More on Diet and Carbohydrates

Before you place that order to the butcher shop, I'd recommend getting the study and looking over it yourself. Reporting of medical studies in the lay press is notoriously bad, with diet studies being the worst.

I don't know if this study is good or bad. I also don't know whether coffee, tea, or red wine, or e-cigarettes are good or bad for you either.

That children who drank skim milk and 1 percent were heavier than those who drank 2 percent and whole.

This is exactly the kind of reported result that needs to be taken with a grain of salt until you've actually looked at the study. Would it surprise you the least if it turned out that when parents see their kids blowin' up like manatees that they start buying them skim milk?

Here is a link to a number of studies comparing low carb to low fat diets.

http://authoritynutrition.com/...-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets

According to the site, there is definitely a trend towards studies showing that low carb diets are more effective than low fat diets. But the trend is not universal and there are fairly recent studies rebutting the idea that Atkins was right.

If I were going to pick and choose, I'd look at well designed studies where the people were kinda like me. I'd ignore the studies that were observational rather than controlled experiments.

And here is another, rather sobering result:

http://www.wellspringcamps.com/...essons-in-weight-loss.html

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More important, the overall outcomes were not particularly impressive: an average of 9 lbs. weight loss (out of an average of 50 lbs of excess weight at the start) after dieting for two years.

In the accompanying editorial, Dr. Martijn Katahn stated: "It is obvious by now that weight losses among participants in diet trials will at best average 3-4 kg after 2-4 years."

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Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

The key issue isn't which weight-loss diet is better, but what should a healthy diet look like.

I agree. My last comments were addressed to the "Atkins was right" posts and not the OP.

I've regained all the weight I lost.

With respect to weight loss, is that such is the result of all diets.

I've regained all the weight I lost.

With respect to weight loss, limited weight loss and regain is the end result of all diets.

Atkins was right about the health benefits of low carb eating, not just losing weight.

Perhaps he was. My point is that you cannot demonstrate that by citing weight loss or looking at weight loss diet results.

Sorry...

You certainly don't need to apologize to me for nitpicking. . Yes, some people do have success and I should not imply otherwise. Some people actually succeed at climbing Everest too. But is there any diet that can claim, in the large, to be successful for most people? Is any diet so flawed that it fails to work for someone?

I lost 30 pounds around 5 years ago but found that my new weight wasn't conducive to athletic participation

What athletic activity in particular? I can imagine that losing weight might take a few pins off of my sub 100 bowling average and maybe a bit off my bench press, which is scarcely above my own weight, but I'm finding it difficult to imagine that for anything else I'd be willing to try right now.

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There is a general perception that almost no one succeeds in long-term maintenance of weight loss. However, research has shown that ≈20% of overweight individuals are successful at long-term weight loss when defined as losing at least 10% of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for at least 1 year...

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At least one year? That is a rather limited definition and puny definition of "long-term", isn't it?

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The National Weight Control Registry provides information about the strategies used by successful weight loss maintainers to achieve and maintain long-term weight loss. National Weight Control Registry members have lost an average of 33 kg and maintained the loss for more than 5 years.

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And isn't this a cherry picked registry?

NoNukes writes: ... snipped blatant accusation of cherry picking

Percy writes: I had never heard of them before that article, maybe, I don't know

I am going to hazard a guess:

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to Join
Recruitment for the Registry is ongoing. If you are at least 18 years of age and have maintained at least a 30 pound weight loss for one year or longer you may be eligible to join our research study.

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I'm reading "may be eligible" if you've demonstrated that you can lose weight and have some track record."

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The NWCR is tracking over 10,000 individuals who have lost significant amounts of weight and kept it off for long periods of time.

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I don't think the Yo-Yoers are in this database.

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There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.

78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.

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Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

As I said before, the government's dietary advice is largely responsible for the low fat revolution that took over our grocery store shelves.

Percy, could you provide a pointer to some of this bad government advice? Right now, this discussion is loaded up with a bunch of 'they said' without any identification of who 'they' are.

Well, okay, sure, correlation doesn't prove causation. So let's just say that at the same time that the government and groups like the American Heart Association were pushing diets low in fat and high in vegetables and grains that America became fatter, more diabetic, and more prone to heart disease

This, in a way, is similar to arguments regarding guns. People who live in high crime areas are more likely to insist on having guns in their homes, resulting in a crime rate/gun owning correlation.

I suspect that an alarming rise in bad health leads to warnings about bad diets. If such warnings were ignored wouldn't the result be pretty much what we've observed?

I'd like to believe that I could be convinced by some good science, but the problem is that there is not very much of that out there. People can become obese and sedentary on any diet, and they can be (at least apparently) physically fit on any diet where intake is limited. So what is proved when fat, sugar consuming, smokers have health problems?

he government and certain organizations represented their dietary advice as deriving from the best scientific research available, and that wasn't true. Such hubris shouldn't be given a free pass.

That does not sound much like hubris. At worst it sounds like those organizations were wrong.

I think the weak point in your presentation so far is that you cannot show that people who actually followed government advice are unhealthy. In general, Americans eat too much of just about every food category except spinach and as a class are just as fat as anyone would expect. I don't see any indication of a mystery class of unhealthy people that we can blame government advice on.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Even if everyone whose health was going to shit was religiously following the government's dietary guidelines, it still isn't the government's fault.

I would disagree with this a bit. If the sole problem were visible things like being obese, then yes we do get some feedback that our diet is at fault. But if our diet is actually bad for our cardiovascular system without some visible sign, then that is directly caused by the bad advice.

They can monitor, but the feedback that would tie such information to diet is not very strong.

"Did you see the link in the OP"

I saw it. I don't see the impact on what I posted.

"No mention of caloric intake"

And yet we are still reaching conclusions about weight loss? Quite bizarre.

I am sorry that you cannot see that.

In the face of this rather dubious comment, let me be more explicit. There is no impact between the OP's statement that " low-fat diet recommended by the USDA is less effective at maintaining overall health than a diet lower in carbohydrates and higher in fat" and my comment.

My comment was that just being wrong does not constitute hubris. You come along with a statement that says that the government advice was wrong. Well, that was exactly what I assumed was the case when I made my comment.

was not aimed at your hubris comment

Your comment had no aim at all. The rest of my post was material you agreed with and for which the quote from the OP was even less relevant.