The complications of nutrition science

The biggest problem is we have rejected science from food to begin with. We have government spending billions pushing a diet designed to create obesity (which is very high in carbs, effectively sugar, and low in fat.)

Likely there are at least two types of people biochemically- those who are insulin sensitive and those who are insulin resistant.

The insulin sensitive tend to not be fat and if they are fat its because they are really over eating. These people are the ones who end up thinking that fat people are lazy, or who think that "You should just eat less sugar" (not realizing that carbs are effectively sugar) or "calories in The insulin resistant people tend to be the fat ones. And for them a diet low in carbs is effective. I've seen a lot of studies and this is consistent in all of them.

Personally, I finally found out about the effect insulin plays on the creation and storage of energy in fat cells.

Government has been pushing a high carb diet for decades and as at the same time we have an obesity epidemic. Instead of recognizing the problem (correlation is not causation but you can't claim they have caused obesity to go down) they are going to war against fats. Transfats being banned is junk science (I eat a lot of them and my blood work is great, and getting better, not worse) and their use in the food system is because of government going to war on "Saturated" fats in the first place.

The war on Fat is the cause of obesity, in my opinion, because it is political, and not scientific, and ignores the insulin sensitivity issue.

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I'm slow banned because this site is not tolerant of diversity, so I can't reply to Max below. (And so I'm off to do something fun. Caio!)

Here's the reply I tried to give him:

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Fish oil is trans fats. I'm taking trans fats supplements!

I think the larger issue is that people are looking at things way too simplistically ("trans fats bad because more of them means problem x") and not controlling for other things-- eg: there's a huge difference between eating a pure meat and vegetable diet (And consequently a lot of fat) and eating a lot of fats in the presence of a lot of carbs. Those anti-trans fats studies did not control for carbs (as far as I can tell).

This is why the blood work of people on keto disproves the "trans fats bad" hypothesis.

And also "trans fats" are a government propaganda boogeyman-- how many people take fish oil supplements and also oppose trans fats, do you think?

I can't do two experiments on myself at once. Since things are going in the right direction now, I want to enhance my weight loss.

Of course this is anecdote and it gets to the key problem the article is addressing-- there's no controlled group of statistically significant size who are all eating the same diet for decades.

When I hit my target weight I'll go into a maintenance mode anyway hat will include more carbs. I've done this twice- once when I was moving and once over christmas where I didn't want to be on the diet and increased carbs. I was able to keep my weight relatively flat.

But there are studies where people do this diet-- not just the scores of anecdotes on reddit/r/keto- but actual studies. And of course self reporting is not ideal, but I saw a meta study of a variety of diets that seemed to indicate the more low carb/high fat you went the more effective you were (there is a spectrum- keto, zero-carb, atkins, protien power, pescatarian diets, etc.)

The practical thing is, this diet not only caused me to lose weight ,but totally changed my relationship with food-- I'm not longer hungry. I eat as much as I want so long as I keep carbs under 20 a day (and really I usually hit less than 10 known carbs, often zero known carbs, but carbs slip in to all kinds of things, like cheese which should be no carbs has some, etc.) Sometimes I forget to eat meals. When I go off the diet and eat carbs, I find myself hungry soon after eating.

This change in my relationship with food and no longer being hungry indicates to me that part of the cause of my previous over eating is the carbs causing hunger. This points to it not being me starving myself, but an orientation towards food, or types of food.

Which I think is hormonal. Since many people report similar effects, and it is reproducible, there's room for real science there.

Edit to answer: Fish oils are not trans fats. But my point was that you had not yet even run an n=1 experiment and shouldn't draw any conclusions from your experience (unless you think the weight loss and other changes you speak of would have no impact on your blood work...).

here is the recipe: https://diy.soylent.com/recipes/keto-chow-104-master-rich-ch...

Its true that its hard not to sound like an evangelist when you've lost weight-- but it's not pseudo science when there are studies that support the hypothesis (of course a lot of diets are fad diets and are pseudo science). The thing is its hard to tell the pseudo science from the real science.

Personally, in my experiment, I'm going to try adding Keto Chow to my diet over the next couple of months and see how I feel about it.

For me, I love BBQ. I love Mexican. I hate cooking, so getting a crockpot and cooking mexican dishes (eg: chicken, taco seasoning, salsa and a little bit of peppers, plus 6 hours and you've got great tasting shredded chicken).... I don't feel like I've given up much. It does take a week or two to transition, though, and control over your diet (eating out is tough unless you go to BBQ restaurants.)