycerides. Even if a person fasted after consuming fructose, his VLDL triglyceride level would still be high as a result of VLDL clearance. These effects could potentially culminate in development of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other aspects of metabolic syndromes. Having identified more fructose-induced changes in gene expression, these genes and/or their encoded proteins can potentially serve as effective targets for new drugs and treatments.

So is fructose dangerous? By demonstrating the hazardous changes in gene expression induced by high consumption of dietary fructose, Koo et al. (2008) say yes.

In response to "No, grains are not all that healthy."

In 1900, Americans got the vast majority of their calories from grains. Today we get far fewer calories from grains, yet obesity levels have skyrocketed. So it can't be that we are eating too many grains. It just doesn't make any sense. Certainly the fact that the refining process removes substances from grains that are associated with lower body weight could be a problem. It can not be the grains themselves.

Even bread labeled "whole wheat bread" is not necessarily healthy. Unless bread say 100% whole wheat, it almost certainly had the wheat oil removed. Just like white rice has the white rice oil removed. Food processors want grains to have long shelf life, and these oils go bad quickly, yet they contain the vast majority of the nutrients in the wheat. Nutrients we haven't even identified as such. Supplementing people with rice bran oil has been shown to dramatically lower insulin resistance, but researchers don't know what component of the oil this is. This is the benefit of real whole grains. Whole wheat bread is not a whole grain, 100% whole wheat or stone ground wheat is a whole grain. As is whole rice or brown rice.

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In response to "The most sources of glycerol-3-phosphate converted most effectively is fructose and if you listen carefully after reading that slide you hear him say
"'it might be 90% of the problem.'"

Adding fructose to food might be a large part of the problem, but it isn't the fructose in itself. We have been eating fructose that is naturally present in fruits and vegetables for all of human history. Now when we take fructose and add it to processed food, we are getting something high in sugar and low in nutrients. Certain nutrients can make us feel full just like calories can, and nutrient deficiency can make us feel hungry. Eating food with added fructose rather than from fresh fruit that naturally contains fructose could lead to a nutrient deficiency, increased hunger, and weight gain. However, all added sugars can lead to processed food that is nutrient poor, not just fructose.

Hutchinson,

The article about soil mineral content falling in response to high yield grain a good point. I wrote about falling mineral content, not only in grains but in our bodies. From 1986 to 2006, measured levels of chromium and magnesium in our blood fell by about a third despite adequate consumption. However, soil content is not the only effect responsible for this. Fruits, vegetables, and grains grown with chemical fertilizers all have lower mineral content. Adequate levels of these minerals have been associated with lower body weight, for reasons that are not entirely known. These minerals are well absorbed in supplement form, and I take them as part of a mineral supplement.

The problem we have is that their are other nutrients we have not identified that help control appetite. The nutrients in fruits and vegetables are very similar to the nutrients in the parts of grains we discard (even flower labeled as whole wheat and not 100% whole wheat). While we can supplement what we have identified is important, we can't supplement the things we haven't identified. That is why we need to eat whole foods. Something that we have gotten less and less of over the last one hundred years as rates of obesity have spiked.

dmkorn - No, Americans did not get most of their calories from wheat. They ate a lot of meat, butter and dairy too. You have been brainwashed into the eat whole grains cult. You will be healthier if you take some advice and read about how whole wheat is not good for you. What we have gotten rid of since the 1960's is red meat. Ever since Nathan Pritikin (not a doctor) persuaded George McGovern to force the Dept of Agriculture to adopt his food pyramid.
Obesity spiked as we have removed butter and meat, and added crap like corn and soybean oil to our diets.

I said, "In 1900, Americans got the vast majority of their calories from grains." I didn't say that was why we were thin. I can show you a study that track falling grain consumption and rising meat consumption from 1909 to 1974. The study is called "Nutrition in the United States, 1900 to 1974." It was published in "Cancer Research." This is not something from a cult, it is a mainstream scientific study.

If you look at page 3 of the study, table 1. In 1909 Americans were getting 497 grams of carbohydrates per day, and 3530 calories. So carbohydrates were about 56% of the diet by calories. If you go to page 5, and look at chart 9, in 1909 flour and cereal products had fallen to about 40% of total calories and their consumption decreased to 20% of total calories by 1972. In 1909, consumption of meat, poultry, dairy, fish, and eggs made up about 50% of calories, that rose to about 70% by 1972.

Now, in 1900 about 1 in 150 Americans were obese, by 1974, I believe it was over 20%, off the top of my head. So as meat and fat consumption were rising, so was obesity. However, I don't think meat and fat consumption cause obesity. Certainly the French eat more saturated fat and dairy than we do and they have an obesity rate which is about 70% lower. I do however, think certain types of fats, and removal of certain types of nutrients from grains contributes to obesity.

Over 90% of the grain products in the U.S. have the majority of their B vitamins, vitamin C, E vitamins, and phytochemicals removed. These grain products are certainly not healthy, but I do believe that 100% whole wheat bread (which is not whole wheat bread, which has the germ removed to prolong shelf life), is healthy. I also think whole grain rice and brown rice are healthy. I also think grass fed meats and wild caught fish are healthy. I try to eat all of the above as organics because there is an effect on nutrient content, which can effect hunger.

Here is the study showing that meat consumption increased and grain consumption decreased while obesity rates exploded:

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/c...Part_2/3246.pdf

I am bumping this thread its interesting