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Author | Topic: More on Diet and Carbohydrates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22499 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Jon writes: The actual claim is that the bad nutrition advice played a significant role in the increases in obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
And that's simply false. You've been shown repeatedly that no one really followed the guidelines. Well, first when you say "no one" followed the guidelines, even your own citation disagrees with you. And it's been explained that your criteria for "following the guidelines" are absurd. You classify anything short of 100% compliance as not following the guidelines. By your criteria, since most people roll through stop signs when they can, no one's following the traffic laws in America. Your own source reinforces what I've been saying about America's drive to decrease fat consumption, and about the increase in low fat options in grocery stores:
quote: And while consumers may be failing to meet some guidelines, they were apparently successfully meeting other guidelines, like the now defunct food pyramid I mentioned earlier, described here, again by your own source, ironically from the same page you've been quoting from:
quote: This can be a complicated issue. You can't just pull out a few facts, make up your own rules, then leap to conclusions. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22499 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
NoNukes writes: The issue as I understand it, is you believe people followed the government's advice on high/low fat vs carbs and became sick/obese as a result. The key question before the nation more than a half century ago was the mystery of what was causing the dramatic increases in obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The answer was too much fat in the diet, and the advice was to reduce fat intake and increase carbohydrate intake. Both the answer and the advice turned out to be wrong, and as a result rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease continued at high levels or even increased. The problem with the guidelines and dietary advice was that it made fat the bugaboo and pushed people toward higher consumption of carbohydrates. Had carbohydrates been made the bugaboo then the obesity/diabetes/heart-disease epidemic would have been averted.
You assert without evidence that people actually followed that advice and then Coyote brings up salads at McDonald's. Well that example is irrelevant. The point of the salad example was to show how the food industry responds to customer demand. The demand for more healthy offerings came from people who had been influenced by advice about diet, particularly fat. Without the scientific research and statistics distilled for public consumption by the government, health organizations and the diet advice community the public would never have become aware of either the problem or the proposed solution. The public concern about fat was coincident with the guidelines expressing concerns about fat because the public concern was a reaction to them.
And now in your latest post you admit that McDonald's action lagged way behind the real trend anyway. No, not way behind. I believe the fast food industry began offering salads in the 1990s, the period during which the food industry responded most strongly to demand for low fat foods.
I don't see any evidence that people with proper caloric intakes got fat or sick by following government advice on low fat diets. No one's making claims here that "people with proper caloric intakes got fat or sick," though that is certainly possible. The problem is that nutrition advice warned against fat instead of against carbohydrates, the real danger. The more carbohydrates consumed, particularly refined carbohydrates, the more one experiences glucose spikes (forces cells toward metabolic syndrome, strains pancreas, eventual result can be obesity and diabetes), the higher one's triglyceride levels and the worse one's LDL/HDL ratios (related to heart disease).
What's worse, you don't seem to think it is important to show that people actually followed the advice anyway. But I do think it's important to show that people actually followed the advice. That's why I provided the charts showing increased carbohydrate consumption relative to fat, and described the history of the food industry responding to the public's demand for more low-fat offerings. More evidence than that would require actually getting into people's heads. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22499 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
From the USDA Healthy Eating Index Webpage:
quote: Here is a laymen friendly version of the index provided by Nielsen that I think is based upon their own polls or data gathering techniques rather than the actual HEI, but it gives a flavor for what can be learned (source):
Their description:
quote: HEI is an area of ongoing research, and other measures have been proposed. --Percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I'm not sure why you posted that data and it just made me want to know what they consider to be "healthy eating." Turns out they are still recommending against fat, as here in their 2010 Dietary Guidelines:
