A large part of the issue is that in the traditional American diet, a significant portion of fat intake is in the form of saturated fat. There is a decent amount of research showing saturated fat has inflammatory effects in the body and directly causes insulin resistance. For a long time doctors have had success encouraging patients to eat diets excluding America's primary sources of saturated fat (red meat, bacon/lard and butter).
In addition, dietary fat intake does influence triglycerides, LDL and VLDL; fairly good correlations exist between these levels and heart disease. It is only recently we have discovered that sub-types of these particles exist, and not all of them have the same impact on health. Additionally, the knowledge that excess carbohydrate intake can actually have a larger impact on these levels is somewhat more recent.
The bias against mono- and poly- unsaturated fats given all the research that exists on their beneficial health effects is still bat-shit crazy, though.
You're spreading a bit of misinformation here about the nature of saturated fats. The evidence that specifically saturated fats impact insulin resistance is very weak - the change was very low in the studies that took place, and there was no control group in the studies.
More recent studies, which generally don't get the same level of publicity, found no correlation between the two (though do confirm the adipose inflammation relationship):
I wouldn't say it is misinformation, though I agree that the issue is far from decided. I appreciate the references and I would love to look at any more you have.
One issue with Tierney et al. is that EPA/DHA have been shown to partially ameliorate the insulin desensitizing effects of saturated fatty acids. See http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/302/5/R598.
I'm not against all saturated fats, actually short and medium chain fatty acids are incredibly beneficial for health. The issue is more with longer chain fatty acids, particularly palmitic acid (which is the fatty acid your body synthesizes to dispose of excess carbohydrates).
I am definitely not against carbs in general, though sugars containing fructose are definitely a bad choice in terms of general health. In my opinion, carbs are healthier than fats as long as you can dispose of them quickly; elevated blood glucose is a real problem though. For people who are sedentary and have poor insulin sensitivity, mono- and poly- unsaturated fats will generally be a better choice in terms of overall health.
It isn't even that clear-cut that saturated fatty acids with different lengths have equal effects on health.
Butyric acid (C4:0) and stearic acid (C18:0) are both saturated fatty acids. I would be very hesitant to claim that they are interchangeable for the purposes of human body chemistry.
Saturated fat stimulates obesity and hepatic steatosis and affects gut microbiota composition by an enhanced overflow of dietary fat to the distal intestine. http://ajpgi.physiology.org/content/303/5/G589
The influence of the type of dietary fat on postprandial fat oxidation rates: monounsaturated (olive oil) vs saturated fat (cream). http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/12037652
A saturated fatty acid–rich diet induces an obesity-linked proinflammatory gene expression profile in adipose tissue of subjects at risk of metabolic syndrome. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/90/6/1656.short
Substitution of saturated with monounsaturated fat in a 4-week diet affects body weight and composition of overweight and obese men - Here they show consuming monounsaturated fat instead of saturated fat causes weight and fat loss. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...
I would love to look at counterpoint articles if you have any.
I could grab a load of studies from the appendix of her book, but rather than swap PubMed links I'd recommend you read it: http://thebigfatsurprise.com/
It shows you the human factors that led to the distortion and exaggeration of the science to maintain the position of the originating scientists.
To add: this is also why many other discussions suck: politics, economics, religion, etc.
Everyone's a fucking expert, can disregard science because [someone on tv] disagrees with peer-reviewed studies, and there's no obvious correct answer.
At least on HN it's moderately fact-based, even in disagreement. If you dare to read discussions--dare I call them that--on somewhere like Facebook or Reddit...well, godspeed.
Nutrition discussions suck because nobody is demonstrably wrong. It doesn't matter if you can back your opinion up with a study, because the other can can back up his contradicting opinion with another study. There are no canonical facts, because the studies are just so hard to control. We know nothing, in the end.
Giving the benefit of the doubt here, presumably at the end of that book is also a long list of peer-reviewed studies that the author based the book on.
Both the parent comment and the book are essentially distillations of the current scientific knowledge on the effects of fat in a person's diet.
It's a "shitty book"? Oh well, all the parts where she discusses the methodology flaws in studies are completely bogus then, because you think the book is shitty. Good argument.
Still, you clearly know more than the Economist, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the BMJ who all gave it good reviews. We're totally lucky to have you here to enlighten us.
A pretty huge collection of studies I have show that a low-carb diet, high in fats (saturated and unsaturated) is hugely effective in reducing bad LDL and increasing good HDL and LDL.
One of the big wins for low carb high fat diets is that people tend to self regulate better. I hear people say "I ate as much as I wanted and I lost weight" all the time. Thus it is important that calories also be controlled.
The big issue with carbs is that when you have too much glucose floating around, the liver responds by converting it into palmitic acid. Palmitic acid seems to be one of the worst saturated fatty acids in terms of metabolic effects, and hepatic fat production tends to result in increased levels of low density lipoprotein. Fructose is even worse than glucose in this respect, as its primary metabolic fates are hepatic glycogen storage (which is very limited) or conversion to fat. Note that these issues only occur when you consume carbohydrates in excess of your body's ability to readily store or metabolize them - consumed in moderation, carbs are just fine.
That is curious, considering our rates of heart disease and diabetes were a fraction of what they were today when people ate more saturated fats (e.g butter). And when switching to a diet where saturated fat is the primary energy source, people tend to lose weight and see an increase in insulin sensitivity.
Off-topic, but every time I see the phrase "a fraction of what it was" I get a bit miffed. 99/100 is a fraction. 101/100 is a fraction. Every thing that gets measured in time intervals is always going to be a fraction of what it was before, bigger or smaller.
That's one meaning of the word. It also means 'much smaller than it once was'. Funny thing with words is that they can mean different things in different contexts.
"A fraction of what it was" is a common idiom, which uses
fraction in the ordinary sense.
"Fraction" is related to words like "fracture" and "fragment". When you fraction something into pieces, they are always smaller than the whole (barring strange spatial partitionings: Banach-Tarski paradox and all that).
