I think this is not so surprising, given that the calories are not restricted in the study. High carb, low fat foods I think are not satiating relative to low carb, high fat foods. As an example:
Weight isn't the product of calories in vs out, that's an overly simplistic model that doesn't account for the effect of hormones on how we metabolize different compounds and nutrients. This area of nutrition science is nascent and unsettled, and fraught with research funded by parties with conflicts of interest, but here's for example a pretty good talk that discusses some of the research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKC3hiyLeRc&t=159s
I used to be very interested in the speaker (Jason Fung) too.
But after getting much more interested in nutrition over the last few years, I now think he is someone to avoid. He is basically outside of the scientific mainstream, and continually says things that are just not supported by actual studies. And there have been many studies on this.
Weight is a product of calories in vs out, both in the trivial sense (conservation of energy), but also in the sense that if you control the amount of calories you eat, and keep it below your calories out, you will lose weight. It's true that calculating your actual calories out is basically impossible, but you can estimate it, and then just reduce more calories if you're not losing weight.
This has been proven multiple times in real experiments with real subjects. This is agreed on by basically everyone who's actually in the field. There is also ample anecdotal evidence that this is true (every athlete, bodybuilder, etc that wants to gain or lose weight can do so basically at will, on a set schedule they plan months in advance. It's almost precise and very scientific.)
If you take the time to watch the talk I linked to (I understand if not, it's pretty long) he spends a substantial amount of time citing and discussing studies. He's not just throwing out a bunch of unsubstantiated theories.
As non-scientific anecdotes go, I've confirmed this myself. I went on keto and absolutely did not reduce my calories, actually I increased them, but severely cut carbs / sugar and I lost 5 notches off my belt in 3 months.
Ketogenic Diet Benefits to Weight Loss, Glycemic Control, and Lipid Profiles in Overweight Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trails
> "A ketogenic diet, characterized by low calories with high levels of fat, adequate levels of protein, and low levels of carbohydrates, has beneficial effects on body weight control in overweight patients."
I wouldn't say it's case closed, this area of nutrition science needs many years of additional research, but to say flatly that studies don't support the hormone model of weight gain isn't correct.
>absolutely did not reduce my calories, actually I increased them
unless you've kept a highly detailed journal of things you ate and their precise amounts, then it's indeed just an anecdote.
it's physically impossible to accumulate fat - which is the storage medium for excess energy - without consuming an excess of energy. it is indeed very much case closed.
It's simple enough to be useful and applied. If you continue to reduce your calorie intake, you will lose weight. This is a fact. Build a model to explain weight gain/loss and calorie intake will always be the most influential variable full stop
Is it actually simple enough to be useful? We’ve known this for decades and it hasn’t slimmed anyone down statistically. What precisely is it useful for? Because it isn’t useful in losing weight… people simply aren’t losing.
Total BS. We've known if for forever and the reason "people simply aren't losing" is because they aren't doing a good job of counting. Go ask a fighter, wrestler, runner, or bodybuilder how they manage body weight. They don't do it by tossing a coin into the wishing well, I can tell you that.
Dude I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, I’m asking what is it useful for in a statistically significant manner. I’m not really interested in some outlier professional fighters or whatever have to say about it. What fat person doesn’t know CICO is real? You don’t think they’ve heard it a million times? Yet statistically we’re only getting fatter. Trying the same stuff expecting different results is stupid, and yet we’re telling every fatty out there CICO, millions of them, for decades, with nothing to show at a population level.
This is stupid. Thus I’m questioning what CICO is useful for beyond some academic, theoretical sense. Actual applications. Because the application ain’t applying.
You're correct with the caveat that the system is not totally static so TDEE tends to decline as the body endures deficits. Therefore it "appears" that CICO is broken... its not, it's just that to keep a static deficit over time you have to eat fewer and fewer calories.
I don't think that YouTube cites any sources that show there's scenarios where metabolism is significantly different for net weight and other health outcomes, when it comes to low fat vs low carbohydrate diets. There might be some genetic disorders causing some pathway to be inhibited, but on average, if we want to give generic advice for every individual, I think it's best to say to reduce calories and choose the appropriate method that satisfies your lifestyle and allows you to adhere to the diet, to improve your health.
I don't think it's sustainable to do a keto diet if you live and partake in society. You might encounter many scenarios where food options are carb heavy, and in this case, keto is not an option whereas caloric restriction is.