Increase intake of fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products, such as milk, yogurt, cheese, or fortified soy beverages.58 Choose a variety of protein foods, which include seafood, lean meat and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, soy products, and unsalted nuts and seeds... Replace protein foods that are higher in solid fats with choices that are lower in solid fats and calories and/or are sources of oils.Use oils to replace solid fats where possible. They are also still concerned about salt, which many current nutritionists consider to be just as false a concern as saturated fats, and even having soy on the list as a healthy food is highly questionable. There may be some move toward the recognition that carbs are the problem rather than fats, but it isn't a very big move yet. Or maybe it will show up on their 2015 recommendations, which aren't out yet. And I have to mention that some nutritionists are REALLY behind the times: when I was in rehab after surgery about a year and a half ago they actually brought squishy white bread and margarine on the tray (both of which I regard as poison) plus fruit juice, which I try to limit because it's pure sugar, and of course the milk was some kind of low fat, maybe 2%, not whole milk anyway. When I tried to explain my problem with all this to the "nutritionist" who came around to find out our likes and dislikes, she was astonished and said "but you want to get better don't you?" Well, that WAS the idea, but I decided there was no point in saying more. Three weeks in rehab didn't kill me, but I did lose four pounds because of all the stuff I just couldn't or wouldn't eat. ABE: The 2015 Dietary Guidelines aren't out yet, but more of the same is what they are projecting, according to this report: cutting back on fat as usual, also red meat, and keeping grains high on the list (whole grains are better than refined grains but they're still carbs and still have an effect on your blood sugar, just a somewhat slower effect). At least they also recommend against sugars:
The overall body of evidence examined by the 2015 DGAC identifies that a healthy dietary pattern is higher in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low- or non-fat dairy, seafood, legumes, and nuts; moderate in alcohol (among adults); lower in red and processed meatsiii; and low in sugar-sweetened foods and drinks and refined grains. ---->I think I must have misunderstood something. I thought you were saying the guidelines were changing so I didn't expect to see the same old same old which is what these guidelines seem to be. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Jon Inactive Member |
Well, first when you say "no one" followed the guidelines, even your own citation disagrees with you. I think it is clear what I meant: the percentage of people following the guidelines has not been anywhere close to the percentage of people who are obese, diabetic, suffering from cardiovascular diseases, etc.
And it's been explained that your criteria for "following the guidelines" are absurd. But they're not, because my one and only criterion is that the guidelines be followed. It is your criteria which are mangled; you seem to think it is fine to label as followers of the guidelines wishy-washy people who kinda get in the ballpark with some 'general spirit' (determined by you) of the guidelines.
You classify anything short of 100% compliance as not following the guidelines. No. If most folks were following the guidelines to a significant degree, then I could agree that following the guidelines is what led to the nation's poor health. But that isn't the situation we have. Hardly anyone followed the guidelines to any appreciable degree whatsoever. In fact,
quote: And, of course, if these people weren't just eating whatever they wanted but actually following the USDA guidelines, then we wouldn't have a population that's 60% overweight, since your own link demonstrates that the USDA diet leads to weight loss, not gain:
quote: There's obviously something else responsible for what's been going on with the health of Americans over the last several decades, and it has little, if anything, to do with the USDA's guidelines to eat 6-11 servings of grains, preferably high-fiber whole grains, a day.
By your criteria, since most people roll through stop signs when they can, no one's following the traffic laws in America. And what is wrong with that conclusion? Are we forced to conclude that people in America follow traffic laws? If, for some reason, we wanted to conclude otherwise, must we reevaluate our position until we have convinced ourselves away from the obvious conclusion? We don't get to change the evidence just because we don't like where it leads.
Your own source reinforces what I've been saying about America's drive to decrease fat consumption, and about the increase in low fat options in grocery stores:
quote: Did you bother to read the whole thing, Percy?
quote: Their conjecture on the reasons for some of these trends sounds oddly familiar to what some of us in this thread have been saying:
quote: quote: But that's not following the guidelines, which, as you've been repeatedly reminded, set specific serving limits and emphasize whole grains. Furthermore,
quote: People are mostly getting more grains because they are eating more BigMacs, churros, and chalupas. Such eating habits are so far from the USDA guidelines it's laughable that anyone would try to connect the two.
You can't just pull out a few facts, make up your own rules, then leap to conclusions. Exactly. Like you can't just pull statistics out of context, make up your own version of the USDA guidelines, and then blame the government for everybody being fat.Love your enemies!