Maybe you were playing hooky in grade 3 when the teacher explained that 101/100 is an improper fraction, which can be rewritten as 1 1/100: the whole number 1, combined with a proper fraction. See? "Improper!" Mathematics recognizes a special status for fractions where the numerator has greater magnitude.
Also, ever heard of the "integral" and "fractional" parts of a floating-point number? See the ISO C99 function modf, for instance.
An improper comment is still a comment. An improper fraction is still a fraction. What exactly is your point? I'm not sure why you felt the need to be snarky.
Words and phrases have multiple, context-dependent meanings. That's just how natural language works.
"a fraction of ..." is commonly used in informal and/or non-technical contexts to mean what would be expressed in a more technical context as "a positive, proper fraction of ..."
The thing with carbohydrates is that when you consume more than your body can shunt into glycogen stores/fat cells or use immediately for energy, glucose just accumulates in the blood. Glucose is an inflammatory molecule (at least to endothelial cells) and inflammation has been shown to directly modulate insulin resistance; thus you end up in a downward spiral with metabolic syndrome as the result.
I haven't seen any research that controls for calories while varying the saturated fat content of the diet which shows improved weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity for the saturated fat case. I have seen ad libitum feeding studies where people were instructed to eat fatty foods of their choice with that result, but I strongly suspect that the results in those cases were due to reductions in calorie intake.
I think that is based on pretty crappy science. People who cut out refined carbs and sugar, yet eat a very high fat diet have healthy levels of triglycerides and LDL. The science is to the point that the only real danger of high fat diets is colon cancer. But adding fiber to the diet can offset those risks.
And of course people want mono and poly unsaturated fats, but they're more expensive and harder to eat in quantity than saturated fats.
Plus when I went on a high fat diet (nothing but fat, protein, fruit and vegetables), I cut my triglycerides and LDL in half, lost 40lbs, dropped my blood pressure to well into the athletic level, and felt better than ever before. All in 6 months.
The fact that you lost 40 pounds in that time frame indicates to me that you were running about an 800 calorie a day deficit. This is important because calorie restriction has been shown to directly improve those numbers, as has weight loss. It is very likely if you cut your calories by the same amount, and lost the same amount of weight with a diet higher in carbohydrates and lower in fat, you would have had similar results.
With that being said, if those dietary restrictions allowed you to lose weight with ad libidum feeding, then they were the right choice for you.
It's a lot harder to restrict calorie intake with a diet mainly comprised of carbohydrates. I find it very easy with a high fat diet, just because fat keeps you feeling fuller for longer.
For example, I can eat 2 eggs for breakfast and not think about food for 4+ hours. Before I would eat an oat-based muesli with dried fruit (no refined sugar), which contained twice the calories - I'd invariable be hungry within 2 hours. Maybe it's also possible that the drop in blood glucose after eating carbs has a hunger 'signalling' effect.
Because fat is good for the brain and for the body (it makes you slim and a fast thinker) whereas carbs are the opposite - obese people have 8% less brain tissue.
The government wants dumb unhealthy people that depend on it so it can perpetuate its existence.
The federal government isn't afraid of fat, but carbs, most extensively from corn and corn syrup, are a huge industry in the US, and the agriculture industry is a massive lobby. Politicians aren't going to tell you to eat fats not sugars when your sugar addiction is keeping them in office.
This doesn't make sense. Corn is used much more heavily as feed stock for animals than as a sweetener or dietary carb for humans. Corn growers thus have more invested in encouraging high-fat diets than low-fat diets.
About 4.2 billion bushels of U.S. corn per year are used to feed livestock (dairy, beef, hogs, poultry). About 1.4 billion bushels go toward uses including sweeteners like HFCS, as well as toward cereals (and booze).
And yet when I say that the government doesn't like fat because it makes people healthy (less dependent on the government) and faster thinkers (less likely to blindly trust the government) people downvote me.
Impact of obesity on the brain, memory and intelligence:
"But as scientists are learning more about the critical role white matter plays in cognition, new research suggests that obesity may target white matter integrity, leading to a decline in human cognitive performance."
Correlation does not imply causation my friend. Carbs do not imply obesity, neither does fat. Only excess calories (of any macronutrient, including protein) will lead to bodyweight storage, and eventually obesity.
It's no secret that there are a lot of terrible people on HN with over 500 karma, but usually it doesn't help to complain about them. You just give them a chance to downvote you again.
Fat is calorie dense. There's ~380 calories per 100g of sugar but 880 calories per 100g of olive oil.
70% of the US population is overweight. Being overweight is bad for you.
If your diet contains a lot of fat, you're consuming more calories than if you substituted the fat with something else (e.g. by avoiding deep fried foods, and eating leaner meat).
If you are not overweight, then feel free to eat as much fat as you like, but know you are unusual.
Once upon a time I did the ketogenic diet which bases the bulk of your daily calories from healthy natural fat. No carbs allowed except for carbs from fiber. I, along many other people who have did this diet have lost a lot of weight.
It's simply not true that you can't lose weight by eating primarily fatty foods.
That isn't the real reason, it's that the bottom of that food pyramid is cheap, they're used everywhere as fillers, and they make that cheap food more palatable.
It can't be national policy because there's a huge portion of the population that couldn't afford that diet.
Because most people of any culture can't stick to restrictive diets [1]. Restricting calories is ultimately the goal - how you do it is largely irrelevant, outside of eating mostly whole, unprocessed foods. When you apply further restrictions, people (up to 66% of them) rebound and gain the weight back (or more).
A national health body is pointless in the context of the US health care system. Nobody here is going to fix that problem.
But we can still self-experiment based on dietary hypotheses. An anecdote is not data, but it can be a counterexample! When someone says, "You can't lose weight by eating mostly fat," and someone else says, "I lost X weight on a diet that was 60% fat," that casts strong doubt upon the validity of the hypothesis.
