High Carb diets, yeah

[Arien Malec]

Originally Posted by Tom Rawls

"Mopped up"? That strikes me as hyperbolic. What was the difference in weight loss? 10 lbs in 2 yrs vs 6 lbs.

Again, greater weight loss in an unrestricted diet than in a calorie restricted diet, with concomitant statistically significant improvements in generally recognized physiological measures of health (lipids, HbA1c, CRP). If this were a phase III drug trial, that would be a pretty devastating result for the low fat diet.

With regard to the absolute amount of weight loss, that's actually pretty high for a 2 year study of any significant population group. Just shows how difficult long term weight loss is.

[Mike ODonnell]

courtesy of Conditioning Research....this study

Effects of two energy-restricted diets differing in the carbohydrate/protein ratio on weight loss and oxidative changes of obese men.

Abete I, Parra D, Martinez De Morentin B, Alfredo Martinez J.

Department of Food Sciences, Physiology and Toxicology, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

Introduction Low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets are a current challenge in the nutritional treatment of obesity. Objective To compare the effect of a low-carbohydrate high-protein diet with a traditional hypocaloric diet on weight loss and mitochondrial oxidative metabolism. Subjects and methods Nineteen obese men (age 36+/-6 years; body mass index 34+/-2 kg/m(2)) were randomized to follow one of the two diets-control diet (15% protein; 30% lipids; 55% carbohydrates) or high-protein diet (30% protein; 30% lipids; 40% carbohydrates)-over an 8-week period. Anthropometry, biochemical variables, resting energy expenditure and mitochondrial oxidation were measured at the start and at the end of the intervention. Results The high-protein diet produced a greater weight loss (-8.3+/-1.2% versus -5.5+/-2.5%, P=0.012) than the control diet. Interestingly, an activation in the mitochondrial oxidation was found in the high-protein-fed group. This stimulation was positively correlated with the final resting energy expenditure and negatively associated with the final fat mass content. Conclusion Low-carbohydrate high-protein diets could involve specific changes in mitochondrial oxidation that could be related to a higher weight loss.

[Mike ODonnell]

another good article from Stephen at Whole Health

My conclusion, from this study and others, is that macronutrients don't determine how healthy a diet is. The specific foods that compose the diet do. The rural Masai are healthy on a high-fat diet, the rural Bantu are fairly healthy on a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet. Only the urban Bantu show a pattern really consistent with the "disease of civilization", despite a daily energy expenditure very similar to the rural Bantu. They're unhealthy because they eat too much processed food: processed vegetable oil, processed grain products, refined sugar.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co...ntradicts.html

Same old message.....sugar kills.

[Mike ODonnell]

as for Okinawa....could it be what is being "told" as their healthy diet is far from the truth?

In some countries around the world, eating meat is taboo. Other countries exhibit differences in their preferences for meat. The Japanese, for example, generally rank beef first, followed by pork, chicken, whale meat, lamb and mutton, goat and horsemeat. The Chinese, it seems, put pork first, then lamb and mutton, chicken and horse. As for Okinawa, "pork as number one" sums it up. Okinawa clearly favors the Chinese preference over the Japanese. However, in Okinawa's case what is available and familiar no doubt outweighs preference in determining the rank order.

In Okinawa, during the hunting and gathering era, wild boar and dugong were hunted for food. It is thought that beef and horsemeat have only been eaten since the 12th century, and pork since the 14th century when potato cultivation spread through Okinawa. Pork did not appear on the tables of ordinary folk until the latter half of the 18th century. Thus, consumption of these meats is not all that old. A major factor in the spread of pork was the need to entertain the Sappo envoys from China, the "pork as number one" country. The Buddhism that spread in Japan fostered the appearance at least of shunning meat. Shintoism originally held the idea that meat eating was defilement. In the fusion of Shintoism and Buddhism, it is thought that this idea became linked with the Buddhist proscription against killing living things. Further, when rulers in Okinawa instituted policies to turn people from hunting and fishing to agricultural pursuits, the use for food of domestic animals like oxen and horses that were needed to till rice paddies was strictly forbidden.

http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/e/phi_3.html

In fact, here’s a quote from Dr, Kaayla Daniels, author of The Whole Soy Story:

Dr. [Kazuhiko] Taira also reports that healthy and vigorous Okinawans eat 100 grams each of pork and fish each day. So much for the low-fat, plant-based diet!

One hundred grams of pork and fish each day tallies up to 3 pounds of meat a week! What about the claim that Okinawans eat lots of soy? Here’s another snippet from Dr. Daniels. It is a response to The Okinawa Program, one of several books touting a bastardized/westernized Okinawan diet as the one true path to nutritional enlightenment:

Is the total amount 60 to 120 grams per day? Or should we trust a Table that shows total legume consumption (including soy) in the amount of about 75 grams per day for the years 1949-1993? Perhaps the people eat an average of three ounces of soy products per day, mostly tofu and miso? Or is it two whole servings of soy, with each serving a mere one ounce? Only one thing’s clear — the Okinawans aren’t really big soy eaters.

What’s becoming clear here is that the real Okinawan diet relies on quite a bit of pork, fish and vegetables fried in lard.

http://breadandmoney.com/thefreeradical/?p=135

Vegetarian propaganda or a whole health system that refuses to admit higher fat intake could be healthy? Gasp.....

