Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates • Hacker News Board

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#151

Post by apathy » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 1:35 AM UTC

luketych wrote: post #147

apathy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, poor example, and I made it up. Why does this not surprise me? Outside of mathematics, there really isn't anything resembling proof. There is the weight of the evidence, and the weight of any substantive critiques of bias in said evidence. That's about it. > But there are many research articles out there that look impressive because of all the tools they throw at the problem. Under the surface these studies are…

Again, you are cherrypicking any flaw you see and then attacking. For a logically-trained person you are misusing it. Being overly logical can become a negative when it is used to justify your already-held beliefs. I do not care what you think at this point, this has already blossomed into a 1 vs 1, so anything said will just make both sides more justified in their position. This is about onlookers. Hacker News is fl…

I wouldn't say that HN is flawed the way elections are, because non readers aren't affected by what goes on here (I hope).

You logic strikes me as specious -- the proximity of an idea to the mushy middle is orthogonal to whether it is correct. Great ideas are often met with violent opposition -- but shitty ideas are, too. If I thought most people on HN were in fact dumbasses, as most of the electorate often seems to be, I would go somewhere else. It's the least worst forum (save perhaps Metafilter) I've found so it's a place where I go to procrastinate.

My job is to write, so my natural impulse when I see something that seems easily dismantled is to get in a bit of practice.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#152

Post by DrScump » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 1:38 AM UTC

apathy wrote: post #113

terhechte wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also can't find the link right now, but there was a study recently which claimed that Stevia, in particular, did not cause an insulin response after consumption.

The opposite, actually. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc... Beware of small sample sizes in these sorts of studies. Until you get up into the hundreds or thousands, I personally would expect regression to the mean. Just FYI.

No.

that study used sucralose ("Splenda" et al) -- a completely unrelated, artificial sweetener.

Stevia is a naturally occurring plant extract which has steviol glycosides, having 150x the sweetness of sucrose (according to Wikipedia).

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#153

Post by prostoalex » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 3:46 AM UTC

mchmch wrote: post #88

sago wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.ncahf.org/articles/o-r/pcrm.html The guy on that video is well known by Quackwatch. He is a vegan evangelist, and also teaches that proteins are not required in the diet. It's motivated nonsense.

Speaking of "motivated nonsense". The millions of dollars the meat/dairy industry spends on political campaigns and the revolving door at the NIH might concern you :) http://qz.com/523255/the-us-meat-industrys-wildly-successful... Eating a diet based heavily on animal products is almost as stupid as smoking cigarettes. If we didn't have so many wonder drugs keeping people who make bad choices alive, it would be obvio…

Why omit the millions of dollars spent by the corn lobby or various seeds-related lobbyists (of which Monsanto is the most well-known donor)? Or very California-specific nuts lobby, and until recently bottled water lobbying? Excluding the food groups associated with major lobbying spending might not lead to an optimal diet.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#154

Post by arjie » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 3:54 AM UTC

mixedCase wrote: post #148

arjie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which diet do you mean? I looked and can only see evidence of their recommending 45-60 g of carbohydrates a meal. That's 180 g a day, some 60 g below my personal non-diabetic maintenance level.

180g a day is 6-9 times as many grams of carbs allowed in a low-carb diet.

20 g carbohydrate per day is a very drastic diet. That's not something the ADA can recommend to the general public. It's not fair to expect them to do so.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#155

Post by prostoalex » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 3:54 AM UTC

eatfruitnoteggs wrote: post #139

charlesism wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, whatever the fat intake, it won't be enough to mitigate the refined wheat, and sugars.

What about instead of fat, wheat and sugars, we eat whole plant foods, which are the most physiologically appropriate things to put into our bodies?

Pure vegan diets work for some, yet lead to feelings of constant hunger, weakness, lack of energy, sleepiness or headaches in others. As a result, people who try them frequently revert back to their old ways with vengeance when they need that extra boost of energy, and yo-yo dieting usually leads to worst outcomes than no dieting at all.

