[yksin]

Hey Espi,

Originally Posted by Espi

There's one thing I really dislike about the entire discussion pro/con Taubes' GCBC is that everyone seems to be prejudiced already before drawing a conclusion.

I'm with you on that. I read the book around last April, as part of my initial exploration of low-carb, something I'd shied away from quite strenuously previously. (I took singular care to define how I was eating for the past couple of years, more or less per the advice of Diana Schwarzbein in The Schwarzbein Principle, as "moderate carb.") I found Taubes' book to be pretty compelling in a lot of ways, then came head up against the opinion of a source I respect (in this case, Tom Venuto) that really didn't have a heckuva lot of good to say about the book, though Venuto hadn't read it, because of his perception that it was meant to promote the general low-carb fan club's insistence that "low carb diets give a metabolic advantage" (i.e., in weight/fat loss). Also, of course, people over at Venuto's board (Burn the Fat Inner Circle) were pretty amused by Taubes' claim in his book & in media appearances that exercise was useless for weight loss.

My frustration was that Taubes does present some compelling arguments, but... well, as you say:

Unfortunately Taubes is one of them as apparently he cherry picked the studies.

Yes, he left a lot out, at least with his whole insulin/carb theory of "what makes us fat." For what remains of value in his book, you've got to read with a discerning eye.

Meantime, his book is definitely lionized by those low-carb fans who believe in the "metabolic advantage" myth, & who insist that carbs & insulin will make a person fat even if they don't eat an excess of calories.

My own journey with low-carb since then has been: well, I want to know the facts, about low-carb diets in general & about ketogenic low-carb diets in particular, because over the past couple of years I'd become increasingly convinced that even if higher carb diets were suitable for some people, high carb diets were completely screwed up ways to deal with insulin resistance, prediabetes, diabetes. -- Which is how I eventually landed at Lyle McDonald's website to pick up his book on The Ketogenic Diet. So I feel pretty clear now about very low carb diets & ketosis: essentially, yes, they work, & work very well, for some people in some situations. But there's no one-size-fits-all diet. And calories do count.

I must say from experience that nearly every single person who adopts a (Very) low carb diet spontaneously eats far less than they need. Unless they want to train hard as I had countless binges upon trying to stay below 30-50g of carbs and still try to do HIIT or high rep workouts. Carb cycling solved this problem. But most obese people on a VLC diet don't train and they generally respond very well to a VLC diet because of appetite suppression. Except.. when they are fooled to believe they can eat as much fat as they want and still drop weight like crazy. Since that is effectively NOT true.

[Bold added.] Yes, & I think that's the real problem posed by the "metabolic advantage" crew: they give people eating low carb diets the false impression that they can eat as much as they want without having to pay attention to calories & the laws of thermodynamics. Not to mention other errors in science.

For example, one of the ideas often propounded by the "metabolic advantage" ideologues (& echoed quite a bit in Taubes's book) is that because insulin is the "fat storage hormone," carbs that you eat will turn into bodyfat. I.e., their claim is that the liver will take ingested carbs & synthesize it into new fat -- in the process called de novo lipogenesis -- to be added to your fat stores. That kinda made sense to me, until I read somewhere where Lyle McDonald said "de novo lipogenesis is actually pretty rare in humans" and, surprised, I did a lot of research in PubMed for myself & found that -- yeah, he's right! Mice & rats do de novo lipogenesis all over the place, but in humans it happens only in fairly rare circumstances (& my research taught me exactly what those circumstances are). The real problem with eating lots of carbs, in terms of getting fat, is in eating an excess of calories: the carb calories spare your bodyfat. In other words, your body will burn those carb calories to meet its energy needs, & leave all those adipocytes sitting around in your big fat storage facility strictly alone. And since you're likely also eating dietary fats with your excess calories, they'll get added to the fat depots.

Unfortunately, Bray's review is simplistic about a few things too. For example:

Response: There is no convincing evidence that carbohydrates are producing cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, or coronary artery disease.

Not carbohydrates per se, certainly. But I think there is growing evidence that overconsumption of carbs, especially highly refined carbs (the kind that Taubes is especially critical of) contributes to these ills through promotion of chronic high blood sugar & insulin levels, not to mention really whacked out swings in blood sugar levels, which has a big effect on hunger/appetite/satiety. And I know firsthand, as a prediabetic, that my blood sugars are in much better control, as is my appetite, ever since switching over to a moderate carb diet two years ago, or the low-carb plan I'm following for now.

But there is also growing evidence that fat metabolism plays a huge role in the development of insulin resistance. (See Philip Wood's book How Fat Works.)

Fortunately there are a few people out there who are accurate & knowledgeable about how low carb diets really work, but aren't idealogues about it, whether for or against -- John Berardi & Lyle McDonald are two names that come to mind. Anthony Colpo is a low-carb advocate, but at least is accurate that there's no "calories don't count metabolic advantage" to low-carb. (He seems to have a little war about it going on with the Eades' of Protein Power fame.)

But as a prediabetic, if those folks weren't around -- well, I'd still listen to Atkins, the Eades', & Taubes over & above the American Diabetes Association about what insulin resistant people ought to be eating. Better yet, Dr. Richard Bernstein, the Type 1 diabetic who has been steering his diabetic patients away from the iatrogenic high-carb ADA diet for decades now.

-- Mel