[Darryl Shaw]

Originally Posted by Arien Malec

The recent study published in NEJM compared a restricted calorie high carb, low fat diet to a restricted calorie med diet (similar in spirit to the Okinawan diet in terms of % carb and focus on fiber and leafy greens) to an unrestricted calorie low carb diet.

One of those diets mopped the floor with the other two, in terms of total weight loss, lipid improvements, HbA1c improvements, and C-reactive protein (i.e, inflammation) improvements. Guess which one? The unrestricted calorie low carb diet, not the calorie restricted low fat diet or the calorie restricted Med diet.

'Splain that?

I'm no a statistician so I may be wrong but as I read it the participants in the NEJM study ate fairly similar diets and experienced fairly similar results and as the difference in weight loss between the best and worst diet amounted to about 1/4 lb per month with the best diet resulting in only 12.1 lbs lost over two years compared to the worst with only 7.6 lbs lost over two years I'd say that all three diets produced equally poor results.

Chaneges in Dietary Intake, Energy Expenditure and Urinary Ketones during 2 Years of Intervention.

[Darryl Shaw]

Originally Posted by Mike ODonnell

as for Okinawa....could it be what is being "told" as their healthy diet is far from the truth?

http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/e/phi_3.html

http://breadandmoney.com/thefreeradical/?p=135

Vegetarian propaganda or a whole health system that refuses to admit higher fat intake could be healthy? Gasp.....

Having read the book The Okinawa Way I can confirm that the Okinawans are far from vegetarian and they don't eat anywhere near as much soy protein as vegetarian propagandists would have you believe. As I've said before in another thread if you take the rice (a recent addition to their diet) and soy out of their diet you've got something remarkably close to that of both contemporary African and paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Their consumption of protein and fat is still fairly low compared with western diets though and they derive most of their calories from carbs.

[Arien Malec]

Originally Posted by Darryl Shaw

I'm no a statistician so I may be wrong but as I read it the participants in the NEJM study ate fairly similar diets and experienced fairly similar results and as the difference in weight loss between the best and worst diet amounted to about 1/4 lb per month with the best diet resulting in only 12.1 lbs lost over two years compared to the worst with only 7.6 lbs lost over two years I'd say that all three diets produced equally poor results.

Again, clinical research has yet to demonstrate a dietary strategy that actually causes large amounts of weight loss in a population of any meaningful size.

The relevant physiological markers (HDL, HbA1c, CRP) were both statistically and clinically significant given the association of those parameters with health outcomes.

The macronutrient ratios are pretty typical in studies of this kind: the low fat group doesn't eat a diet that is as low in fat as Ornishians would want, the low carb group doesn't eat a diet that is as low in carb as the Atkensians/Eadesians would want. All groups ate low protein, but the low carb group at a tiny bit more there. Low carb group ate 40/40 fat & carb, low fat group ate 30/50. Despite all that, the "low" carb group saw an average 8.4 point increase in HDL, 2 points more than the low fat and the med diet group, with similar improvements in CRP and HbA1c. Life changing? Perhaps not, but life improving...

One more thing that can get lost here: there's some evidence that babies born to mothers with high blood insulin are already predisposed to insulin resistance. For the current generation of people who are likely to receive the "personal training" advice in that started this whole thread off, promoting a high carbohydrate diet is likely to be a disaster.

We are going 'round and 'round in this discussion, but I'll just end this by saying that applying the dietary habits of Okinawans to modern day Americans is counterproductive.

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Arien Malec

We are going 'round and 'round in this discussion, but I'll just end this by saying that applying the dietary habits of Okinawans to modern day Americans is counterproductive.

and cue RATT.......great band.....

Yep...think we have beat this one to death....lifestyle factors, activity level, quality/sources of macronutrients (where do you get carbs from) and starting point in health (are they already skinny and active or overweight and lazy) are all important factors that must be addressed. Good discussion though.

[Kevin Perry]

i got lost in this discussion a long time ago.

kudos for getting this thread to 6 pages... should see what else i can post to get you guys ansy

[Mike ODonnell]

This thread mine as well be labelled Colpo vs Eades with the calorie in and out equation arguement....but I found this article to be interesting for those that still want to read about it

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.c...diazoxide.html

So just to summarise this paper. Caloric restriction failed in about 7 weeks. Equal caloric restriction plus lowered insulin levels allowed on going weight loss throughout the study period.

Or maybe, just maybe, you could just accept that in the real world, outside a meatball ward, sorry, metabolic ward, the level of insulin in your blood stream influences your rate of weight loss, specifically your rate of fat loss

which was about this study
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/83/6/1911

We previously demonstrated that administration of diazoxide (DZ), an inhibitor of insulin secretion, to obese hyperinsulinemic Zucker rats resulted in less weight gain, enhanced insulin sensitivity, and improved glucose tolerance.

Compared with the placebo group, DZ subjects had greater weight loss (9.5 ± 0.69% vs. 4.6 ± 0.61%, P < 0.001), greater decrease in body fat (P < 0.01), greater increase in fat-free mass to body fat ratio (P < 0.01), and greater attenuation of acute insulin response to glucose (P < 0.01).