Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#71

Post by endtime » Fri, May 20, 2011, 2:52 PM UTC

zwieback wrote: post #39

endtime wrote: post #4

I've found the fat hypothesis - 'fat makes you fat' - to be false, or at least not to apply to me. I am not exactly anti-carb - I eat potatoes, and a little rice - but I have been eating a diet that I guess you could call 'Paleo 2.0' for the last 7 months or so. The basic goal is to minimize my intake of grains, fructose, and legumes, and maximize that of saturated fats. I also happen to be vegetarian, so for me this…

Fage, butter, cheese, eggs, chocolate. Sounds yummy! Not exactly cheap, though.

I'd happily double my food budget for the sake of my health. And potatoes and eggs are cheap. :)

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#72

Post by endtime » Fri, May 20, 2011, 2:54 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #58

zwieback wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fage, butter, cheese, eggs, chocolate. Sounds yummy! Not exactly cheap, though.

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.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#73

Post by matwood » Fri, May 20, 2011, 2:57 PM UTC

djackson wrote: post #57

matwood wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. A good criticism of Lustigs demonizing fructose: http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab... Key takeaway that Lustig ignores - USDA numbers by the way: Total energy intake in 1970 averaged 2172 kcal. By 2007 this hiked up to 2775 kcal, a 603 kcal increase.

And Lustig responds to those criticisms here: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201104211000 Key takeaway is that Lustig doesn't make any claim that you can't get fat by eating too many calories, regardless of the source. Lustig's research is on the metabolic pathways for fructose and glucose, and they are substantially different.

I'll listen when I have some time later. Does he also address the dose dependent problem in his cited studies? Of course if I'm drinking 6-7 sodas a day that's generally going to be a problem, but it doesn't mean sugar is evil. Too much water can kill me also, but I don't see people saying water is evil.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#74

Post by rimmjob » Fri, May 20, 2011, 3:02 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #47

jpk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to your key #1, this[1] talk by Robert Lustig (who's work has seen some exposure on HN in the past) has a pretty good run-down of how some of the carbohydrates are metabolized. Specifically, he points to fructose as the culprit when it comes to obesity. I recommend watching the whole thing, but skip to about 36:00 to see the biochemistry. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Sigh. A good criticism of Lustigs demonizing fructose: http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab... Key takeaway that Lustig ignores - USDA numbers by the way: Total energy intake in 1970 averaged 2172 kcal. By 2007 this hiked up to 2775 kcal, a 603 kcal increase.

that doesn't seem to be a very good criticism at all. he completely misses Lustig's point, skews the argument and tries to obfuscate his own lack of expertise with buzzwords and shallow analysis.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#75

Post by matwood » Fri, May 20, 2011, 3:02 PM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #64

matwood wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm pretty sure Michael Pollan's bank account disagrees with your second sentence.

Fad books sell to a lot of people over and over. Of course you can get rich helping people to just eat healthy, but it's harder and you likely don't get the repeat buyers. But write a book saying x is evil or fat is not your fault because y is evil and you'll get tons of buyers.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#76

Post by paganel » Fri, May 20, 2011, 3:02 PM UTC

I eat lots and lots of bread (what you would call "carbs") but basically no meat, and I'm quite skinny nevertheless. I do no sports (I've only recently started to ride my bicycle after a 10-year pause), nor am I on any diet or anything similar. So, yeah, I don't see how carbs are worse than fat.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#77

Post by tokenadult » Fri, May 20, 2011, 3:04 PM UTC

What'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 more exercise, so that's what gets in the news (and on HN, over and over and over).

Doing serious scientific research

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

with controlled experiments and careful observation and follow-up on human nutrition is extremely hard. I recall a local television news documentary about a dietary study from the 1970s in which experimental subjects were confined 24/7 in a lab for many weeks (they must have been compensated handsomely to agree to participate in this experiment) and fed EXACT portions of food that were weighed with extreme precision. Oddly, I don't recall particularly what hypothesis that study was set up to test, but I do recall that it was described as the first experiment that relied on feeding subjects exactly measured portions of known foods (and excluding subjects from access to foods they chose for themselves) while involving lengthy (weeks of time) follow-up. It's still exceedingly rare for studies of human nutrition to have careful experimental designs. (And even at that, I suppose most of the subjects of that experiment are still alive, but I don't know if anyone is doing follow-up observations of those subjects in any manner.) Instead, we get inferences from Egyptian mummies (as in the submitted article) or from other uncontrolled case studies that never even had careful observation to begin with. That really isn't science;

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

that is trading anecdotes, and third- or fourth-hand anecdotes at that.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#78

Post by Hawramani » Fri, May 20, 2011, 3:06 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #47

jpk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to your key #1, this[1] talk by Robert Lustig (who's work has seen some exposure on HN in the past) has a pretty good run-down of how some of the carbohydrates are metabolized. Specifically, he points to fructose as the culprit when it comes to obesity. I recommend watching the whole thing, but skip to about 36:00 to see the biochemistry. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Sigh. A good criticism of Lustigs demonizing fructose: http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab... Key takeaway that Lustig ignores - USDA numbers by the way: Total energy intake in 1970 averaged 2172 kcal. By 2007 this hiked up to 2775 kcal, a 603 kcal increase.

The reasoning in that line shows the classic misunderstanding that has led us here. As Taubes says, saying you get fat because you eat too much doesn't explain anything. Of course you need to eat more calories that you expend to gain weight. But why do people do it, and why didn't they do it before?

Taubes says we eat too much because we eat carbs. If people had eaten a carb-free diet since 1970 we wouldn't be seeing that spike in calorie intake. Therefore the fact that calorie intake increased is in complete support of Taubes and Lustig's ideas.

Carbs increase insulin secretion, which encourages fat cells to take in blood sugar and turn it into fat, and discourages the body from burning fat for fuel.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#79

Post by ajscherer » Fri, May 20, 2011, 3:06 PM UTC

I'm always surprised at the theories people are willing to believe about obesity, particularly people on hn. It really sounds reasonable to so many of you that the cause of the obesity epidemic is people actually listening to nutrition advice from the medical establishment and following the food pyramid?

My view of what has happened is this: technologies and ingredients were invented by food manufacturers over the past half century. Foods manufactured using these technologies have the following advantages: cheap, high mouth appeal, non-perishable, convenient. They also have the following disadvantages: calorie dense, difficult to metabolize, addictive for some people.

For most peopele not explicitly making food decisions with a mind to control their weight, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

At the same time as this was happening, most of the reasons for people to expend calories vanished. As far as I can think of, the only reasons left to burn calories are pleasure and weight control.

In this sort of context most normal, perfectly rational people will end up getting fat. The only people who won't are: athletes, people with strong metabolism (this usually goes away with age), and people who dedicate themselves to not being fat.

Re: Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

#80

Post by matwood » Fri, May 20, 2011, 3:07 PM UTC

mentat wrote: post #63

matwood wrote: post #17

I resist the idea that carbs (and HFCS for matter) need to be demonized. The article mentions peoples tendencies, but one tendency the anti-carb crowd relies on is how people want to find a smoking gun or silver bullet solution. The article doesn't really do much to prove anything since rarely did the elite eat the same thing as the peasants. Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasan…

"Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasants." Those terms post date this by thousands of years. Please cite research that supports this statement.

The article says "Mummy Says Princess Had Coronary Disease." This leads me to believe they are talking about Egyptian royalty, even if they were not called kings and queens.