Here comes the CICO cult to lynch you. They never seem to understand that your body regulates its CO by reducing/increasing movement and NEAT, so how can you really measure it?
Maybe you can't consciously manipulate NEAT, but you can control movement. You are literally saying that we can choose to move more in order to offset over-consumption, which is true. NEAT holds a different level of influence based on the individual. Adjust to it or pick an average percent and move on. This appeal to "CICO is oversimplification" is a distraction and excuse.
NEAT holds a different level of influence every single day, maybe even hour, based on your body's supply of energy, hormones, and other unknown stuff. Have you ever been extremely fidgety while people next to you are completely still? You would have been burning at least 2x the calories they were in that time.
Basically, its simple and accurate to measure calories in. But almost impossible to measure calories out. So TDEE actually shifts by a couple hundred calories every day. That's small but not insignificant, and explains why some people end up quite underweight and others quite overweight, even if they eat the same foods (over a long period of time).
I'm am quite aware of how TDEE and NEAT work, but they average out in the long run. If you choose to give little credence to CICO, then so be it. I've spent the past decade in various sports which require different bodyweights and body comps, successfully going up and down as needed. I know it works, and it's not unique to me. For some reason I never have these arguments with other athletes. I wonder why
Every time I see some study anchored in dietary impositions, I can't help but wonder:
How have we managed to complicate diet and health so much?
We are humans. We are supposed to move. A lot.
Eat mostly whole food and move. Walk. Walk uphill. Lift if you can. Run if you can.
Buy food in the produce section. Buy food in the meat section (if you eat meat). Buy whole grains. It's not expensive. Maybe it takes time to prepare. Try to find value in that time. Do it with family and friends. There's no food product, diet, or gimmick that's going provide a greater marginal benefit
I think this works but only in a vacuum. I’m a single human with a humans natural stressors, getting dopamine from food. Food these days are literally engineered to maximum craving/hunger/whatever, with a bunch of ads and marketing also designed by people with literal lifelong studies of how to get people craving junk. Armies of em.
This isn’t even talking about what sort of thing forever chemicals are doing to me. No idea what microplastics in my bloodstream are up to.
Im just a dude, my dude. I didn’t make the game so hard.
Dude I’m just a guy, I’m not like perfect or anything. I get tired, sleep like crap sometimes, get stressed about money and inflation like everyone else. Sometimes I don’t feel like fighting a whole system with armies of psychologists keeping me a lazy consumer or whatever, so maybe some dinners is something out of a microwave or a can. Condemn me, or whatever, for not being so free willed as others here. I’m just not as enlightened I guess.
No one is perfect. I'm sorry for being snarky, but how else can we make meaningful change without starting with personal responsibility. We can't blame big food for our choices.
Can you read the room or will you keep being a smart ass ?
> No one is perfect. I'm sorry for being snarky, but how else can we make meaningful change without starting with personal responsibility. We can't blame big food for our choices.
Yeah. Actually we can. The marketing and psychological warfare big food is waging against customers take its toll on personal responsibility when it's time to cook something after your second job night shift.
Then go innovate in that area. Find ways to reduce cost and time prep through new technology and business models. This is why I'm being a smart ass and why it's so frustrating to listen to excuses.
You obviously see a problem in one our biggest industries. Go disrupt it. Do something about it. No one is going to pay you to complain.
> Then go innovate in that area. Find ways to reduce cost and time prep through new technology and business models.
This is so effing stupid to read. You don't innovate to reduce costs and time prep to squeeze out more time out of people so they can work 3 jobs instead of 2 to pay for microwaved food, that's not the end game.
> This is why I'm being a smart ass and why it's so frustrating to listen to excuses.
No, you are a smart ass because you are riding the personal responsibility trope to ignore fuck tons of external and internal reasons for why people are not robots and don't follow the perfect diet and lifestyle recipes. That's a simplistic nickelodeon outlook that helps no one.
One day you'll bump into a wall and maybe you'll realize your belief that your mind is free and your body a dumb machine to program to overcome anything is bullshit, like your stance that "we are all free so everything is our fault and anyone can do anything if only they apply themselves" is bullshit as well.
> You obviously see a problem in one our biggest industries. Go disrupt it. Do something about it.
What a stupid and empty edge lord counter argument is this ?
Too busy working on climate change at the moment [0] if you want to know it all.
> No one is going to pay you to complain.
If you could stop complaining about "people's excuses" as well that'd be even better.
