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USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

unsettledscience.substack.com

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Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#231

Post by chimprich »

nradov wrote: post #204
kennethh wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, this is a misconception. If you look at the numbers you get different results based on how you calculate it. Meat also comes out a lot better if you compare protein instead of calories. Greenhouse gas emissions per 100g protein https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore?tab... Dark Chocolate 93.30 kg Beef (beef herd) 49.89 kg Coffee 35.66 kg Lamb & Mutton 19.85 kg Tomatoes 19.00 kg Oatmea…

You also have to factor in protein quality as well as quantity. Protein in animal products is generally higher quality because it has the right proportions of amino acids and is easier to digest.

Those claims seem questionable. Even if true, is having the "right proportions of amino acids" at all desirable? Human digestive systems are pretty good at extracting what they want from our diet; we don't need to measure out precise proportions.

What evidence have you got that animal products are "easier to digest"?

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#232

Post by bpizzi »

tpush wrote: post #218
bpizzi wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the diet is (too) high in saturated fat, increased cardio vascular risk. You may want to take a look at this meta-study [0]. > “A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD.” [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20071648/

The authors of that meta-analysis adjusted for serum cholesterol, which defeats the entire point. Saturated fat intake above a certain threshold is associated with CVD because it causes an uptake in serum cholesterol, eventually leading to atherosclerosis. Saying saturated fat intake doesn't correlate with CVD when ignoring serum cholesterol is entirely uninteresting, and not what anyone's claiming. See also this[0]…

Meta-analyses are not a panacea, that's clear. As I suspect you know well, two further meta-analysis came to the same conclusion: Chowdhury 2014 [0], De Souza 2015 [1]. More recently, Kang in 2018 [2] and Zhu in 2019 are also stating that they fail to find evidence of a clear association between SFA consumption and risk of CVD.

Obviously, as science is what it is (and that's a good thing), those study are debatable and do have weak spots.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24723079/ [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26268692/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31791641/ [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30954077/

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#233

Post by thebigspacefuck »

eru wrote: post #42
mertd wrote: post #6

I imagine if the headline news declared that we should reduce the carbs in our diets, most Americans would up the meat intake and not vegetables, and that would reduce fiber in their diet even more.

Perhaps remove the government from these recommendations altogether? Don't they have more important things to do?

It could change which crops are subsidized. Imagine if broccoli were subsidized as much as corn.

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#234

Post by astine »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #210
Scalene2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the person saying "chemical" is being intellectually lazy.

What word would you suggest to use, then? Discussing individual chemicals by name is inefficient, confusing and almost certainly requires scientific citations to be remotely worthy of discussion. Going by groups of chemicals is a bit better, but then citations are largely not applicable. There are no synonyms or near synonyms. The dictionary definition of ”chemical” (noun), however, is explicitly clear: 1 : a substan…

Your definition "1" describes just about anything. Water, for example, produces a chemical effect. So do amino acids. Your entire metabolism is a chemical process, as is the growth of plants. What I think that people mean when they talk about "chemicals" in their food is artificially synthesized chemicals and that's easy enough to say.

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#235

Post by timbit42 »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #225
swalsh wrote: post #160

My main issue with low carb is that humans have been eating carbs for thousands of years. The obesity epidemic is only decades old. I've seen enough evidence that low carb is working for people, so it would seem like something in the carbs we eat in particular is causing the problem... not carbs in general. We should significantly increase the science in this area in my opinion.

I've seen someone close to me having success with losing weight with this diet. But truth be told to me the low carb diet looked like lower calorie diet redefined. Whatever works of course.

Reducing carbs reduces the subsequent blood sugar spike, which reduces the insulin the pancreas must produce to push that sugar into the fat cells, increasing weight, and eliminating the subsequent sugar crash which causes you to feel hungry. On a keto diet, instead of being hungry 2 hours after eating, you won't be hungry until 6 hours later. This reduces calories eaten which helps reduce weight.

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#236

Post by bandrami »

andreareina wrote: post #146
bandrami wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "calories-in" approach sets minima and maxima, nothing else. For one thing we still are very bad at determining how much energy an individual will actually extract from a given food. We still get calorie counts from setting food on fire.

That's mostly only an issue with an open cycle approach. If intake is titrated according to how the scale moves[1] individual variation in digestive efficiency, activity levels etc is handled. [1] on an appropriate timeframe to reduce noise

Granted, with the caveat that "noise" includes most of what people intend as weight loss

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#237

Post by wbsss4412 »

eldenwrong wrote: post #131
tpush wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is sarcasm, but the answer is wholeheartedly the meat and dairy industry.

Imagine people still believing that veggie industry is small and not a gigantic player. Every major organization/gov wants to make people eat more veggies and less meat

You write like the government is literally force feeding people vegetables…

Name one vegetable producer that makes the kind of profit that meat and feedstock producers do.

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#238

Post by timbit42 »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #226
weberer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the western world the default is a high-carb diet. It's like this everywhere in the world. You know rice is mostly carbs, right?

Ghana and many many other African countries are 80% carbs or more. The whole Western carb angle is just a cope for eating too damn much calories.

Eating low-carb doesn't reduce weight directly, but indirectly. It reduces hunger because you don't get the sugar spike and subsequent crash which causes you to feel hungry 2 hours later. Instead, you get hungry 6 hours later. This helps reduce snacking between meals and total daily calories.

Low-carb also helps because the carbs you eat are turned to sugar which your pancreas then has to produce insulin to tell your body to push that sugar into fat cells, increasing weight.

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#239

Post by datacruncher01 »

As someone who has lost significant weight on a keto diet (~80lbs) I can say it works in assisting someone who is overweight lose weight which can help with their health issues. It is easy to stall out by eating too much protein and fat, you still have to go hungry to cut down calorie intake. But it's overall a fad diet that ignores a lot of valuable nutrition that will be lacking essential healthy food.

My take on the diet you need is that it should have a good fiber to carb ratio (5:1 or less) and low in added salt, fat, and sugars (ideally none added). If you start looking at foods in this category they are all the so called superfoods. Soluble fiber slows down absorption of sugar, lowers cholesterol levels and increases satiety.

Re: USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets

#240

Post by drugstorecowboy »

kgermino wrote: post #206
slowhand09 wrote: post #203

The unspoken truth here... The USDA doesn't represent the consumer. The USDA represents the agriculture industry. Source: I worked on contract there for a couple of years.

Is it unspoken? It's literally in the name.

United States Department of Agriculture? Just based on the name no you really can't assume anything nefarious. It's literally not in the name.
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