Over the last few decades (maybe century) we have been led to believe that the obesity epidemic and other related diseases pathologically stem from over consumption of some arbitrary unit of energy called a "calorie." It's been really simple: if you're obese, then the problem is obviously that you eat too much and the solution is even simpler.. to either "burn" off more calories than consumed to create a deficit or to defy every survival-based, self-preservation instinct in the body and starve oneself under his or her own will power...
I have a few questions about that though...
If obesity is a product of over-consumption, then why does it plague the under-cosuming populations to a much higher degree.
You expect me to believe that groups of people who can't afford paperclips are gorging themselves on excessive food!? The homeless are over-eating!? Really? They're eating "too much"? Am I really the only one to find this absurd? (side note, so did Gary Taubes). According to "their" math, they expect me to believe that the poor in this country are feasting on more food than the wealthy. Interesting. I wonder if these people are eating their share of meat and vegetables...
Here's your homework assignment: drive around the city of LA and go inside of every Ralph's store you see. Take note of the neighborhood and the observed level of poverty or affluence. Then record what the first things you see when you walk through the door are. This is what my undergrad senior thesis was.
You think they have a whole foods in Compton? You think they're buying organic veggies at their carbon-footprint-neutral farmers market in Watts? Think again. They get to choose from discounted soda (2 liters for a buck) and tons of discounted baked goods like breads and cookies and donuts. Think I'm kidding? Go look.. You think those are high calorie or high fat foods? Check the labels..
Tell me again about how these people are eating too much.. Better yet, go up to a mother of like 4 or 5 who is shopping in there, on food stamps, and tell her that she eats too much and is probably feeding her kids too much. I suggest you get a good head start because my mom would not take that too lightly.
I wonder what their dinner plate looks like.. Too much saturated fat from animal meats? Right...
Not getting enough exercise, you say? Let's think about this.. I'm not even going to bother finding a graphic because this is absurd.
What demographic is more likely to populate white-collar jobs? College-educated? Middle to upper class?
- What constitutes a white-collar job? Sitting in an office for 8 hours behind a blinking screen under blinking flourescent lights.. Meetings.. Cell-phones.. periodically checking facebook.. Tough day of sitting around huh?
Blue collor: No education required usually. On site training. Lower class.
- Dirty manual labor. Heavy physical demands. Hauling. lifting, wrenching. welding. Moving. Basically a gym rat's dream job.
Which lifestyle do you suspect has a higher chronic caloric expenditure? Seems pretty obvious, right? But who is more likely to be obese? The hard-working, blue-collar folks.
Does that seem logical? Is adding an extra 100-200 calories burned a day going to make a difference in a 5000 calorie burned day? Those of you aching to burn a few extra calories may want to reconsider your career paths.. Let me know how it works out for you..
I may have the wild speculations and I may be a skeptic about what is considered "common knowledge". But I'm no doctor and I don't have a fancy Ph.D. nor am I a recognizeable TV personality and I sure as hell haven't written a book.. So what do I know.. Make your own judgements..
I'm OUT!
Hollow rocks.. Do them. Do more.
I agree entirely with Russ. What do you offer for dinner if you're on a budget and working 2 jobs? Is it carefully prepared soups and casseroles, or Mac and Cheese with some hamburger that takes 15 minutes to make. You can buy processed crap much cheaper, and spend a lot less time preping it for dinner. Hamburger Helper is easier and quicker than homemade chicken soup.
ReplyDeleteYou can not analyse a non-linear multifactorial equation like this. Distracting factor has unexpected nonlinear effects on each other. for example, poverty decreases the quality of life and living satisfaction. It ends up with hedonistic behavior and depression. then eating disorder happens. people spend more money on food. become poorer. and vicious cycle make situation worse. (just an example. I'm not saying it is the only scenario)
ReplyDeleteGary Taubes logic about the correlation of caloric expenditure and obesity is like this:
1)One who has more money, buys more food, eats more food and become obese.
2)Just because statement no 1 is not correct then excessive consumption of food does not make you fat!
Fitness, Obesity and health are very complicated issues. But not magic. Excessive caloric intake (more than you spend) would not magically disappear in your body unless you have some PHYSIOLOGIC DISORDER. Gary Taubes' solution to this is ketogenic diet. You better cut one of your arms off to loos weight. It is healthier than ruining your body by staying in ketosis state for ever.
In reading your thoughts, I am a little confused.
ReplyDeleteI believe you are trying to argue against the point that obesity is the product of over-consumption. To support this, you cite a correlation between poverty and obesity and then give examples of the types of food readily available in poorer areas, such as calorie-laden soda and baked goods.
To me this seems to support, rather than oppose, the idea that obesity is related to over-consumption. This of course assumes that over-consumption is defined by caloric intake, rather than by volume/mass of food.