[0] For real. And big food industries is part of this problem and we are trying to tackle it at work.
edit: dammit, I'll even play along:
> Then go innovate in that area. Find ways to reduce cost and time prep through new technology and business models.
What makes you think faster to cook or even healthier food can beat billions of €/$ poured in advertising and marketing at scale ? It's not working, that's the reality, that's the facts, this is the environment your purely intellectual vision of the problem doesn't want to account for.
Because it's easier to say "people are free so it's their fault" than admit "hey... that world is surprisingly hard to model and predict and understand, lots of things going on and parameters interacting with each other here...".
>This is so effing stupid to read. You don't innovate to reduce costs and time prep to squeeze out more time out of people so they can work 3 jobs instead of 2 to pay for microwaved food, that's not the end game.
Maybe if you used a sliver of creativity you could think of a solution that doesn't result in this outcome. This is false dichotomy. I'm not saying this is end game.
>No, you are a smart ass because you are riding the personal responsibility trope to ignore fuck tons of external and internal reasons for why people are not robots and don't follow the perfect diet and lifestyle recipes. That's a simplistic nickelodeon outlook that helps no one.
>One day you'll bump into a wall and maybe you'll realize your belief that your mind is free and your body a dumb machine to program to overcome anything is bullshit, like your stance that "we are all free so everything is our fault and anyone can do anything if only they apply themselves" is bullshit as well.
I'll reiterate that yes, it does come down to personal responsibility. Also a fallacious argument since you don't have to follow a perfect diet and lifestyle to achieve mostly optimal outcomes. Promoting the idea that we don't have personal sovereignty is insidious and wrong.
>Too busy working on climate change at the moment [0] if you want to know it all.
Food systems account for 1/3 of global emissions. You act like there is some moral superiority tied to your own work while ignoring the low hanging fruit of food systems in climate change mitigation.
>If you could stop complaining about "people's excuses" as well that'd be even better.
I'm not complaining. I'm pointing out erroneous narratives and harmful mindsets.
>What makes you think faster to cook or even healthier food can beat billions of €/$ poured in advertising and marketing at scale ? It's not working, that's the reality, that's the facts, this is the environment your purely intellectual vision of the problem doesn't want to account for.
>Because it's easier to say "people are free so it's their fault" than admit "hey... that world is surprisingly hard to model and predict and understand, lots of things going on and parameters interacting with each other here...".
The same was said about transitioning away from fossil fuels and going against the billions of dollars poured into climate denial. Change will come. Maybe you should extend the scope of your imagination to entertain a better food system instead of rolling over.
But you'll keep believing what you believe, and that's fine. Keep resorting to edge cases to defend your claims, and accept that big food will maintain its grip on your free will. I'll still be here actually doing things that make a difference, not caving to the complexity of models, and maintaining ownership of my decisions.
>> This is so effing stupid to read. You don't innovate to reduce costs and time prep to squeeze out more time out of people so they can work 3 jobs instead of 2 to pay for microwaved food, that's not the end game.
> Maybe if you used a sliver of creativity you could think of a solution that doesn't result in this outcome. This is false dichotomy. I'm not saying this is end game.
Maybe if you used a sliver of creativity you could think of a solution that is not tech based. Because, guess what ? The problem is not tech based. Moreover you claim it's about personal sovereignty and yet your solution is to ignore the core problem and jump to techno gadgets. Why would tech help if the solution is for people to take personal responsibility ? Talk about tunnel vision...
> I'll reiterate that yes, it does come down to personal responsibility.
And I'll reiterate that no, it does not come down solely to personal responsibility. I get it it's easier for you to think/believe people make bad choices willingly because it fits your narrative and is simple to understand but it's naive and short sighted. You won't get results or changes out of people if your framework is that narrow and limited.
> >Too busy working on climate change at the moment [0] if you want to know it all.
> Food systems account for 1/3 of global emissions. You act like there is some moral superiority tied to your own work while ignoring the low hanging fruit of food systems in climate change mitigation.
Moral superiority ? I think you are projecting because, too bad, I happen to put my skin in the game and you couldn't imagine that when you wrote You obviously see a problem in one our biggest industries. Go disrupt it. Do something about it. No one is going to pay you to complain. Who was trying to get the moral high ground ?
> >If you could stop complaining about "people's excuses" as well that'd be even better.
> I'm not complaining. I'm pointing out erroneous narratives and harmful mindsets.