If a pure vegan diet worked for you and your gut bacteria, that's great. It's a challenge for a lot of others.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#156

Post by prostoalex » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:01 AM UTC

eatfruitnoteggs wrote: post #135

mchmch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one minute video will save your life. FAT is the cause of type 2 diabetes. Fat in cells stops your body from processing sugar correctly. You need to reduce dietary fat to very low levels and your body will be able to process carbs correctly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S51D07bvlPY

I commend your effort, but don't even try bringing up Veganism on Hacker News. I've tried to do the same and low-carb dogma ideologues lost their minds to the point logical and evidence-based dialogue became impossible. My own theory is, there is too much emotional attachment to eating meat, dairy and eggs in Americans to consider Veganism seriously. They will perform incredible mental gymnastics to justify their vio…

How do you explain France (high-fat diet, average amount of plant consumption, lowest rates of heart disease) and Mexico (diet heavily reliant on rice, beans and other plants, yet the world leader in obesity)?

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#157

Post by mixedCase » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:32 AM UTC

arjie wrote: post #154

mixedCase wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

180g a day is 6-9 times as many grams of carbs allowed in a low-carb diet.

20 g carbohydrate per day is a very drastic diet. That's not something the ADA can recommend to the general public. It's not fair to expect them to do so.

20-30g is low-carb, and induces dietary ketosis (read: not ketoacidosis) which is in essence a cure for type 2 diabetes.

Everything other than that and it no longer fits that category.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#158

Post by DrScump » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:36 AM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #18

juandazapata wrote: post #4

I have been doing Keto for 3 months and lost 20kg without any exercise at all.

That's good, but don't make it sound like 3 months of Ketosis is "easier" than a full and strict exercise routine. That's an extraordinarily hard diet to follow.

Depends on the individual. I had little trouble staying keto for over 18 months once I saw it working.

(cardio) Exercise alone generally doesn't work unless your genetic predisposition makes you a good responder to cardio; see the University of Bath study or Michael Mosley's "The Truth About Exercise".

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#159

Post by DrScump » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 4:38 AM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #55

ng12 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says who? I did very strict Paleo and didn't find it that difficult. Remember the saying "abs are made in the kitchen". Working out is fine and good, but if you don't control your diet first you won't get anywhere.

If by "keto" we're talking about "ketogenic diet" that's means the body has fundamentally changed its metabolism away from using glucose and instead uses ketones for energy. That's what ketosis actually is. Getting to this state and maintaining it is far harder than, say, paleo or mere "low carb". I don't have anything against any diet, just saying that ketosis isn't necessarily an easy alternative, it is an extreme…

  instead uses ketones for energy

Mostly free fatty acids, actually; also ketone bodies.

Some organs require glucose, which can be made from protein via gluconeogenesis.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#160

Post by toasterlovin » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 5:04 AM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #136

toasterlovin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty skeptical of your claims that starch and simple sugars played an important part in human diets for the past 150,000 years. Here's why: 1) Throughout most of the world, fruit is generally only available during an extremely limited window in any given year. And it spoils in a matter of days. 2) The big agricultural revolution was the domestication of grains. Grains are important because they keep for a long…

I don't know what you are skeptical about but you seem to have very poor understanding of history. Starch and sugars are a staple of the primate diet to the point where it is and was our main source of calories for ever. Grain has been domesticated for over 12,000 years ago, wild grain has been as early as around 30,000 BCE. Grain isn't the only source of starch, in fact for most of our history including our recent o…

Sorry, I misspoke. I have no doubt that any readily available calorie source, regardless of type, would have been important to pre-agricultural humans. What I should have said is this:

The low-carb diets are about staying away from highly refined carbs. They're fine with eating most fruit and vegetables (though they may recommend abstaining from all carbs for an introductory period or for people who are extremely overweight). You seem to be dismissing these diets by pointing out that primates and humans have always eaten fruit and that it was often "processed" into, essentially, refined sugar by virtue of being fermented.

Here are the issues with your argument:

1) The low-carb diets don't have any issue with eating whole fruit.

2) The highly refined sugars that hunter-gatherers could obtain by fermenting fruit during the extremely limited window when fruit is available in the wild is not really the same thing as having an unlimited, near zero cost ($0.76 for 2500 calories) supply of refined sugar available 365 days a year at your local grocery store. To say nothing of candy and sugar water being the predominant form of snack food, available in most of the spaces in which people spend their lives (work, home, stores, etc.). The scale of this difference makes these two fundamentally different things.