Even so, this is yet another rehash of the "food energy hypothesis" poster versus "body chemistry hypothesis" poster. We have seen it before, both on HN and in other places. I have never observed this particular debate to yield useful results, anywhere. I am, personally, a "body chemistry hypothesis" person. I don't think humans are glorified bomb calorimeters. And I don't think that the "food energy hypothesis" folks provide useful guidance to people who are currently overweight. So what; who cares? That's just, like, my opinion, man. Hypotheses are judged by the experiments that support or refute them, not by the number of people who believe they may be true.
So don't be like the national health bodies. Let the science speak for itself. Nobody should be touting any sort of dietary maxims when the available evidence is still inconclusive, especially when they have no meaningful accountability if they get it wrong.
Our energy metabolism isn't that mysterious. Like, we know how various macro nutrients are broken down into constituents and the pathways that are then used to convert them into energy that is available to cells.
The problem with the food energy hypothesis as a path to weight loss is that it is a lot of work to accurately count and limit calories, and that it is difficult to accurately estimate calorie consumption (a good way is to count calories for a long time and calculate consumption based on the corresponding change in weight). Once there is an accurate estimate of consumption, sustaining intake below that level will result in weight loss.
As far as I am aware, the only useful application of the food energy hypothesis to practical obesity management are the recommendations that people increase their daily physical activity, do resistance training to build muscle mass (thereby raising resting metabolic rate), and eat specific foods that may increase resting metabolic rate. Notable examples would be caffeinated black coffee and unsweetened tea, which provide nearly zero food energy while the caffeine temporarily boosts metabolism. Compounds found in Capsicum peppers are suspected of temporarily increasing metabolic rate (though the effect diminishes as the body acquires tolerance). The resveratrol in berries and grapes is also suspected of causing white adipose cells to temporarily become "beige", where they mimic brown adipose cells. That third recommendation is, in essence, to take [non-caloric, herbal] drugs to boost metabolism.
As you suggested, the element that makes it useless for practical adiposity management is the fact that human bodies adjust resting metabolic rates, psychological impulses to consume food, and psychological impulses to adjust physical activity levels in response to dietary intake. One person drinks a sweetened beverage and starts bouncing off the walls for the next two hours, burning off that extra energy. Another drinks an identical portion, then becomes lethargic and turns every last sugar molecule into stored lipids. We don't [yet] have a model that can predict a structured diet for a specific person that can reliably produce the desired effect.
The labels on food packages and the calorie counting websites get their numbers from nutritional assays, rather than in vivo measurements in actual humans. The latter would be prohibitively expensive, would produce results that are far less precise, and offer foods suppliers no competitive advantage.
This is why diet plans that don't require calorie counting are relatively popular. People just want to follow a diet where they can consistently lose excess adipose tissue without either literally working their asses off for hours a day, or constantly suppressing the psychological impulse to eat more than is allowed by the plan. Whatever other mechanisms may be in play, some diets work best for some people for just one reason: they can feel satiated and stop eating at a caloric intake level consistent with fat loss, without having to constantly do math during their day.
Uh, what about all the people that count calories and succeed in sustaining a weight loss?
Raises hand.
I don't constantly count calories, but carefully tracking calories for a medium length of time was a valuable tool in helping me make better food choices over the long term (which means I consume less calories).
This is simply not true. You are oversimplifying the issue. As an example, I'd like you to go take a shot of olive oil and tell me you feel fuller than having a cup of steel cut oatmeal with a cup of blueberries. In fact, in 1 shot of olive oil, that's 3 tbsp, which is roughly 360 calories, whereas the oatmeal and berries clocks in around 250 calories. "All things being equal", I just put fat against carbs and the oatmeal just won because 3 tbsp of olive oil will not satiate the way 2 cups of carbs will.
The experiments that measure satiety generally have the subjects eat a measured amount of a certain food, wait a specified period of time, then eat from a buffet wherein subjects may eat pre-measured portions of whatever they like.
In such experiments, certain foods do have a significant impact upon the calories later consumed from that buffet. Some foods are more filling than others. I forget the exact results, other than the one that was surprising to me: whole boiled potatoes were the grand champion of fullness, and 3 times as filling as a calorie-equivalent portion of french fries.
So do your experiment for real, with some volunteers. You will need to make some oatmeal, and pour some oil shots, and have a buffet ready. And you will have to continue the experiment for multiple days, so you can get same-person comparisons for different foods.
Please actually do the experiment before you declare your hypothesis confirmed. For what it's worth, I think it probably would be, but there is always the possibility that we will be surprised by the results.
Naturally, to avoid accusations that your experiment cherry-picked specific foods that are not representative of their fat/carb classes, you would also have to test other foods, like coconut oil, glazed doughnuts, rendered beef suet, dry white toast, butter, and bananas.
But wait. That's still oversimplifying the issue. Boiled white potatoes are three times as filling as plain white bread. If some carbs are more filling than other carbs, how can you meaningfully compare all carbs against all fats?
I guess you can't. The experiment would have to serve isolated food components. Rather than olive oil, serve a shot of caprylic acid, or stearic acid, or DHA. Rather than oatmeal, serve pure starch, or pure glucose syrup, or fructose. Maybe also test the effects of added MSG, aspartame, or table salt.
I said fatty foods are often more satiating. Your oatmeal vs olive oil competition has nothing to do with what I said.
A higher fat:carb balance than mainstream diets leads to less hunger, because of the satiety of fat when combined with other foods (especially fibre and protein) and mor importantly because of the reduced insulin spike when carbs are reduced.
The feeling of fullness at the end of a meal is primarily driven by the stretching of the stomach. Which is why people who have their stomach stapled feel fuller faster, and so eat less per meal.
Fat, with its extremely high calorie density, is some of the least satiating food you can eat.
This oversimplifies it a bit, because there are multiple signals and sensations related to satiety and hunger. The mechanics of snacks are different from meals because you will never get "full" from eating snacks, although you may cease being "hungry".
You are oversimplifying it. Calorie density is not the only factor related to satiety.