You are pointing at the obvious and easy parts of the problem and reducing the problem to those parts only. See your comment I am sorry you lost your free will. Arrogant, not empathic and not helpful.
> The same was said about transitioning away from fossil fuels and going against the billions of dollars poured into climate denial. Change will come. Maybe you should extend the scope of your imagination to entertain a better food system instead of rolling over.
I don't understand how you came to the conclusion I don't believe change will come. Don't put words in my mouth.
Why are you now advocating for a better food system since you claimed it's all about personal responsibility ? Isn't what you said earlier enough ?
> Eat mostly whole food and move. Walk. Walk uphill. Lift if you can. Run if you can.
> Buy food in the produce section. Buy food in the meat section (if you eat meat). Buy whole grains.
> But you'll keep believing what you believe, and that's fine. Keep resorting to edge cases to defend your claims, and accept that big food will maintain its grip on your free will.
Hey, you are the one calling on bodybuilders and (every athlete, bodybuilder, etc that wants to gain or lose weight can do so basically at will, on a set schedule they plan months in advance.... but all athletes and bodybuilders combined are the edge cases compared to the majority of people.
And again, just like personal sovereignty and free will absolutism are more often than not not enough to defeat bad habits it so happens that big food doesn't have total grip on people's free will (who said they totally controlled us aside from your straw man argument ?) . But they do have a huge budget to spend on marketing and lobbying that is at war with people's will and motivation.
> I'll still be here actually doing things that make a difference, not caving to the complexity of models, and maintaining ownership of my decisions.
I don't think calling people's personal circumstances "excuses* and being a smart ass with stupid one liners like * I'm sorry to hear about your loss of free will. * will help anyone and make any differences.
Im not tying to shift blame, I’m pointing out that this is much less simple than the original poster described. It’s no so simple as just walking more and taking the time to eat whole food precisely because there is a broader system designed to keep people fat consumers that should be seriously and skeptically examined for dodging their influences on society. We know cigarette kept dodging their involvement in getting kids addicted early. We know Perdue was lying about how their opioids worked to guarantee addiction cycles. We know the original nutrition guidelines were originally developed by the agriculture department and that several agribusinesses had their thumbs on the scale to skew what was told to the entire nation on how to eat well.
Are those kids who were exposed to cigarettes personally responsible? How about those folks who are addicted to opioids now? And of course all those Americans at the time, they just should’ve decided against following official nutrition guidelines by their government (assuming they can afford to! Poor kids were fed according to these guidelines in school lunches…)
I think the original comment was pointing out that our discussion of diet and nutrition is overly complicated. Not that it's easy to make the right choices, but that it is easy knowing what those right choices are.
I hear you on how difficult it is though. People who are able to manage it confuse the simplicity of knowing what to do and the difficulty of actually achieving it.
We can't blame big tobacco either. Let's remove taxes on tobacco and make tobacco advertising legal no matter what. Let's also stop subsidized detox clinics, those addicts have their own free will after all.
Maybe whole grains are not expensive, but the outside walls of a grocery store (produce, meat, eggs, dairy) are very expensive, and have gotten a lot more expensive on the last two years. Especially if you are buying higher end (organic, pasture raised, etc..) stuff. Nuts and seeds, also very expensive right now. Good oils like olive oil also expensive.
"The percentage of the population who can afford the least-cost diet adhering to food-based dietary guidelines (henceforth ‘a nutritious diet’) increases from 15% (at the median) in countries with rural and informal food systems to nearly 100% in countries with industrial and consolidated food systems (Fig. 1). We estimate that nearly all residents of industrialized countries and a median of 82% in countries with an emerging and diversifying food system are able to afford a nutritious diet"
Besides, the question is relative to what? What percent of your income is worth spending on healthy food? Put a number on it and then we'll talk.
> To assess affordability, the CoRD is constructed by the median cost of the healthy diet compared to median incomes under the assumption that 63% of income is spent on food 11,13
Paper is baed on prices from 2020.
11. Herforth, A. et al. Cost and Affordability of Healthy Diets Across and Within Countries: Background Paper for the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 (FAO, 2020); https://doi.org/10.4060/cb2431en
Return to ref 11 in article
13. FAO, IFAD, WFP & UNICEF. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2020); https://doi.org/10.4060/ca9692en
A recommended diet is considered affordable if it does not exceed 63% of the median income
63% of income on food is expensive
the question is relative to what
Relative to the standard American diet, what you are suggesting is expensive. Processed foods may be bad for you, but they are unarguably cheap calories.