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I think it is clear what I meant: the percentage of people following the guidelines has not been anywhere close to the percentage of people who are obese, diabetic, suffering from cardiovascular diseases, etc. I don't know why you are being such a stickler about exact following of the guidelines. I think Percy has answered you well enough about that, also pointing out that the same health problems the guidelines were put in place to prevent have been continuing in spite of them. But I think most of us followed the guidelines for years where it counts: in cutting back on saturated fats and choosing the lower fat versions of dairy products and the leaner meats in the markets, some totally eliminating red meat, and cutting way back on eggs and the like. I think just about everybody has at least been doing that much as a general rule, which is a definite effect of the guidelines. This is a subjective impression but it covers a lot of observations and I would expect you to have the same impression because it's been hammered into us. And that particular emphasis in our diets, even if we consciously changed nothing else, would cut down the calories, especially the KIND of calories, that satisfy hunger, which increases our cravings for carbs, especially sugars, to make up the difference, and it's that pattern of eating that is now associated with obesity, Type 2 diabetes and so on. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Jon Inactive Member
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But I think most of us followed the guidelines for years where it counts: in cutting back on saturated fats and choosing the lower fat versions of dairy products and the leaner meats in the markets, some totally eliminating red meat, and cutting way back on eggs and the like. I think just about everybody has at least been doing that much as a general rule, which is a definite effect of the guidelines. This is a subjective impression but it covers a lot of observations and I would expect you to have the same impression because it's been hammered into us. I don't know anyone who did this.
I don't know why you are being such a stickler about exact following of the guidelines. As I said, I don't think Percy needs to demonstrate exact following of the guidelines, but so far he hasn't demonstrated following of the guidelines to any reasonable degree except, preferring to mention only vague generalities. Related to this are the following two points, which I have already brought up:
Perhaps the USDA diet isn't the best diet possible, but there is little to show that actually following that diet led to the health problems for which it is being blamed in this thread.Love your enemies!
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Well, I'm very surprised that you haven't known people who insisted on avoiding fats because my experience has been that everybody around me was concerned to avoid fats because of the nutritional advice we've all been aware of. But then the stores also have been stocking those same low fat items because of their popularity too, as Percy brought up earlier. Getting an old fashioned "marbled" steak has been just about impossible in most stores for decades, for instance, and where you do find it you can't afford it. And the other effect is the proliferation of "low fat" processed items that contain sugar. All this certainly reflects the low fat diet guidelines and should certainly contribute to blood sugar problems at least. Anyway, my experience of people being super conscious of fat and avoiding it has been so total I'm amazed you or anyone wouldn't recognize it.
I'll have to review the thread about the other points. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Percy Member Posts: 22499 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Faith writes: I'm not sure why you posted that data... The information was mostly for Jon, but I thought it might be of interest to everyone so I didn't address that message to anyone in particular. The information about the Healthy Eating Index Webpage was meant to rebut his claim that one either adheres to nutrition guidelines or one doesn't, that there is no in between. But the Healthy Eating Index measures precisely what Jon claims can't be measured beyond a "yes or no" assessment, and I presented an example with the Healthy Eating Index from Nielsen:
This shows that compliance with nutritional goals varies over time and is not an all or nothing proposition. But very little in this world *is* an all or nothing proposition, and I'm a bit amazed this has to be explained. But it looks like you clicked on links that eventually took you to the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines, so let's discuss that. Here I collect the various points with specific advice about dietary fat:
quote: Some of this advice is absurdly detailed. While some number of consumers must exist who track their calories so closely and who know how many calories in each food derive from saturated fats versus monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats that they can follow that first guideline, it can't be many. The advice against solid fat makes sense because early in the brochure they make clear its a dense source of calories, but what are the sources of solid fat? My guess was foods like cheese and yogurt, but not until page 24 do you find the first definition of solid fats: "Solid fats are found in most animal foods but also can be made from vegetable oils through the process of hydrogenation, as described below." Reading forward we see that butter and lard are examples of solid fats, but footnote "a" of Figure 3-3 tells us that coconut oil, palm kernel oil and palm oil are also solid fats. Solid fats are not actually defined until page 27, and now we find that even the fat in milk is considered a solid fat. So enough of the analysis about the fat advice. What we have here in the USDA guidelines for 2010 about fat is a complexity of information that few can remember let alone follow. I'm sure most people never read the brochure and get their nutritional information from other sources, mainly the media on shows like the nightly news and talk shows like Opra. There's also email and Internet websites. The message heard by most Americans regarding fat is a simple oen: fat is bad. That there are some who have been oblivious to this message that has dominated and persisted for over half a century bewilders me. But we are now learning that the true dangers come from carbohydrates, not fats, so now let's look at what the brochure's guidelines say about carbohydrates. Which is nothing. The word "carbohydrate" appears 27 times in the brochure, but not in a single guideline. By contrast the word "fat" appears 601 times. To be fair the brochure often uses the word "grains" when it really means "carbohydrates", but the word "grain" only appears 324 times. So adding it all up, grains and carbohydrates are referenced 351 times, fats 601 times. The emphasis on fat is clear. Here are the guidelines that reference grains:
quote: These guidelines have the advantage of being very simple as long as one understands the difference between refined grains and whole grains. Unfortunately today (and I think you mentioned this earlier) it can be very difficult to find real whole-grained foods because the food industry has successfully lobbied for weaker labeling standards, and now you can, for example, find the whole-grained label on breads that are little different in carbohydrate and fiber content from white bread. The guidelines also contain some truly dangerous misinformation:
quote: Glycemic index is a measure of a carbohydrate-containing food's ability to produce glucose spikes in the blood stream, and glucose spikes are strongly suspected of being a primary contributor to metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Fat does not produce glucose spikes. The brochure is long, 95 pages, I've only touched the surface, I could analyze it for hours, but I've got things to do today, so that's enough for now. I don't hold out much hope for the 2015 guidelines. The growing acceptance of the dangers of carbohydrates by both the scientific and nutrition communities is a relatively recent phenomenon, and the "fat is the real bad boy" community still has a large stake in things. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Jon Inactive Member |
Well, I'm very surprised that you haven't known people who insisted on avoiding fats because my experience has been that everybody around me was concerned to avoid fats because of the nutritional advice we've all been aware of. Oh, I've known people who would like to eat less fat, but I've never known anyone who actually has. And the data from the USDA that I've been posting suggests that my observation is far from unusual. Americans consume more from every food group now than they did in 1950. As a nation we aren't eating less of anything.
And the other effect is the proliferation of "low fat" processed items that contain sugar. All this certainly reflects the low fat diet guidelines and should certainly contribute to blood sugar problems at least. Anyway, my experience of people being super conscious of fat and avoiding it has been so total I'm amazed you or anyone wouldn't recognize it. Whatever the cause of low-fat, high-sugar foods there is no doubt that such things don't meet the USDA guidelines, which put sugar in the same category as fat and advise consuming both sparingly. Replacing fats with sugars is not at all part of the USDA guidelines.Love your enemies!
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Percy Member Posts: 22499 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Jon writes: I think it is clear what I meant: the percentage of people following the guidelines has not been anywhere close to the percentage of people who are obese, diabetic, suffering from cardiovascular diseases, etc. Nobody said that it was. The claim is that with government guidelines as a basis the nutrition advice community drove the public's avoidance of fat and pushed them toward carbohydrates, causing increased rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. I can see that you're examining this claim and asking yourself, "What should we see if this claim is true?" One of the answers you evidently arrived at is that if the claim is true then the percentage of people following the guidelines should be approximately the same as the number of people who are obese, diabetic and heart diseased. But that's not a valid extrapolation from the original claim I made, and in any case you deny that there can even be a "percentage of people following the guidelines". You claim it's an all or nothing affair.