Blood sugar, insulin, the combination of foods eaten, fibre levels, all contribute to satiety. And in this context adding more fat and less carbs to your diet does increase satiety
>70% of the US population is overweight. Being overweight is bad for you.
So? Americans are not subjects, they are citizens. They do not belong to you or the government or any other institution that has a constitutional basis to be telling them to be healthy. If someone chooses to be fat too bad. If you a freaking out because it's going to cost you so much money to deal with their health problems, you should have thought of that before you voted for someone who promised you universal health care.
>Based on years of low-fat messaging, most Americans still actively avoid dietary fat, while eating far too much refined carbohydrates.
This is the crux of the problem; years of social programming is hard to reverse. Try to explain to someone that fat is good and carbs are bad. It shouldn't be hard to convince someone, but even the basic premise is tantamount to heresy to most Americans. Fat gives you clogged arteries! Fat makes you fat!
Because whenever they set dietary guidelines last the common way of thinking was that "fat is bad" and since it's the government progress is ridiculously slow and also because resetting dietary guidelines is probably way down on the list of "Things that we should really fund this year"?
I've seen comments here and elsewhere pop up across the entire internet in response to this article saying that obviously it's a government conspiracy and a lobbying issue and they're all trying to keep us fat and stupid but that's some serious tin foil hat lines of thinking.
Also:
But rather than focusing on total fat or other numbers on the back of the package, the emphasis should be on eating more minimally processed fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, fish, yogurt, vegetable oils and whole grains in place of refined grains, white potatoes, added sugars and processed meats.
Which seems to be saying "hey, if you don't eat processed stuff and instead eat more whole foods from a variety of sources and strive for lots of variety in your diet then you're probably going to be healthier and less likely to gain a bunch of weight" which seems to be pretty ridiculously obvious nutrition science.
Armchair dieticians in post an this thread. Not all carbs or fats are the same. Good ones of both are part of a healthy diet. But hey, making it simply black and white is appealing for the uneducated masses.
From the article:
"Dariush Mozaffarian is dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. David S. Ludwig is the director of the Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and the author of the forthcoming book “Always Hungry? Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently.”"
We don't know much about our bodies. I feel like every time a major news publication publishes an op-ed or a study, they're contradicting themselves[1]. One week eggs are bad, the next they're good. Same with dairy, carbs, and red meat. Then you mix in the whole "diet" complexity: Atkins? Paleo? Keto? Vegan? How do I choose?
When you study the longest-living peoples of the world, you also find extremely varied diets: the carbohydrate-rich Greeks rely heavily on fruits, veggies and whole grains. They also love goat's milk and wine. While natives of costa rica are primarily relying on "evil" white rice and beans, and heavy on pork and chicken. The people of Japan are also heavy on white rice, and virtually no fat in their diet, since their diet is primarily plant-based[2].
The truth is that everyone's needs are different. As an anecdotal example, I was convinced that keto was the right way, and that carbohydrates were not going to help me. Did I lose fat? Yes. Did I feel great? Sure. It turns out that even with great HDL and Triglycerides, my LDL and fasting glucose were still high. And I'm not alone in this problem from keto either [3].
After switching to a broader, less-restrictive diet, which now includes whole grains (quinoa, oatmeal, and wild rice), beans, and fermented vegetables (kimchi, sauerkraut), lots of fruits and vegetables (including starchy carbs like sweet potatoes and squash), I've lowered my LDL and fasting glucose (yes, now that carbs are back in my diet). Different things work for different people because everyone has a different metabolism. It seems that, if you study the longest-living people, the trends are as follows:
* Don't overeat.
* Eat mostly plant-based, whole or minimally-processed/refined foods.
* Leave 10-20% of your diet for indulgences. Virtually all of the longest-living peoples drink alcohol or coffee on the regular. And even then, by allowing yourself that affordance, you don't risk binge eating or rebounding for days/weeks/months on end.
* Ignore fad diets. Stick with the whole foods that you like to eat, get in some variety, but don't be dogmatic about dietary approaches, because not only will you likely not adhere to such restrictions, but you'll probably find yourself being contradicted by another study in the next 3-10 years.
When I visit Greece, I find it very surprising how little my relatives eat per meal.
I think at the end of the day, we're just going to find that calorie in, calorie out is what's really going on here. Sure, heavy eaters binge on carbs or fats or whatever, but that's not the root problem here. Its our portions and snacking culture that might be the real culprits.
Because they can't change their recommendations without admitting they were wrong, and governments generally can't do that. Or, at least, the speed with which they can change their recommendations is sharply bounded by ensuring they never quite have to admit fault. Admitting you were wrong is basically begging to have your funding cut, your reputation trashed, your influence removed, your job cut. The closest thing a government can do to admitting being wrong is if they can say a previous government was wrong, but now we're right. But for these administrative posts there's never a clear turnover for that to occur.
Public policy adds the additional problem that if they admit they were wrong about what was possibly the single clearest message the government has sent the US public in the last 50 years, "Fat is bad for you!", the public will very likely and entirely rationally start asking very pointy questions about how such volume could be combined with such error, and what else being communicated with such volume and confidence today may also be wrong.
The government has a ton of moral capital tied up in fat being bad for you, so it has to be bad for you. It has to be bad. It just has to.
As an individual, you may find it profitable to consider whether this is the sort of incentive structure that produces an authority you want to bet your life on. Considering whether there are similar issues where the government may have gotten stuck on a particular answer and now can not change its mind pretty much regardless of what facts come in left as an exercise for the reader.
The next wave of food bans are worse because "everyone is an eventual consumer of healthcare" so the choice to ignore the government on some things is also being taken away.
This is one of the important reasons for my general vague libertarianism. Governments can be wrong, markets can be wrong, individuals can be wrong, clubs can be wrong, companies can be wrong, all people and all elements of the powerset of all people can be wrong. (Except perhaps the null one, but it's also not known for being very right....) But the incentives for what happens next varies widely, and very-large-organizations have horrible horrible ones to double down, triple down, indefinitely keep throwing money on the number that keeps losing over and over, because they seem to inevitably settle on political structures that work that way.