We're also fundamentally lazy creatures. Useless expenditure of energy does not promote survival. We're predisposed to do nothing. Couple that with our ability to amuse ourselves with endless entertainment and it's tough to get people moving.
The root cause for a lot of people is being addicted to the sugar hit. And for a reason: We like to perform. At first for baccalauréat, then for exams, then at work. I need my sugar hit, because I love being a good coder, focussed and in the flow. I love feeling clever. Sugar is a bit like cocaine, if I understand well, in terms of the way it works on dopamine. And our society demands a lot from us.
I wish I got into slow living, but I don’t have enough friendships to be happy with less work. Vicious circle ;)
Coach potatoes spend approximately the same amount of calories as modern-day hunter-gatherers. The current thinking is that a body has an energy budget to spend. If one does not move, that energy is spent on other things like hormone synthesis. Conversely walking or even running for 5 miles each day will not decrease the weight.
So been overweight is really about eating too much. This does not mean that one should not move. That has a lot of benefits, it is just loosing wright is not one of them.
Having a higher cardiovascular capacity increases the number of potential calories you can burn per hour.
Weight loss strategies that don't include exercise can work, but it is silly to do so. Exercise improves longevity, mental health, and expedites weight loss. All things equal, if you add a 5 mile walk to your daily regiment, you will lose weight faster.
Clearly not, even before considering particular disability; average age of children first walking is over a year, and the number of children under 1 is well over 1% of world population.
More relevant to the discussion, though, in the US, 13.7% of adults have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs. [0]
You know what. You are right. This is an excellent critique and I'm quite literally quivering in my boots at the sheer intellectual dominance exuding from your comment. I've learned my lesson and in the future will consider my opinions to be irrelevant and not useful. Please continue enlightening the world with your critical thinking prowess. I look forward to reading your future work.
Except those that regularly take part in physically strenuous activities are often very much aware that excess weight makes those activities much harder (particularly if you're at all competitive), which provides extra motivation for being concerned with what and how much you eat. Anecdata, yes, but everyone I know that was overweight in the past and has now lost it and kept it off has done so by taking up some sort of sport/regular physical activity (mostly cycling). I don't know anyone who's done so just by dieting alone.
Just the opposite from yo: everyone I know who lost weight permanently did so by changing their diet exclusively (no changes on exercise). In fact some of the sports guys gained some weight with sports (lifting, gained muscle)
They've typically still lost fat though, even if they've gained weight.
I don't know what sort of stats there are comparing those who've lost weight and successfully kept it off (for, say, 10 years or so) via exercise/sports vs via dieting alone, though from what I know it's a pretty low percentage that do manage in the latter group. My understanding is that the initial weight loss is primarily down to diet changes, but exercise works better at helping maintaining a healthier weight/lifestyle.
> walking or even running for 5 miles each day will not decrease the weight
This is so wrong. Humans have come up with calories as a measurement of how the body burns fuel. Food is the fuel and burning that fuel is spending calories. You can reduce the calories consumed and/or increase movement to burn more. A quick google indicates 1 mile walking is about 100 calories burned for a 180lb person. So walking 5mi is burning roughly 500 calories and if done daily, this would mean 3500 per week which is roughly 1lb of loss. If you replace that 500cal loss per day with 500cal of ice cream then yeah you’re not going to lose weight. So if someone decided to just eat all the same stuff they currently eat but go walk 5mi day they would likely lose weight.
Calculating weight loss is mathematically very simple and software devs should be familiar with feedback loops. The simple formula is track calories, weigh yourself, adjust calories for loss, weigh self. Daily tracking works. The LoseIt app does this for you and adjusts calorie budget when you lose weight (less weight means lower budget).
Exercise is not solely about living longer, though an additional four years on average isn't exactly trivial.
The anecdotes abound about the positive impacts. Dismiss them in favor of scientific studies at your own peril.
My own anecdote: I lost 90 lbs and started lifting and it's done wonders for various aspects of my life. I recognize that my experience may not apply to everyone but it also seems reasonable given our evolutionary history that regular movement would have benefits.
> "Physical activity reduces many major mortality risk factors including arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus type 2, dyslipidemia, coronary heart disease, stroke, and cancer."
That's a lot more than just a few number of years.
> "This is laughable."
Really? Exercise is linked to decreased stress, increased stamina, clarity, and general well-being. Being physical and mentally capable and competent into older age is a good thing and a major improvement in quality of life. Not sure how this is "laughable".