I really like how Anonymous pointed out that this is a very complicated issue. Especially so, when you are trying to implement solutions that will work for different types of people, from different social and economic groups, in a way that is ecological and sustainable.
That's exactly what it was. Correlary. No causality.
ReplyDeletecoca-cola has 100 calories/8oz and is relatively inexpensive.
http://productnutrition.thecoca-colacompany.com/products/coca-cola?packagingId=10164
orange juice is 121 cal/9oz and relatively pricier.
http://www.calorieking.com/foods/calories-in-fruit-vegetable-juices-orange-juice-fresh_f-ZmlkPTY3NTIy.html
Seem (calorically) pretty even-steven to me.. Which would you buy more of on a tight budget??
I'm trying to stimulate a healthy debate. It would be helpful if people actually cited sources and utilized real facts as counter-points. Otherwise it's just a food-fight of opinions.
If you look at the deductive reasoning, it implies that this indeed is NOT a simple, linear model, but rather multi-factorial and complex. It would be very simple to merely say that an individual is "fat" and unhealthy because they consume too many calories. THAT is a linear model. Obviously, there are other factors involved here whether they be biochemical or sociological.
Based on physiology books, (like Gyton medical physiology or NSCA book) 100 kcal of coca-cola or 100 kcal of orange juice can make about 11 grams of fat tissue in your body. It is thought that orange juice is healthier because of the type of sugar, amount of fiber, vitamins, minerals, glycemic index and etc. BUT both of them make you equally fat if you take same amount of calorie of them. The same thing is true about protein and fat foods. The general rule (again based on physiology books) is that if a normal person without any physiologic disorder takes more calories than he needs, the extra food is stored as fat (adipose tissue). The physiology of fat storage is now investigated over and over up to cellular level. Need reference? Look up any physiology book and you will find it. Authors (like Taubs, Atkins or Weston Price foundation) who propose that there is no correlation between the calorie intake and fat storage don't suggest any physiology mechanism for their claims. Most of the explanations they provide are based on anecdotes, deductive reasoning from statistical facts and guessing (with a self-satisfied smirk) which are not bad per se. BUT when the mechanism of something is investigated from social down to the molecular and cellular level using powerful scientific methods, you don't rely on weak deductive tools.
DeleteStill this is not the worst part. The real bad part is that their formula only works because they break two firs axioms of physiology rules: 1) normal person and 2) without physiologic disorder. What is the reference for this? Then again I should refer to medical book like principals of internal medicine. Decreasing dietary carbohydrate to less than 100 grams per day (as paleo diet prescribes) causes ketosis state which is a physiologic disorder. When you're there, you don't get fat, not because you're eating right because you're malnutritioned. There are books on side effects and complications of ketosis. Look up (of course in internal medicine books) complications of ketosis and you will agree with me that loosing one arm is healthier.
I still believe that getting fat is muli-factorial problem. It means different factors makes you eat the food your body don't need. But after that step, the excess calorie eventually becomes fat if you don't burn it. This is not even physiology, it physics.You can burn it in wise ways like: increasing your lean body mass, increasing your activity. Or stupid ways like driving your body in malnutrition by using only few of necessary macro or micro nutrients (like low carb diet, high carb diet, high protien diet, low fat diet, etc ....)
Taubes does actually propose mechanisms to support his hypothesis, using basic biochemistry.
DeleteAlso, the body isn't a closed/isolated system, so the concept of conservation of matter (calories in = calories burned to maintain weight) doesn't apply.
Not all macronutrients are processed with equal efficiency in the body, so of course the type of food matters, not just the amount. There are essential amino acids (ones our body can't make) and essential fatty acids (ones our body can't make), but as far as I know, there are no essential carbohydrates. Our cells are perfectly capable of making necessary glucose from protein (gluconeogenesis). Our cells cannot, however, easily synthesize fat from protein (it requires quite a bit of energy), so it is not very efficient to store excess protein as fat. It's basic cellular biochemistry.
The biochemical explanations that Taubes provide does not fully explain where equation of calories in, calories out can be broken in a way that you can eat as much as you want and don't get fat.
DeleteYes, Not all macronutrients are processed with equal efficiency in the body, proteins metabolism spends 10-15% more energy. But it is not enough expenditure that let you eat as much as you want. Besides, 15% doesn't worth the complications of protein metabolism by-products.
All mono-macronutrients diets are harmful. Low protein or fat diets make deficiency of essential amino and fatty acids. It's true that our cells are perfectly capable of making necessary glucose from protein but as I said the cost and by-products of the process are toxic for the body. Therefore, according to modern nutrition, a healthy diet is one that consist of all macronutrients. It's basic cellular biochemistry, but it can be deadly if you misread them!