I say "very large organizations" like it's one word because I fully consider "big business" and "government" to merely be two instances of that general problem, and I'm against both in general. It isn't really "government"... it's "the big organizations that humans tend to produce once you have an organization that is fully confident (rightly or wrongly!) that there is absolutely no meaningful threat to its continued existence". Large navel-gazing organizations are dangerous, in general.
Where did bans come in to play? What food is banned that you want? And please don't say trans fats if you don't understand that they were a harmful preservation method and don't affect taste at all.
I don't think it's so much about banning as it is about "pushing". Look at the subsidies for certain food groups, or the labeling requirements (hint, these feed into peoples' paranoia and preconceived notions of good/bad healthy/unhealthy), etc. So as long as they pipe-up the narrative they want (and scare people about other things), and people listen to it, then they they're effectively creating "ban"-like barriers and hindrances for people making their own choices.
"Now, the FDA is taking a step to remove artificial trans fat from the food supply. This step is expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year."
> the public will very likely and entirely rationally start asking very pointy questions about how such volume could be combined with such error, and what else being communicated with such volume and confidence today may also be wrong.
Because fat has 9 calories / gram, carbohydrates have 5 and water has zero. So while a tint of olive oil in your salad might have some theoretical health benefits if you are skinny, replacing those deep fried chips with baked chips has immediate benefits if you are overweight - you will probably eat the same quantity anyway but half the calories.
Fat makes you fat without a proportional decrease in your appetite, it's as simple as that.
one thing i don't get with all these sways of opinions... everybody is so obsessed with what they eat and how much, nitpicking contents of this and that, instead of trying to match their intake with amount if activity per day.
I know it's hard, i know you have to produce that nasty thing called sweat to actually achieve anything, but for christ sake... just do some activities! ideally daily, with some variability. But even half an hour early morning run every day will make huge difference in life.
it will make your life longer, and more interesting in the process, in practically every aspect (yes, including sex). We are all unique, so find whatever makes you sweat and feels like fun & challenge. Heck, after not consuming processed sugars for few weeks, eating something with them is rather disgusting experience, same goes for overly fatty foods. Taste for anything natural improves HUGELY.
of course, ideal scenario is good food + healthy activities. but the more you do work out, the less importance there is on quality of food to make you stay & feel healthy (this one is more complex topic, so let's say keep eating healthy).
what i would propose is similar to tobacco treatment - anything clearly unhealthy, add a tax that will go directly to health system treating all those heart attacks, diabetes and other conditions that people bring upon themselves by being weak and/or stupid. i know it's not that simple, but at least that's a move into some direction...
In particular, table 2 summarizes what we know about each type of food (sodium, saturated fat, trans fat, carbs, sugar, ...) and what type of study we know it from (e.g., randomized trial or association study?): http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/123/24/2870/T2.expansion...)
The best type of evidence you could have is a randomized trial of clinical end points--divide people randomly into (say) low fat and low carb diets, run the study for a few years, and measure what percentage of people have a heart attack. That's column 4, and it's nearly empty. The only things we seem to know are that total fat seems to be neutral, and substituting polyunsaturated fat for saturated fat reduces heart attacks.
In the absence of that gold standard evidence, we're relying on weaker but more convenient types of study designs -- randomized trials that measure surrogate metrics (e.g., blood cholesterol and blood pressure), or various types of association studies.
As of now, those seem to be telling us that alcohol, dietary fiber, and unsaturated fats help our risk factors for a heart attack, and trans fats, sodium, carbs, and cholesterol make our risk factors worse. But those conclusions can easily change since they're based on a surrogate, and indeed, we've already seen the recommendation against eating cholesterol reversed:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/nutrition-panel-cal...
The article talks about some dietary ideas that turned out to be wrong while at the same time saying stuff like "... the emphasis should be on eating more minimally processed fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, fish, yogurt, vegetable oils and whole grains in place of refined grains, white potatoes, added sugars and processed meats.".
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[ 9.1 ms ] story [ 628 ms ] threadIn addition, dietary fat intake does influence triglycerides, LDL and VLDL; fairly good correlations exist between these levels and heart disease. It is only recently we have discovered that sub-types of these particles exist, and not all of them have the same impact on health. Additionally, the knowledge that excess carbohydrate intake can actually have a larger impact on these levels is somewhat more recent.
The bias against mono- and poly- unsaturated fats given all the research that exists on their beneficial health effects is still bat-shit crazy, though.
More recent studies, which generally don't get the same level of publicity, found no correlation between the two (though do confirm the adipose inflammation relationship):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19828712
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20938439
One issue with Tierney et al. is that EPA/DHA have been shown to partially ameliorate the insulin desensitizing effects of saturated fatty acids. See http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/302/5/R598.
I am definitely not against carbs in general, though sugars containing fructose are definitely a bad choice in terms of general health. In my opinion, carbs are healthier than fats as long as you can dispose of them quickly; elevated blood glucose is a real problem though. For people who are sedentary and have poor insulin sensitivity, mono- and poly- unsaturated fats will generally be a better choice in terms of overall health.
The vilification of saturated fat has been widely shown to be based on poor evidence, and there are many arguments for it being healthy.
Furthermore, it is not clear-cut that mono- and poly- unsaturated fats are as healthy as you say they are.
Butyric acid (C4:0) and stearic acid (C18:0) are both saturated fatty acids. I would be very hesitant to claim that they are interchangeable for the purposes of human body chemistry.
Overfeeding Polyunsaturated and Saturated Fat Causes Distinct Effects on Liver and Visceral Fat Accumulation in Humans. http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2014/02/1...