> That's a lot more than just a few number of years.
No, the number of years is listed in the study. Your implication that reduced risk has any other impact is baseless.
> Really? Exercise is linked to decreased stress, increased stamina, clarity, and general well-being. Being physical and mentally capable and competent into older age is a good thing and a major improvement in quality of life. Not sure how this is "laughable".
You should check your clarity already, you seem to be deluded by "common sense".
> While there is an association between some indicators of PA and IQ, there was no consistent evidence that higher PA levels might lead to increased IQ scores.
Yet another useless study clouding peoples minds. Stop eating ultra processed foods, meat is okay, rice is okay, most bread from the store isnt (look at the ingredients). Potatoes are possibly the most nutritious vegetable provided you dont deep fry them in seed oil. Stay away from cheap oils like canola, corn, soybean, safflower.
Stick to olive oil, coconut oil, tallow, lard, ghee, etc BUT KEEP IT LIMITED.
No need to go on a restrictive keto or carnivore diet, it does have some benefits yes but you're missing out on variety.
what is the difference between a processed food and an unprocessed food? what degree of processing makes a food ultra-processed? what ingredients should I be looking for and why? what is so nutritious about potatoes, and why does frying change anything? what is special about seed oil?
"Processed" is a slightly confusing shorthand for "has undergone processes which either damaged its nutritional properties or added a ton of unhealthy shit for the sake of becoming more appealing and/or easier to preserve and consume".
A chopped apricot or a smoked salmon are in a literal sense processed food, but nobody is referring to that kind of processes. Rather, they're referring to the processes that turn an apricot into a Sachertorte, or a salmon into spreadable salmon-flavoured cheese. Dehydrating, extensive cooking, adding massive amounts of salt/sugar/fats - processes that destroy vitamins and other nutritionally important characteristics and mix the original food with large quantities of unhealthy ingredients.
It's a combination where both parts play a key role. Much like a jam needs both fruit and sugar, or a bar of chocolate needs both cocoa powder and cocoa butter; neither component is a small addition, and neither can be omitted.
Just be aware of whats in your food. I don't look for specific ingredients just learn what the makeup of your food is and decide if you should be eating that. Awareness is 80% of the battle.
Boiled/roasted potatoes are really satiating for their calories. But most people associate potatoes with a lot of fat, like french fries or mashed potatoes which make them very high calorie.
Deep frying anything I think should be a special occasion, you shouldn't be having deep fried food every day or even week, it adds a lot of useless calories. Stir frying is healthier
Seed oils (modern oils like canola, invented in 1974) are suspicious. There is a lot of conspiracy theories out there and not a lot of data, but I try to stay away from it. After all we've been using olive oil for thousands of years, no need to stop.
Generally speaking, I think of processed foods as anything padded with sugar, salt and/or fat. Food which comes from a factory, not a farm. Processed foods are digested quickly which has issues. They have a high caloric density with low nutrients due to the sugar,salt+fat.
Think candy, chips, soda, bread, cured meats and things in bags. Low in nutrition, high in calories.
Coconut oil is not a healthy choice because of its colossal content of saturated fats [1]. It's fine for use in cosmetics.
Olive oil is great fresh, as a part of sauces, dressings, etc, but care should be taken not to burn it when frying things [2].
Deep-fried stuff is a traditional part of many cuisines of Eastern Asia [3], where people often live pretty long [4], are usually less overweight, and experience less heart diseases than in the US. Quite possibly it's not the most nutritional choice, but often the safest for street food in hot climates. Likely other parts of East Asian diets, like abundance of fresh vegetables, somehow offset whatever detrimental effects deep-fried food items may have, in a way they don't in a typical US diet, especially at lower income levels.
Interestingly, canola oil is officially considered somehow beneficial for health [5].
Potatoes are a brilliant food. They're filling, contain an appropriate amount of calories, a lot of nutrients and a lot of potassium which helps balance out all that salt we're eating.
Why is rice ok? It is processed, high carb, low fiber. Good if you are starving, tastes good, but seems like it should be skipped as much as a typical junk food.
Unless you think there's something wrong with eating carbs (there isn't,) there's nothing particularly bad about rice. In fact, it's a great source of calories and carbs.
"Typical junk food," on the other hand, usually contains a lot more calories (and sugar/carbs and fat), sprinkled with various things that make them super-appealing. It's not impossible, but not incredibly appealing to overeat rice. Overeating a bag of Doritos on the other hand is very easy.
