We are predisposed by our Victorian ancestors to assume that anything which gives us great pleasure must also be bad for us. Hence fat is believed to be worse than carbs.
Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
131–140 of 186 posts
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#132What'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.
What compounds this is that 'healthy' is a particularly ill-defined catchall term.
Thanks for asking an important follow-up question implicitly by commenting on what the term "healthy" (used in my first post here) might mean. To make that explicit, when I refer to "healthy" people in the context of a human nutrition study, I refer to people who have longer lifespan (less mortality) and fewer documented diseases and disabilities (less morbidity) than the general than the general population baseline. (By symmetry, unhealthy people have more mortality and more morbidity than the population baseline.) Ideally, a hypothesis on nutrition and its relationship to health would be backed up by EXPERIMENTALLY OBTAINED data on both the central tendencies of groups given one treatment or another, and by similarly obtained data on individual outcomes before and after differing treatments. We have a long way to go to get data of this quality. And it may be that eventually (although this promised future seems farther away now than it did a decade ago) individuals will be able to obtain testing to allow them to receive individualized advice on diet, adapted to their individual peculiarities. Right now we are still trying to figure out very general patterns of advice, which surely won't fit all individuals equally well.
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#133People resist the idea because the answer is too simple. "Fats" are better than "Carbs". So lard is better than a banana? Ugh. It's not the broad category of "Fats" vs "Carbs". It's the TYPE of food. Eat good food. Period. Not something made in a factory. Twinkies: out. Soda: out. Standard pizza with refined grains and loads of cheese: out. Eat healthy food: the right meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lots…
I totally agree, the problem is that it's harder for people to eat healthy than simply pick a single thing and demonize it. Plus, telling people to eat healthy doesn't sell a lot of books.
It's also more expensive to provide quality fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Compare the cost of a big mac to a free-range organic chicken breast and some fresh vegetables.
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#134God I remember when everywhere (even in school) was hooked on the "you are killing your kids with butter, eat margarine" line. Of course, then they banned it most sensible places because of the hydrogenated/trans fats. Shocking that something made by chemical process by companies with large sums of money will be heavily advertised and pushed to people over, say, something that can't be patented by any one body. Simil…
You can set margarine out in hot sun all day and it'll will not melt. Once I saw that, I knew I'd never eat it. I'll take butter any day.
Things that melt are safer to eat?
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#135The "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…
You can trust them to continue diving into the science of nutrition. The interesting thing about this whole episode is that it serves as a wonderful illustration of the self-correcting nature of the scientific method. Consider what's happened: First, health authorities made observations about diets and various diseases, creating hypotheses along the way. Next, they gathered some data and analyzed it. They drew conclu…
Being in the midst of a global obesity epidemic brought on by thirty years of following the nutritional advice of scientists really isn't "a wonderful illustration of the self-correcting nature of the scientific method". Especially when the government and most other health authorities are still actively promoting the bad science that caused the problem to begin with.
This was bad science not politics. Dr. Lustig (of Sugar the bitter truth fame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM) explains the details of it, but to sum up; Ancel Keys authored the Seven Countries Study that linked heart disease with dietary fat that that study formed the foundation of our nutritional knowledge ever since. According to Lustig, Keys preformed the first multivariate regression analysis and messed it up but we have been teaching it and living by it for 30+ years. Its still a challenge to get
Everybody loves to place science on some pedestal and pretend that politics is the source of all our problems. We have found scientific justifications for our racism and other quirks, habits and general prejudices for a very long time:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-life-and-de... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence ...a thousand other links...
Don't think that because This information was brought to you by Science! that it is necessarily correct. I spoke to James Flynn (The guy the Flynn effect is named after) and it turned out that he only got into studying IQ to disprove the science of the day showing that blacks were inferior. He has gone on to show that women are also equally intelligent (Imagine!). He is still working on debunking racist, sexist science decades later. The science around nutrition is no more reliable and no less subject to being shaped by our cultural prejudices.
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
"People relate fat the nutrient to fat the body type because they share the word 'fat'." That's like when people think that alcohol makes you depressed because it's a depressant.
To be fair, alcohol (ab)use is highly correlated with depression symptoms. The nervous system depression, however, is not necessarily the same mechanism that causes psychological depression. (lots of available articles on alcohol and depression, e.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=alcohol%20depression )
"The nervous system depression, however, is not necessarily the same mechanism that causes psychological depression."
Alcohol causes depression because of its longterm effects on the brain, as well as the fact that it causes cytokine inflammation. (And possibly for other reasons as well.) This definitely has nothing to do with the fact that it temporarily slows down your heart rate and breathing, otherwise we'd all be suicidal every morning when we woke up.
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#137There are many reasons why people resist the idea that carbs are worse that fat. For one thing, no one has proved that "carbs are worse than fat." It's a silly, over-simplified assertion. Also, fats are the most calorie-dense macro-nutrient. If your calorie intake is greater than your calorie expenditure you will gain weight. You could easily supplement your diet with a 300 calorie bar of chocolate twice a day and yo…
> Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage.
This only happens in the case of ketoacidosis which is caused by things like type 1 diabetes and alcoholism. A ketogenic diet isn't inherently unhealthy (they use it very successfully to treat epilepsy in children).
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure he didn't mean to offend you, but those were mentioned because they are pretty rich in carbs. I must say though I haven't heard of anyone eating flour, especially doused in butter, no less ;) Regarding your height/weight: age, physical fitness and genetic disposition are also determinants of that along with your diet. Edit: I'm 29, 6'1" and 180 pounds (I could lose another 10-15 pounds if I got back into mar…
I beg to differ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux
It's very possible that I've eaten this in a dish but never knew what it was. Thanks - I like learning about things like this!
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Agreed - though in Europe (though maybe not the UK these day) food isn't marketed as agressively, people eat main when they are hungry not for something to do, and home cooking is a way of life and is held in high esteem.
Also more of Europe is plain old walkable or bikeable. When I lived in Oslo I didn't even own a car. In the states there are very few spots you can get by without a car. Even if I wanted to bike from my house to some places there flat out are not sidewalks in a lot of places. Walking is looked down at. There are plenty of blog entries of guys that go without a car even though they could afford it and find dating near impossible not because they live in a city, but because it is such a powerful signal here.
Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I somehow don't think that 'cavemen' were eating cheese. :P
The point isn't to eat what cavemen ate, it's to look at what their bodies were optimized for and eat things with similar components. Dairy is a very good source of saturated fat, especially for a vegetarian like me.
And the average life expectancy of a caveman was what, maybe 20 years? Cavemen perished too soon to have to worry about the diet-related health problems that we deal with today.