Substituting dietary saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat changes abdominal fat distribution and improves insulin sensitivity. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00125-001-0768-3
Saturated fat stimulates obesity and hepatic steatosis and affects gut microbiota composition by an enhanced overflow of dietary fat to the distal intestine. http://ajpgi.physiology.org/content/303/5/G589
The influence of the type of dietary fat on postprandial fat oxidation rates: monounsaturated (olive oil) vs saturated fat (cream). http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/12037652
Saturated Fatty Acid-Mediated Inflammation and Insulin Resistance in Adipose Tissue: Mechanisms of Action and Implications. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/1/1.short
Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase-1 Mediates the Pro-lipogenic Effects of Dietary Saturated Fat. http://www.jbc.org/content/282/4/2483.short
A saturated fatty acid–rich diet induces an obesity-linked proinflammatory gene expression profile in adipose tissue of subjects at risk of metabolic syndrome. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/90/6/1656.short
Substitution of saturated with monounsaturated fat in a 4-week diet affects body weight and composition of overweight and obese men - Here they show consuming monounsaturated fat instead of saturated fat causes weight and fat loss. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...
I would love to look at counterpoint articles if you have any.
It shows you the human factors that led to the distortion and exaggeration of the science to maintain the position of the originating scientists.
Someone provides a long list of peer-reviewed published studies; you respond with a shitty book.
Everyone's a fucking expert, can disregard science because [someone on tv] disagrees with peer-reviewed studies, and there's no obvious correct answer.
At least on HN it's moderately fact-based, even in disagreement. If you dare to read discussions--dare I call them that--on somewhere like Facebook or Reddit...well, godspeed.
Both the parent comment and the book are essentially distillations of the current scientific knowledge on the effects of fat in a person's diet.
Still, you clearly know more than the Economist, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the BMJ who all gave it good reviews. We're totally lucky to have you here to enlighten us.
A pretty huge collection of studies I have show that a low-carb diet, high in fats (saturated and unsaturated) is hugely effective in reducing bad LDL and increasing good HDL and LDL.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzEPvoDPVTV5SzJlSHV0Y21rZ0k...
When I was a neurology professor at a highly-ranked Children's Hospital, half the staff was on a LCHF diet.
One of the big wins for low carb high fat diets is that people tend to self regulate better. I hear people say "I ate as much as I wanted and I lost weight" all the time. Thus it is important that calories also be controlled.
The big issue with carbs is that when you have too much glucose floating around, the liver responds by converting it into palmitic acid. Palmitic acid seems to be one of the worst saturated fatty acids in terms of metabolic effects, and hepatic fat production tends to result in increased levels of low density lipoprotein. Fructose is even worse than glucose in this respect, as its primary metabolic fates are hepatic glycogen storage (which is very limited) or conversion to fat. Note that these issues only occur when you consume carbohydrates in excess of your body's ability to readily store or metabolize them - consumed in moderation, carbs are just fine.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraction
"Fraction" is related to words like "fracture" and "fragment". When you fraction something into pieces, they are always smaller than the whole (barring strange spatial partitionings: Banach-Tarski paradox and all that).
Maybe you were playing hooky in grade 3 when the teacher explained that 101/100 is an improper fraction, which can be rewritten as 1 1/100: the whole number 1, combined with a proper fraction. See? "Improper!" Mathematics recognizes a special status for fractions where the numerator has greater magnitude.
Also, ever heard of the "integral" and "fractional" parts of a floating-point number? See the ISO C99 function modf, for instance.
"a fraction of ..." is commonly used in informal and/or non-technical contexts to mean what would be expressed in a more technical context as "a positive, proper fraction of ..."
I haven't seen any research that controls for calories while varying the saturated fat content of the diet which shows improved weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity for the saturated fat case. I have seen ad libitum feeding studies where people were instructed to eat fatty foods of their choice with that result, but I strongly suspect that the results in those cases were due to reductions in calorie intake.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9858478
And of course people want mono and poly unsaturated fats, but they're more expensive and harder to eat in quantity than saturated fats.
Plus when I went on a high fat diet (nothing but fat, protein, fruit and vegetables), I cut my triglycerides and LDL in half, lost 40lbs, dropped my blood pressure to well into the athletic level, and felt better than ever before. All in 6 months.
[Edit to add personal note]
The fact that you lost 40 pounds in that time frame indicates to me that you were running about an 800 calorie a day deficit. This is important because calorie restriction has been shown to directly improve those numbers, as has weight loss. It is very likely if you cut your calories by the same amount, and lost the same amount of weight with a diet higher in carbohydrates and lower in fat, you would have had similar results.
With that being said, if those dietary restrictions allowed you to lose weight with ad libidum feeding, then they were the right choice for you.
For example, I can eat 2 eggs for breakfast and not think about food for 4+ hours. Before I would eat an oat-based muesli with dried fruit (no refined sugar), which contained twice the calories - I'd invariable be hungry within 2 hours. Maybe it's also possible that the drop in blood glucose after eating carbs has a hunger 'signalling' effect.
The government wants dumb unhealthy people that depend on it so it can perpetuate its existence.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food...
About 4.2 billion bushels of U.S. corn per year are used to feed livestock (dairy, beef, hogs, poultry). About 1.4 billion bushels go toward uses including sweeteners like HFCS, as well as toward cereals (and booze).
This per: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...
Impact of obesity on the brain, memory and intelligence:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/obesity-messes-brain
"Obesity has been associated with a reduced total brain volume and diminished gray matter density."
http://www.mpg.de/4280661/obesity_brain_structure
"But as scientists are learning more about the critical role white matter plays in cognition, new research suggests that obesity may target white matter integrity, leading to a decline in human cognitive performance."
http://www.dana.org/News/Obesity_Linked_to_Changes_in_Brain_...
EDIT: downvoting is one way to cope with cognitive dissonance but it does not help motivate those that are trying to lose weight.
70% of the US population is overweight. Being overweight is bad for you.
If your diet contains a lot of fat, you're consuming more calories than if you substituted the fat with something else (e.g. by avoiding deep fried foods, and eating leaner meat).