The way we quantify energy in foods (calories) is different than the way we process it in our bodies. 1 kcal is the amount of heat required to heat 1 kg water by 1oC. Calories are quantified by combusting the material - burning it in the presence of oxygen to produce water and CO2. In the body, the process is not the same, and although there should be some correlation between the amount of heat a food can produce when it is burned, and how much energy it can provide, ultimately, conversion of a macronutrient to be stored as fat is a different set of chemical reactions than converting a macronutrient into CO2 and water. Because the chemical reactions are different (and/or stop at an intermediate), the amount of energy extracted from that macronutrient is not the same as the amount of energy extracted when it burns. This is particularly true when it comes to converting protein into fat - the process requires a significant amount of energy, about 70% of the energy stored in the protein, so it's difficult to gain weight from a lean protein diet alone, especially since there is a limit on how much protein our livers can process daily. For example, you can eat all the rabbit you want, but if you do so, you will starve to death (regardless of how many calories you consume) because the meat is too lean. Google it.
DeleteIt's been a while since I read Taubes' book, but I don't recall him proposing that carbs be eliminated - just that one chooses the source of carbs wisely (vegetables and fruit) and watch how much overall sugar is in your diet, since it affects hormone production (insulin) and fat storage. I'm pretty sure Taubes would be fine with me eating at much broccoli and asparagus as I want.
As much as I remember from his books, he doesn't recommend the exact amount of carb. But if you calculate some examples he suggest, the total amount was always less than 100 grams. In his recent article in Sci Am
Deletehttp://garytaubes.com/2010/12/calories-fat-or-carbohydrates/
he mentions that low-carb diet restrict carb to less than 129 grams per day. (though comments of this article are really fun. It is surprising that there are so many ways of being wrong).
There's no doubt about the satiety effect of proteins, or benefits of restricting (bad) carbohydrates or insulin releasing foods. There is no doubt that eating only proteins makes you thin because it releases less energy in your body.
Problem is the other aspects of low-carb (or any other extreme mono-macroneutrient) diet. Side effects like hyper uremia, excess ketone bodies or hypercholesterolemia.
I also believe if someone has to restrict his calorie intake, it's better to cut some carbohydrates. But low-carb diets of Taubes or Atkins are too much.
RUS, you're buff and you're smart, you rock!
ReplyDeleteFACT!
DeleteThe above comments seem to be missing the point. Not all calories/food sources are equal. When people choose to get their food from crappy-processed-carb heavy-sources, they get fat. When people choose whole, natural foods-like meat, veggies, good fats, and fruit, weight is easier to maintain. That is the lesson here. Come on people!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry! you're wrong. 3000 kilo calorie of bad food or good food is stored as 1 pound of fat in your body. No difference. Though, bad food might kill you faster. The difference is in the satiety level. 3000 kCal of protein (a 60 oz Sirloin steak... yummy) makes you seriously full. the same amount of sugar probably is about four rich frapochinos. You drink it and get hungry 1hrs later. and 3000 kcal of fruit (about 100 oranges for example) is not humanly possible to eat in a week.
Deletefrom this it seems if we abandon carbs and stick to meat and veggies we defeated obesity. huh?
problem is: the current fuel of our body are sugars and carbs. By restricting the amount of carbs to 100 grams per day our body falls into lots of trouble in reproducing basic energy molecules only from fat and protein. Yes, this trouble means you burn a lot of energy to do it and stay thin. but there are lost of metabolites (simply byproduct garbage like ketone bodies or ammonia) that your body has to get rid of. That part is not easy for the body. Kidneys, liver and immune system go drastically under stress and in the long term they are severely damaged.
So, what you see in books like "good calories bad, calories" is just some misunderstandings and misconceptions of people who just basically without knowledge of human physiology and nutrition try to interpret the medical literature and physiology facts.
No one ever said to abandon carbs. There are plenty of carbs in fresh fruit and vegetables.
DeleteSo what kind of trouble might a person in a ketosis state wind up in? And in what context?
DeleteHere is a direct quote from a review paper:
Deletehttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14672862
short-term carbohydrate restriction over a period of a week can result in a significant loss of weight (albeit mostly from water and glycogen stores), of serious concern is what potential exists for the following of this type of eating plan for longer periods of months to years. Complications such as heart arrhythmias, cardiac contractile function impairment, sudden death, osteoporosis, kidney damage, increased cancer risk, impairment of physical activity and lipid abnormalities can all be linked to long-term restriction of carbohydrates in the diet.
I thought ketosis was ok, but ketoacidosis could be dangerous. As I understand it, ketoacidosis only occurs when you have a high concentration of glucose in the blood, but your body does not "see" it (insulting resistance) and your cells process the protein as if no glucose was present. Basically, ketoacidosis is an issue for diabetics and alcoholics, but a healthy person in ketosis is not problematic, and may be, evolutionarily, the natural state of humans for most of evolution (before the days of easy sources of carbohydrates, like processed grains).
