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A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

nytimes.com

201–210 of 248 posts

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30 Most of the statistics about our ancestors having a 35ish life expectancy are skewed by high infant mortality, and high risk of death due to injury or other external ailments (a broken leg on the savannah can easily be a death sentence). A hunter-gatherer who surived those things would tend to live into their sixties or beyond.

Ask any archaeologist. Most adult hunter gatherers did not make it to 40. We're not talking averages, we're talking maximum life expectancy...

Sure. They also had neither vaccinations nor antibiotics, had no understanding of bacteria, etc. Take any modern teenager and stick him back in the stone age and I doubt he makes it to 40 even WITH modern knowledge.

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its weird that this pops up on HN because I have been trying a low carb diet for the last 2.5 weeks (with quite a bit of success). I have run into the same issue as you in regards to snacking. The best snack I found was flavored almonds. They are about 4 carbs an ounce and come in a bunch of flavors (coconut is my favorite). I have had a huge sweet tooth my whole life but I find the thing that I crave the most is fru…

> Cheeseburgers are amazing but they are a hell of a lot less appealing with no bun, onions, tomato, or ketchup This is true, but honestly the only one of those you really need to cut out is the bun. The onions and tomato add up to 2-3g of carbs, and the ketchup is another 4g, so the whole burger in a lettuce wrap would be 6-7g of carbs, not at all bad for a meal! For reference, I use myfitnesspal to keep track of my…

When you go low carb, you cut out the onions, tomatos, and other vegetables too?

That seems excessive, and somewhat unbalanced.

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#204
post #132
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, nuts were a good choice. Unfortunately the cashews and almonds supplied at my office were all unsalted and I couldn't be bothered to buy my own for the brief trial.

I only ever choose unsalted. It's actually really frustrating - my supermarket sells unsalted bags of cashews for $2 more than the salted bags.

When I temporarily went off keto, one of the first things I did was to buy one of those huge containers of salted mixed nuts from Costco. I gorged on the entire thing for three days and my mouth hated me for the next week. I thought I had suddenly come down with bad toothaches. Nope, I just burned all the skin off my upper mouth and gums from excess salt consumption.

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#205
I absolutely cannot keep up with what we're supposed to eat? Some say low fat, some say high fat, some say high carb, low carb... no sugar, some sugar, some fats... It comes to a point where cutting one thing or another is surely futile. And that we just need to accept that there's no miracle other than eating a varied balanced diet, exercise and cut the fads. I know coming form a vegan that might be calling the kettle black (or whatever the phrase is) but I've given up on faddy diets, I just try to eat unprocessed shit and be done with it.

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#206

"Diet" is a subject that I've studied for most of my life, and I'm no youngster. The same arguments about dietary composition have been going on for at least 150 years. There may be many opinions but for my part, I'd rather listen to the scientific evidence. I was medical director of an obesity treatment clinic for many years. The low carbohydrate (CHO), optimal protein intake diet was often effective for weight loss…

>However as I see it, research into human evolution sheds light on what the optimum diet would be. The idea of knowing the optimum diet for humans is exciting. I used to spend a lot of time reading these studies, then I realized that like many other people I know, we read and pontificate these points to everyone else we know without actually putting them into practice to a level that makes spending so much time readi…

Of course no responsible observer (not me anyway) is recommending obsessive dietary adherence to some arbitrary nutrient ratio. Obviously optimal nutrition is not a single static point but a range and a rather broad one at that.

There can't be, and there are not, absolute rules. The research I'm talking about has nothing to do with arm wresting over dogmatic rules shouted out by people insisting they're right and the other guy wrong.

Nonetheless, when nutrition drifts far enough out of range of optimum to the point it is clearly associated with harmful health effects, and it's alarming when an ever greater segment of the population is affected.

That is exactly what's arousing so much concern. The rates of obesity, metabolic disease and diabetes have risen sharply in recent decades. Diabetes alone burdens the US economy (total costs) to the tune of $170 billion a year. The ever-growing burden of disability has been linked (in part) to dietary factors.

The problem is not going to be solved by medical science primarily, but rather the commitment of individuals to save themselves by altering dietary patterns, increasing exercise, and being an active participant, a real-time partner in their own health care.

Where science can help is teasing out the factors that contribute to the problems. The medical community must get behind the educational and political challenges that have a chance to reduce the unfavorable food industry practices that contribute to the problem, and increase individual change.

It would help to substantially reduce excessive sugars and trans-fatty acid content in manufactured and fast foods. Efforts at education of the public aimed at choosing one thing that's better than another must be attempted. These can work, but not quickly. Think of tobacco--it's taken 5 decades, but headway is finally being made reducing tobacco use.

Obsession over arbitrary dietary rules is not the idea. In severe form, it's tantamount to an eating disorder. That's not at all what we mean in any way. Fanaticism has no place in my world.

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#207
post #11

It'd be nice to have this squared with research in vegetarianism (high-carb, low-fat) which long term studies indicate has a number of health benefits [1] My own take, which I've mentioned before, is that the the starting point is so bad (refined carbohydrates) that you can pretty much walk in any direction and get positive results. That is, what people are eating doesn't matter nearly as much as what people aren't.…

I hope you're right. Low-carb (meat-based as practiced by most) is amplifying climate change and world food shortages. Not to mention the needless gigascale animal suffering.

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30 Most of the statistics about our ancestors having a 35ish life expectancy are skewed by high infant mortality, and high risk of death due to injury or other external ailments (a broken leg on the savannah can easily be a death sentence). A hunter-gatherer who surived those things would tend to live into their sixties or beyond.

Ask any archaeologist. Most adult hunter gatherers did not make it to 40. We're not talking averages, we're talking maximum life expectancy...

The modal age of death for hunter gatherers that survived to adulthood ranges from 65 to 72 among the reasearched cultures.

Sure, a large proportion of them die at early childhood - "life expectancy" measures takes that into account by definition, as it measures the total average life expectancy; and if you get a 100 kids who live to 70 and 100 kids who die as infants, then the average life expectancy is 35.

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#209
I don´t have access to the paper referenced in the article, but a general rule applies: You have to be very cautious with the conclusions of a interventional nutritional study. There are lots of challenges[1] in the design, execution and evaluation of such studies.

[1] http://www.trialsjournal.com/content/13/1/111

Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

#210

Is drinking milk good or bad for someone looking to lose fat and gain more lean muscle mass?

Plain milk probably is okay, but it easily induces diarrhea. Flavoured, highly processed milk products have too much sugar added in for them to be considered healthy.

But then there's stuff like cheese and yogurt, as long as they're unflavoured they're pretty good.

Check the carbohydrates section on the nutrition label. If it's above 2g, you should limit it's usage. Well.. if you follow this recent research.

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