Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 186 posts

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#91

Post by babblefrog »

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #83
fanboy123 wrote: post #23

I think the real answer is because it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people. It is interesting to see comments on this forum that involve the strategy of reasoning with the public to get them to accept their idea. Next time you see somebody drinking a soda explain to them what fructose does metabolically to their bodies. Your me…

I think, first, one should differentiate between the part of the food industry that is actually the sugar industry - products like Coke and Gatorade and Snickers - and the part that is packaged convenience food that also contains a lot of sugar. (High-fructose corn syrup is just another sugar with 5-10% more fructose.) The convenience food industry is highly motivated to sell what the public wants to buy. They follow…

One correction: Atkins died of head trauma after slipping on the ice, not heart failure. I guess you can call every death heart failure, though ;-)

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#93

Post by xiaoma »

hnhg wrote: post #20
forensic wrote: post #14

The "fat is evil" thing that happened in the latter half of the 20th century is going to go down as the biggest scientific fuck up ever. The very people who were given all the authority and trust, and who were supposed to protect human life, actively killed people by pushing carbs as healthy and fats as unhealthy. They directly caused spiking obesity, the #1 medical issue in our society. Repeat after me: The biggest…

I think it's more to do with our idea of a balanced diet being out of kilter. I've met plenty of people who are now replacing carbs with meat, which to me doesn't feel like the right way to go about things. One day perhaps we'll realise for a start that we don't need to eat so many calories in each sitting. Then with any luck we'll realise that vegetables (not potatoes) should form the base of the 'food pyramid'.

It might be interesting for you to know that great numbers of Irish people survived on little other than potatoes and milk in the period before the great potato famine. This was supplemented with oatmeal occasional vegetables, and very occasional salted fish, but the vast majority of their nutrition came from potatoes.

The results? The highest birthrate in western Europe and people historians of the time considered healthy and good-looking.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#95

Post by haploid »

tsuipen wrote: post #81

Argh. This is what I don't like about non-tech, -IT, and -CS articles posted on HN: people go off on tangents with so little (useless) information. I'm sorry to say this article is poor on information. Let's stick to the facts. Complex carbs (brown rice, whole wheat bread, bagels, whole wheat pasta, beans - the list of delicious, healthy complex carbs is long) in moderation does not hinder your health. In fact, your…

Your "facts" are wrong, or at least they date from the conventional wisdom of the 1980s.

There is nothing spectacular about "complex carbs" to make them "slow-releasing". Both potatoes and white bread have glycemic indexes much higher than the "simple sugars" you're trying to demonize. The human digestive tract is extremely effective at unchaining starches and other "complex carb" polysaccharides, and it begins at the first bite via salivary amylase.

Oh, and flaxseed has been linked to prostate cancer in multiple studies.

You may want to read nutritional research more recent than 1985.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#96

Post by dkarl »

My reading led me to believe that sugars and grains in my diet were the culprit and, sure enough, once I cut those out and increased the amount of animal fats in my diet, I lost 50 pounds. (I always had and continued to eat a lot of vegetables, too.) I have never felt more energetic or clear-headed.

So, yes, my personal experience tells me Taubes is correct, just as Horgan’s experience tells him Taubes is incorrect. But, importantly, I would not have had my experience if I had not read the nutrition literature with an open mind.

The last sentence is unjustified and probably incorrect. A lot of people get fed up with their weight, resolve to make a change, and then lose a bunch. Adopting an exciting new idea and making a change is the crucial part, not the validity of the idea. I lost a lot of weight as a vegan (over thirty pounds), got into the best shape of my life, relaxed my rules, and gained a little bit back. Did I gain that little bit back because veganism was the answer and I failed to be faithful to it? No, it was because the initial novelty and enthusiasm wore off. It's the same pattern no matter what the actual composition of the diet is. Low-carb diets' biggest contribution to weight loss has been to provide a psychologically viable option for meat-and-potatoes people who felt unsatisfied or alienated by the "hippie" food that low-fat diets would have had them eating.

the health effects of a high-carbohydrate diet often are not visible as weight gain—that Egyptian princess, no doubt thin as a rail (have you ever seen a fat mummy?), had a level of atherosclerosis that today would have doctors scrambling for a bypass operation

Now, this part is actually interesting and I await more information concerning the heart health of people who exercise and maintain a healthy weight on different kinds of diets.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#97

Post by david_p »

ajscherer wrote: post #79

I'm always surprised at the theories people are willing to believe about obesity, particularly people on hn. It really sounds reasonable to so many of you that the cause of the obesity epidemic is people actually listening to nutrition advice from the medical establishment and following the food pyramid? My view of what has happened is this: technologies and ingredients were invented by food manufacturers over the pa…

While I have to agree with you, your theory fails to explain why people in Europe (who have the same access to calorie dense and convenient food) are less obese (in proportion) than North Americans.

I believe that culinary customs AND some additives used in industrial food play an important role.

Just check out High Fructose Corn Syrup : this is in very product in the USA and is (almost) never used in Europe.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#98

Post by terio »

bgentry wrote: post #69
utefan001 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Brazil in 1995 and one of the Brazilian girls I was eating with mentioned she is not going to eat the pasta / carbs because she is trying to lose weight. I thought she had no idea what she was talking about, what she needed to do was cut out the fat. Turns out I was wrong.

Not really, it turns out the carbs from glucose (pasta) are actually pretty good for you. If she also cut the carbs by removing fruit juice and soda from her diet, then it would have been the right approach. For more info, watch the Lustig video already linked in this thread.

Apparently combining carbs with fat is conducive to fat accumulation. So, avoiding that pasta with olive oil or butter is a good idea if you want to loose weight.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#99

Post by ohyes »

tokenadult wrote: post #77

What's more radically different between people who are healthy and people who are not is how much they exercise rather than what they eat. There is much more worldwide cultural variation in what people eat, and much more individual variation within each culture, among healthy people than there is variation in the exercise level of healthy people. But seeking to change diet to change health sounds easier than getting…

What compounds this is that 'healthy' is a particularly ill-defined catchall term. If you are, for example, morbidly obese or horribly malnourished, you probably do need to change your diet. If you get winded going up a flight of stairs, or maybe worried about general physical fitness, you probably want exercise.

What is our ideal for a healthy person? An underwear model? someone who lives to 93?

I don't know.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#100

Post by bgentry »

terio wrote: post #98
bgentry wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, it turns out the carbs from glucose (pasta) are actually pretty good for you. If she also cut the carbs by removing fruit juice and soda from her diet, then it would have been the right approach. For more info, watch the Lustig video already linked in this thread.

Apparently combining carbs with fat is conducive to fat accumulation. So, avoiding that pasta with olive oil or butter is a good idea if you want to loose weight.

Oh yeah absolutely.. I think the video mentioned that things like donuts and cheesecake are the absolute worst.
Post reply on HN