If you are not overweight, then feel free to eat as much fat as you like, but know you are unusual.
It's simply not true that you can't lose weight by eating primarily fatty foods.
Why not?
It can't be national policy because there's a huge portion of the population that couldn't afford that diet.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17469900
But we can still self-experiment based on dietary hypotheses. An anecdote is not data, but it can be a counterexample! When someone says, "You can't lose weight by eating mostly fat," and someone else says, "I lost X weight on a diet that was 60% fat," that casts strong doubt upon the validity of the hypothesis.
Even so, this is yet another rehash of the "food energy hypothesis" poster versus "body chemistry hypothesis" poster. We have seen it before, both on HN and in other places. I have never observed this particular debate to yield useful results, anywhere. I am, personally, a "body chemistry hypothesis" person. I don't think humans are glorified bomb calorimeters. And I don't think that the "food energy hypothesis" folks provide useful guidance to people who are currently overweight. So what; who cares? That's just, like, my opinion, man. Hypotheses are judged by the experiments that support or refute them, not by the number of people who believe they may be true.
So don't be like the national health bodies. Let the science speak for itself. Nobody should be touting any sort of dietary maxims when the available evidence is still inconclusive, especially when they have no meaningful accountability if they get it wrong.
The problem with the food energy hypothesis as a path to weight loss is that it is a lot of work to accurately count and limit calories, and that it is difficult to accurately estimate calorie consumption (a good way is to count calories for a long time and calculate consumption based on the corresponding change in weight). Once there is an accurate estimate of consumption, sustaining intake below that level will result in weight loss.
As you suggested, the element that makes it useless for practical adiposity management is the fact that human bodies adjust resting metabolic rates, psychological impulses to consume food, and psychological impulses to adjust physical activity levels in response to dietary intake. One person drinks a sweetened beverage and starts bouncing off the walls for the next two hours, burning off that extra energy. Another drinks an identical portion, then becomes lethargic and turns every last sugar molecule into stored lipids. We don't [yet] have a model that can predict a structured diet for a specific person that can reliably produce the desired effect.
The labels on food packages and the calorie counting websites get their numbers from nutritional assays, rather than in vivo measurements in actual humans. The latter would be prohibitively expensive, would produce results that are far less precise, and offer foods suppliers no competitive advantage.
This is why diet plans that don't require calorie counting are relatively popular. People just want to follow a diet where they can consistently lose excess adipose tissue without either literally working their asses off for hours a day, or constantly suppressing the psychological impulse to eat more than is allowed by the plan. Whatever other mechanisms may be in play, some diets work best for some people for just one reason: they can feel satiated and stop eating at a caloric intake level consistent with fat loss, without having to constantly do math during their day.
Raises hand.
I don't constantly count calories, but carefully tracking calories for a medium length of time was a valuable tool in helping me make better food choices over the long term (which means I consume less calories).
All things being equal calorie-wise fat is better for weight loss than carbs are.
In such experiments, certain foods do have a significant impact upon the calories later consumed from that buffet. Some foods are more filling than others. I forget the exact results, other than the one that was surprising to me: whole boiled potatoes were the grand champion of fullness, and 3 times as filling as a calorie-equivalent portion of french fries.
So do your experiment for real, with some volunteers. You will need to make some oatmeal, and pour some oil shots, and have a buffet ready. And you will have to continue the experiment for multiple days, so you can get same-person comparisons for different foods.
Please actually do the experiment before you declare your hypothesis confirmed. For what it's worth, I think it probably would be, but there is always the possibility that we will be surprised by the results.
Naturally, to avoid accusations that your experiment cherry-picked specific foods that are not representative of their fat/carb classes, you would also have to test other foods, like coconut oil, glazed doughnuts, rendered beef suet, dry white toast, butter, and bananas.
But wait. That's still oversimplifying the issue. Boiled white potatoes are three times as filling as plain white bread. If some carbs are more filling than other carbs, how can you meaningfully compare all carbs against all fats?
I guess you can't. The experiment would have to serve isolated food components. Rather than olive oil, serve a shot of caprylic acid, or stearic acid, or DHA. Rather than oatmeal, serve pure starch, or pure glucose syrup, or fructose. Maybe also test the effects of added MSG, aspartame, or table salt.
Everyone is oversimplifying the issue.
A higher fat:carb balance than mainstream diets leads to less hunger, because of the satiety of fat when combined with other foods (especially fibre and protein) and mor importantly because of the reduced insulin spike when carbs are reduced.
Fat, with its extremely high calorie density, is some of the least satiating food you can eat.
This oversimplifies it a bit, because there are multiple signals and sensations related to satiety and hunger. The mechanics of snacks are different from meals because you will never get "full" from eating snacks, although you may cease being "hungry".
Blood sugar, insulin, the combination of foods eaten, fibre levels, all contribute to satiety. And in this context adding more fat and less carbs to your diet does increase satiety
So? Americans are not subjects, they are citizens. They do not belong to you or the government or any other institution that has a constitutional basis to be telling them to be healthy. If someone chooses to be fat too bad. If you a freaking out because it's going to cost you so much money to deal with their health problems, you should have thought of that before you voted for someone who promised you universal health care.
I don't think I'd be physically capable of eating the same weight in fat as I used to eat in carbs.
This is the crux of the problem; years of social programming is hard to reverse. Try to explain to someone that fat is good and carbs are bad. It shouldn't be hard to convince someone, but even the basic premise is tantamount to heresy to most Americans. Fat gives you clogged arteries! Fat makes you fat!
Carbs and sugar are the American Way™.
I've seen comments here and elsewhere pop up across the entire internet in response to this article saying that obviously it's a government conspiracy and a lobbying issue and they're all trying to keep us fat and stupid but that's some serious tin foil hat lines of thinking.
Also: But rather than focusing on total fat or other numbers on the back of the package, the emphasis should be on eating more minimally processed fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, fish, yogurt, vegetable oils and whole grains in place of refined grains, white potatoes, added sugars and processed meats.