Deleteketoacidosis is far more dangerous. But excessive protein by-products is a burden on kidneys and livers. That's the major side effect of starving ketosis which also happens in case of low carb diets. Because body has to break proteins for energy, it has to deal with lots of merely toxic by-products.
DeleteWhat toxic by-products? What is excessive for protein intake? Are you starving while on ketosis?
DeleteLow-carb diets can cause your body to go into a dangerous metabolic state called ketosis since your body burns fat instead of glucose for energy. It is very similar to the situation that body goes under sever starvation. During ketosis, the body forms substances known as ketones, which can cause organs to fail and result in gout, kidney stones, or kidney failure. Ketones can also dull a person's appetite, cause nausea and bad breath.
DeleteIncreasing the protein content of a diet significantly increases the glomerular filtration rate in kidneys (this is basically the filtration power in kidneys. Although, this change would damage the kidneys in long term, unfortunately, this compensatory response to the greater production of nitrogen is insufficient to clear protein by-products (like ammonia ), and blood urea nitrogen levels increase.
It is well known that high protein diets (consisting of red meat, whole dairy products, and other high fat foods) are linked to high cholesterol. I also know some authors have some doubt about it because early studies on cholesterol and cardiovascular disease was flawed. But a comprehensive study of recent literature still shows the complications of increased LDL/HDL. there are only few (those which Taubes and Weston price foundation rely on) that believe high cholesterol is not a danger in high protein diets.
Um, just for the record you realize that veggies and fruits are carbs right? How can you argue against a plan that teaches sustainable-grass-fed-pastured-natural meats, veggies, good fats and moderate fruit intake? Were you at the lecture?? Nobody said no carb, nobody said go into Ketosis. I have been eating like this for about 6 months, never felt better. Oh, and have about 80-120 g of carbs a day from wonderful, natural sources. Just because I choose to avoid grains and legunes (which make me feel sick) doesn't mean I'll enter into the state above.
Deleteyour blog entry here touches upon the on-going debate and movement to get healthier, fresher food into LA's lower-income neighborhoods. basically, in la - and in many cities in the us - there are food deserts, places where people do not have places to buy affordably priced, fresh food within walking or reasonable bus/bike distance of their homes. ucla's school of public health has a research center that is piloting the concept of enabling bodegas to sell fresh food. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-helps-convert-first-of-four-218092.aspx.
ReplyDeleteThis is particularly prevalent in some parts of South LA (hence why the opening of a Food 4 Less down there was a really big deal) and East LA... although I'd submit there are parts of the SFV that are also impacted. Never mind that there is also anecdotal evidence that the produce sold at the markets that are serving LA's lower-income neighborhoods are not as good as what you'd find in more affluent areas.
The Big 3 (vons, ralphs, albertsons) have pulled out of many neighborhoods. Luckily, some smaller "ethnic" chains have taken over their footprints (http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/07/26/27882/independent-groceries-thrive-where-big-3-couldnt/) but there still many places in LA where it is very hard to find fresh food.
Look at this for more good times: http://labs.slate.com/articles/food-deserts-in-america/
Also, if you want to talk about obesity rates and haven't already met him, you totally need to talk to Dick Jackson. He's a professor here at UCLA in the School of Public Health who has written prolifically about the impact of the built environment on the preponderance of obesity and diabetes in the United States. He's very approachable.
this will all be resolved when President Newt Gingrich sends all poor people to the moon
ReplyDeleteOh dear.
DeleteI like where this is going. Let's tangent to this now.
DeleteHere are my two cents.
ReplyDeleteAfter over a decade of studying nutrition for my own health and well being, along with a lot of personal experimentation, the paleo way of eating works well for me. I do not believe, however, that there is any perfect diet for everyone on the planet.
I believe refined sugar and refined flours are major health hazards as is the food full of chemicals and preservatives. No one should be eating this stuff, period. I also think the imbalanced omega content of factory meat is toxic and don't even get me started on canola, vegetable and other processes oils. Oatmeal, millet, brown rice? I personally do not tolerate these things well (except soaked, sprouted and in moderation), but I am not convinced they are "unhealthy."
My approach to this way of eating, however, may not be the norm or at least I wouldn't say it is low carb. I eat a lot of vegetables and a few servings of fruit everyday. I also eat root vegetables a few times a week. By a lot of vegetables, I mean I start the day with 1-2 cups of steamed kale and try to have at least 2 cups of vegetables at each meal. I definitely do not always succeed, but this is the goal. The carbs in these vegetables keep me above the 100 carb count.
For people who are looking to lose weight and haven't had success with calorie restriction, I do recommend trying low carb and seeing if you have more success. It can definitely be a solution for some. Just don't skimp on the veggies.