The "studies" cited in that article are all observational, therefore yes, I can ignore all of it and still sleep like a baby tonight and every night. To wit, the Ewe super-high-carb diet was not tested in an experimental study to determine if in fact such an intake of carbs exclusively in the form of cassava does not cause obesity. Which is to say the
hypothesis derived from this observation was not tested through experiment. The same is true of the other two observational studies. NuSI's argument is precisely that those studies are insufficient to determine the truth. The explicit purpose of NuSI is precisely to finance and design experimental studies that will test those hypotheses.
The minor differences in weight loss of experimental low-carb studies go as high as +100% that of other diets. 100% is not minor by any measure.
A bed-side opinion is sooo valid these days. Well, my bed-side says your bed-side sits on three wholly unreliable pieces of evidence. I'd consider sleeping on the couch for a while if I were you.
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That's certainly not to say that low-carb dieting doesn't help some manage their weights and health, it just means that no amount of bench-made "proof" will change the fact that low-carb dieting, for many, is far more of a restrictive diet than it is a livable, long-term lifestyle.
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So it's not about weight loss anymore? If we go with the paleo idea, it seems we've been eating low-carb for hundreds of thousands of years. How's that for long-term, huh? If we continue with the paleo idea, the abundance of carbs in any form was only made possible by agriculture and processing recently, which makes the argument of low-carb being too restrictive kind of childish. I want my candy!!!!!!
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Meaning that even if low-carb were the holy grail of diets on paper, that fact would be worthless in practice unless you happened to enjoy low-carb enough to stick with it, and judging from the folks I see regularly in my office, that's far from a given. In fact it's a very rare person that I meet who hasn't tried a low-carb diet at least once. And all of those folks? No doubt when they undertook their low-carb diets they were true believers. As far as they were concerned low-carb was to be their salvation, and many report to me having had real success losing but that they just as rapidly regained everything when they couldn't stomach living low-carb anymore. It's that last bit that makes me think that regardless of the outcomes of Mr. Taubes' new non-profit's future studies, low-carb diets aren't going to be a panacea, just as they weren't in Banting's 1860s or Atkins' 1990s.
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OK, Mr obesity medicine doc, I know where you're coming from. First, you are not a low-carb advocate, which suggests that you do not encourage your patients to start nor maintain a low-carb diet. Do you also expressly advise your patients against a low-carb diet? Maybe that would answer part of your complaint about how
your patients can't stick to that, hm? Second, you are an obesity doctor, which suggests that your success rate to treat obesity is pretty much zero. At least if I look at the recent BioMed conference on Metabolism, Diet and Disease. The last question asked was "what do we do with obesity, when it's the biggest problem?" And since you are most likely not a low-carb advocate, your standard therapy is to tell your patients they should eat less and exercise more. That's another argument by NuSI which asks what if that's the wrong advice? Well, maybe you should look at your numbers for a hint, doc.
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And so while I don't share Mr. Taubes' view that there is one simple or predominant cause and treatment for obesity, and would in fact argue that anyone who thinks there's a singular cause for the society's weight struggles almost certainly doesn't work with actual living, breathing, human beings on their weights, I do agree that the research on what works and what doesn't work is inherently flawed. But it's a flaw that Mr. Taubes' is likely setting out to sustain and fund in that the flaw I see from my bedside is the arrogant belief that there's one right way to go and only one path to weight gain (or loss).
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Doc, stop right there and go back a few steps. Nobody ever said carbs was the
only cause of obesity. In fact, Taubes himself always says and emphasizes that carbs may be the
primary cause. This implies that there may be more than one. After all, carbs are not the only thing that can affect the hormones that regulate fat tissue. Drugs do that, certain pathogens and medical conditions do that. You're a doc, you should know that stuff.
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And would you look at that. As weight rose, so too did caloric intake. Pretty much perfectly.
Sigh.
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And obviously, the implication is that the increase in caloric intake is the cause, and the increase in obesity rate is the effect.
Sigh.
Have you not listened to a single thing that's been said by anybody ever, doc? The main argument of NuSI is that public policies are driven by observational studies, from which we infer cause and effect, the very thing we can't actually infer from those kinds of studies. Here's what my bed-side says about that graph. As people grow bigger, they must eat more to compensate. It's just like a small car and a big truck. The small car consumes less fuel than the big truck. Well, the big guy spends more calories than the small guy. Whatchathinkthebigguy'sgonnadoatdinnertime? Has your bed-side ever said that, huh?
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Why we're eating more is the question that needs to be answered, and while the increased consumption of highly refined carbohydrates may indeed be a player, there's zero doubt in this bed-side's mind, the game that's being played isn't one-on-one. There's no doubt it's not as simple as, "eat less, move more", and there's equally no doubt it's not as simple as just cut carbs. If either were true, everyone who wanted to be would already be skinny.
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Now you really lost me, doc. That's exactly NuSI's argument. Science is shite, and we should do better science. By the way, have you thought of putting both graphs together such that you then see that there was an increase in the proportion of carbohydrates eaten, and there was an increase in the total calories eaten, which ultimately suggests that the biggest part of this increase in total caloric intake comes from the carbs, huh? Remember, the proportional chart is about calories, while carbs and fat have difference caloric content. Carbs have 4c/g, fat has 9c/g. So if 1% gets shifted, that's +/-1Xg fat and +/-2Xg carbs. In metabolism, what matters is the absolute number, not the proportion. There's a huge difference in the metabolic effect between 50g of fat and 100g of carbs. There's an even huger difference when you subtract 50g of fat and replace it with 100g of carbs to keep calories constant, or even with 200g of carbs as is the case here since calories went up.
I'm done. While I respect the medical profession, I can't stand some idiot with a doctorate.