Which seems to be saying "hey, if you don't eat processed stuff and instead eat more whole foods from a variety of sources and strive for lots of variety in your diet then you're probably going to be healthier and less likely to gain a bunch of weight" which seems to be pretty ridiculously obvious nutrition science.
Armchair dieticians?
When you study the longest-living peoples of the world, you also find extremely varied diets: the carbohydrate-rich Greeks rely heavily on fruits, veggies and whole grains. They also love goat's milk and wine. While natives of costa rica are primarily relying on "evil" white rice and beans, and heavy on pork and chicken. The people of Japan are also heavy on white rice, and virtually no fat in their diet, since their diet is primarily plant-based[2].
The truth is that everyone's needs are different. As an anecdotal example, I was convinced that keto was the right way, and that carbohydrates were not going to help me. Did I lose fat? Yes. Did I feel great? Sure. It turns out that even with great HDL and Triglycerides, my LDL and fasting glucose were still high. And I'm not alone in this problem from keto either [3].
After switching to a broader, less-restrictive diet, which now includes whole grains (quinoa, oatmeal, and wild rice), beans, and fermented vegetables (kimchi, sauerkraut), lots of fruits and vegetables (including starchy carbs like sweet potatoes and squash), I've lowered my LDL and fasting glucose (yes, now that carbs are back in my diet). Different things work for different people because everyone has a different metabolism. It seems that, if you study the longest-living people, the trends are as follows:
* Don't overeat.
* Eat mostly plant-based, whole or minimally-processed/refined foods.
* Leave 10-20% of your diet for indulgences. Virtually all of the longest-living peoples drink alcohol or coffee on the regular. And even then, by allowing yourself that affordance, you don't risk binge eating or rebounding for days/weeks/months on end.
* Ignore fad diets. Stick with the whole foods that you like to eat, get in some variety, but don't be dogmatic about dietary approaches, because not only will you likely not adhere to such restrictions, but you'll probably find yourself being contradicted by another study in the next 3-10 years.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/why-nutriti...
[2] http://www.nsca.com/uploadedfiles/nsca/inactive_content/prog...
[3] https://www.google.com/webhp?#safe=off&q=keto+fasting+glucos...
I think at the end of the day, we're just going to find that calorie in, calorie out is what's really going on here. Sure, heavy eaters binge on carbs or fats or whatever, but that's not the root problem here. Its our portions and snacking culture that might be the real culprits.
Public policy adds the additional problem that if they admit they were wrong about what was possibly the single clearest message the government has sent the US public in the last 50 years, "Fat is bad for you!", the public will very likely and entirely rationally start asking very pointy questions about how such volume could be combined with such error, and what else being communicated with such volume and confidence today may also be wrong.
The government has a ton of moral capital tied up in fat being bad for you, so it has to be bad for you. It has to be bad. It just has to.
As an individual, you may find it profitable to consider whether this is the sort of incentive structure that produces an authority you want to bet your life on. Considering whether there are similar issues where the government may have gotten stuck on a particular answer and now can not change its mind pretty much regardless of what facts come in left as an exercise for the reader.
I say "very large organizations" like it's one word because I fully consider "big business" and "government" to merely be two instances of that general problem, and I'm against both in general. It isn't really "government"... it's "the big organizations that humans tend to produce once you have an organization that is fully confident (rightly or wrongly!) that there is absolutely no meaningful threat to its continued existence". Large navel-gazing organizations are dangerous, in general.
Are you kidding? Every opinion held by the null set is wrong!
From http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm372915.ht...
Close enough to use the word "ban".
Probably a good idea
(see also: the War on Drugs)
Fat makes you fat without a proportional decrease in your appetite, it's as simple as that.
it will make your life longer, and more interesting in the process, in practically every aspect (yes, including sex). We are all unique, so find whatever makes you sweat and feels like fun & challenge. Heck, after not consuming processed sugars for few weeks, eating something with them is rather disgusting experience, same goes for overly fatty foods. Taste for anything natural improves HUGELY.
of course, ideal scenario is good food + healthy activities. but the more you do work out, the less importance there is on quality of food to make you stay & feel healthy (this one is more complex topic, so let's say keep eating healthy).
what i would propose is similar to tobacco treatment - anything clearly unhealthy, add a tax that will go directly to health system treating all those heart attacks, diabetes and other conditions that people bring upon themselves by being weak and/or stupid. i know it's not that simple, but at least that's a move into some direction...
I confirm this. I used to love honey with anything, but now that I've been avoiding it for some time, It repulses me.
Maybe I should stop eating so many nuts too, and see if they become disgusting.
Maybe I'm being a bit cynical, but I'm not sure we have any tax that that goes directly into any direct remedial use for any type of issue.
I can't think of one, anyway. If tobacco tax does, then color me impressed (and surprised).
In particular, table 2 summarizes what we know about each type of food (sodium, saturated fat, trans fat, carbs, sugar, ...) and what type of study we know it from (e.g., randomized trial or association study?): http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/123/24/2870/T2.expansion...)
The best type of evidence you could have is a randomized trial of clinical end points--divide people randomly into (say) low fat and low carb diets, run the study for a few years, and measure what percentage of people have a heart attack. That's column 4, and it's nearly empty. The only things we seem to know are that total fat seems to be neutral, and substituting polyunsaturated fat for saturated fat reduces heart attacks.
In the absence of that gold standard evidence, we're relying on weaker but more convenient types of study designs -- randomized trials that measure surrogate metrics (e.g., blood cholesterol and blood pressure), or various types of association studies.
As of now, those seem to be telling us that alcohol, dietary fiber, and unsaturated fats help our risk factors for a heart attack, and trans fats, sodium, carbs, and cholesterol make our risk factors worse. But those conclusions can easily change since they're based on a surrogate, and indeed, we've already seen the recommendation against eating cholesterol reversed: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/nutrition-panel-cal...
A wrong thing in no way makes other stuff right.