Effect of Calorie-Unrestricted Low-Carbohydrate, High-Fat Diet Versus High-Carbohydrate, Low-Fat Diet on Type 2 Diabetes and Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Result:
The mean age was 56 years (SD, 10), and 58% were women. Compared with the HCLF diet, participants on the LCHF diet had greater improvements in hemoglobin A1c (mean difference in change, −6.1 mmol/mol [95% CI, −9.2 to −3.0 mmol/mol] or −0.59% [CI, −0.87% to −0.30%]) and lost more weight (mean difference in change, −3.8 kg [CI, −6.2 to −1.4 kg]). Both groups had higher high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and lower triglycerides at 6 months. Changes in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were less favorable in the LCHF diet group than in the HCLF diet group (mean difference in change, 0.37 mmol/L [CI, 0.17 to 0.58 mmol/L] or 14.3 mg/dL [CI, 6.6 to 22.4 mg/dL]). No statistically significant between-group changes were detected in the assessment of NAFLD. Changes were not sustained at the 9-month follow-up.
Meaning the diets were not maintained (on avg) after the trial? Can't imagine how difficult it must be to run a properly controlled dietary study. Even if you feed the participants, how can you be sure they're not ingesting additional food outside of the experiment for months on end?
I did a Keto diet for 4 months and lost 45lbs. Those pounds started coming back quick after I eased off of it (my triglycerides and cholesterol numbers were getting worryingly high). I also found it incredibly difficult to jump back into Keto for any sustained period of time afterwards. Tried and failed within a couple of weeks multiple times, kind of like whenever I try to go off of caffeine.
Been finding just eating lower-carb (not as low as keto, and some days where there have been carb binges) and focusing more on whole foods and not eating high-fat foods and my triglycerides and cholesterol numbers are back to normal levels, and I'm back to losing weight again, albeit a lot slower (down 25 lbs this year).
I know another guy who lost 107lbs off Keto (he was my initial inspiration to try it, in fact) and he eventually went off it and he had regained about half of that when I saw him last (according to him).
I'm sure there are people who have been able to keep the weight off, but it was difficult for me.
Exactly why it is normal that nutritional science is taken with a grain of salt, not cause researchers are slacking or producing bad studies. Just the fact they have data sources with a giant astrix attached.
Imho i think this also plays into the misinformation in the space. It's hard to prove anything and I find I mostly wait for a good meta analysis before putting my eggs in that basket
Many comments so far responding with a reader's personal feelings on how all people should eat. This was a study of the effect of these diets on diabetics. As such, it's not a huge surprise that low-carbohydrate, high-fat would come out ahead, given diabetes is a disease that prevents your body from properly processing carbohydrates. The authors here have made no claim whatsoever that anyone who is not diabetic would see any of these same effects and would even want to see these same effects (note that the only thing that might matter here to a non-diabetic is the LDL change, which was worse for the high fat diet). It's just too bad the participants that saw improvement still didn't stick with it and all benefits disappeared 3 months after the intervention was complete.
I think there are a lot of different types of people who react in a lot of different ways to various diets, and you can't just say this or that is the best without specifying which person you're talking about.
Doctor said my cholesterol was getting high, so I radically cut saturated fats. Suddenly I was losing weight at a pound a week, eating as much as I wanted. Shed 25+ lbs that way.
Would that work for everyone? I sincerely doubt it. Find what works for you, I say, and to heck with the naysayers.
And it's not just what works for people in the biological sense (since any diet that's restricting calories will make you lose weight.) It's really what diet works for you psychologically or situationally.
If eating in a time-restricted way (Intermittent fasting) causes you to lower total calories, and is easy for you, great. If cutting out carbs is easier for you, great. If counting calories and eating only a certain amount of calories works for you, great - that's what I personally prefer cause it's the most flexible, though counting is a pain at first.
> It remains unclear if a low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) diet is a possible treatment strategy for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)
N=1 personal non-random uncontrolled experiment: 4+ years of drug-free diabetes control to below pre-diabetic levels via an LCHF diet, regularly measured with continuous glucose monitoring. I suspect that the success rate among self-selected followers is higher than among the randomly assigned.
N=2 10+ years of ultra low carb diet, but not quite as high fat as the study (obviously a greater percentage of protein). My BMI has been ~18 and I've been a runner my whole life, but (like my father), had neuropathy and 'fuzzy' vision in my 30s, and eventually found out that I was glucose-intolerant with large 'spikes' in my glucose levels after meals with carbs. Two weeks after cutting out carbs, vision fuzziness went away, and pins-and-needles subsided (although I still can't tolerate heat or cold in my feet).
Never looked back. Never went on any drugs, running is slower, but can last much longer. Don't really feel hungry - just eat to my activity level and snacks.
Eating is simple - if it has more than 2g of carbs per serving, then I don't eat it. Only supplements required are chlorides: sodium - that's easy, potassium - from NoSalt, and magnesium - an occasional capsule.
How did you get the continuous glucose monitoring? I have only found it available through a prescription. (I'm in the US.)
In OTC A1C tests, I reduced mine from 10.6 to 7.6 to 6.0 over the course of 6 months with keto. I wanted to get a continuous glucose monitor so that I could discover if any foods were unwittingly sabotaging my efforts, but I can't find any that I can buy without a formal diagnosis and prescription.
I haven't gone to a doctor yet b/c I don't have a primary care physician and, to be blunt, it's expensive, even with insurance!
I only looked into nutrisense. They rejected my application because ... I have diabetes. I supposed made necessary by regulations. That's a difficult business model for a company selling blood sugar control. Hopefully they've found their way around it.
I worked around it by just getting a prescription, which was easy and cheap, and comes with a consult from a live doctor.
I actually used nutrisense, the issue is that it is overpriced since all they really do is give you the sensors. Also I had some discomfort with the sensors.
There is a new Abbott sensor that looks really promising but there are no news about it so maybe it is vaporware.
Agree, and I succeeded with that too, but for a shorter period. As a raw vegan my blood sugar was low, but I developed brain fog and intense cravings after about six months. I believe that path is sustainable for people with lower protein requirements and a healthier digestive system than mine.
Interestingly, as a pre-diabetic zero carber my blood sugar is excellent in as little as a week. Not meaning to make fun of your diet, just observing that what you ingest != what's in your blood stream, we are very complex chemical machines.
In this case a moderately high carb diet like yours results in low sugar, while a diet with <5g of carbs a day results in healthy sugar levels.
(The reason is insulin. Remove dietary carbs, you generate less insulin, so blood sugar flatlines, with gluconeogenesis to maintain the minimal levels to function, while the rest of the energy is provided by fatty acids)
A carrot, a cabbage, a bell pepper or a butternut squash will contain a significant amount of carbs, all of which is in the form of simple sugars (glucose, fructose and sucrose mainly) so they avoid those foods?
I'm not OP, but I also adhered to an LCHF diet for ~8 months a few years ago. I found that, early on, maintaining a consistently high ratio of fats was hard, but over time, it simply became a natural aspect of things like e.g. eating normal/non-extra-lean beef.
For the first while I found that using coconut oil or olive oil was a trivial way of adding just pure fat to my daily numbers. Both of them are relatively cheap (though high cal) and can be added to any heated drink like coffee or tea with minimal impact on for flavor. Over time, this just became unnecessary, but it was helpful early on as it was trivial to prep a small container with n grams of oil every morning.
There are also nutrient bars that are explicitly higher on fat and protein and lower on carbs for this very purpose, e.g. 'good fats' bars.
Unlike what others report, while I felt generally good and had energy for day to day things, I simply could not ever work up enough energy for more rigorous cardio or weightlifting, compared to when I'm on a normal/carb-rich diet.
Note that many of the beneficial effects to blood markers are identical so long as weight is lost. Yes, ad libitum consumption maybe lower on HFLC, but both diets when equated for deficit off TDEE, protein grams, and fiber grams will result in improved blood markers.
You need to prove that first, it is not a given. Because a n=1 counter argument is seeing my triglycerides, blood pressure and heart rate drop significantly in 2 weeks, while still being overweight on a very low carb diet and having lost a negligible amount of weight (can't do much in two weeks).
It is possible that some markers improve as a function of weight, but it is not necessarily so.
The so-called Low-Fat diet still allowed for 20%-30% of calories to come from fat. There are a lot of indications that this is not really low to make a meaningful conclusion. One needs to target max 10%-15% of calories from fat to make a difference.
Maybe ancient nomadic humans ate low-carb / keto in winter (which is why it seems good for using up fat resources efficiently) and high-carb in summer (which is why it seems good for filling up fat storages)?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36051903/
Any type of caloric restriction will improve health outcomes.