And it's been explained that your criteria for "following the guidelines" are absurd. But they're not, because my one and only criterion is that the guidelines be followed. It is your criteria which are mangled; you seem to think it is fine to label as followers of the guidelines wishy-washy people who kinda get in the ballpark with some 'general spirit' (determined by you) of the guidelines. While I wouldn't put it in these terms, there is some solid truth in your characterization of what I'm saying. The real world isn't black and white, and we all live in the real world. You seem to be trying to impose black and white interpretations on the messiness of the real world where there are many shades of gray. In the real world people follow poorly understood guidelines to varying degrees. I do agree with you that if Americans had followed the guidelines to the letter that the obesity/diabetes/heart-disease epidemic would have been largely avoided. They'd still have been wrong about fat and carbohydrates, and as a result disease rates would have been higher than necessary, but it would have been modest and not epidemic.
By your criteria, since most people roll through stop signs when they can, no one's following the traffic laws in America. And what is wrong with that conclusion? Uh, because it's wrong? People stop at red lights somewhere north of 99% of time, but by your criteria no one is following the traffic laws. Your binary measurement criteria would tell us that no country in the world is following their traffic laws, leaving no way to compare, say, Naples where people roll through red lights at will to New York where they generally don't. This shouldn't have to be explained. The rest of your message focuses on more details from the guidelines. My intention in quoting a couple excerpts from the guidelines was just to show how some parts reinforce what I've been saying. I understand that other parts of the guidelines reinforce what you've been saying about people not following the specific details of the guidelines, and I readily concede that point, but it was never mine or anyone's claim that they did. The claim is that the nutrition advice community, most importantly the government, focused the public's attention on avoiding fat when the real danger was carbohydrates. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar. Edited by Percy, : Clarify first sentence.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I was specifically talking about the saturated fats that have been condemned on health guidelines for decades now, not all fats. I'm sure people probably ARE eating plenty of fats, but not the fats I specifically listed, thanks to the health lore that has made them verboten and less available in the markets. Consumption of deep fat fried foods shows more of the trend to carbs, soaked in a different kind of fat than I'm talking about.
Whatever the cause of low-fat, high-sugar foods there is no doubt that such things don't meet the USDA guidelines, which put sugar in the same category as fat and advise consuming both sparingly. But I didn't say they follow the guidelines, what I said was that they are a marketing reaction to the guidelines, and this should be taken into account in assessing their impact on diet over the last few decades. Eliminate solid fats and you open the door to "low fat" processed food creations that rely on sugar to boost the taste lost through the lost fat. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I do agree with you that if Americans had followed the guidelines to the letter that the obesity/diabetes/heart-disease epidemic would have been largely avoided. They'd still have been wrong about fat and carbohydrates, and as a result disease rates would have been higher than necessary, but it would have been modest and not epidemic... The claim is that the nutrition advice community, most importantly the government, focused the public's attention on avoiding fat when the real danger was carbohydrates. Yes.
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Jon Inactive Member |
I can see that you're examining this claim and asking yourself, "What should we see if this claim is true?" One of the answers you evidently arrived at is that if the claim is true then the percentage of people following the guidelines should be approximately the same as the number of people who are obese, diabetic and heart diseased. The main point is that the article from the OP makes it clear that following the USDA guidelines actually does lead to weight loss. Thus, it is clear, that anyone who has gained weight has not been following the USDA guidelines It's simple logic, Percy.
... in any case you deny that there can even be a "percentage of people following the guidelines". You claim it's an all or nothing affair. Where did you get that idea from? Seems like a misreading of something...
I do agree with you that if Americans had followed the guidelines to the letter that the obesity/diabetes/heart-disease epidemic would have been largely avoided. Exactly.
I understand that other parts of the guidelines reinforce what you've been saying about people not following the specific details of the guidelines, and I readily concede that point, but it was never mine or anyone's claim that they did. But those specific details are essential to the guidelines. You declare that they are not, but you are wrong. And the evidence that they are essential is the fact that everyone who ignored those details got fat eating too many refined grains, too much fat, and too much sugar. When you follow the guidelines with attention to those details, you lose weight. When you 'follow' the guidelines without regard to those details, you get fat. Obviously those details are important, because without them the diet doesn't work.
The claim is that the nutrition advice community, most importantly the government, focused the public's attention on avoiding fat when the real danger was carbohydrates. The claim is becoming more and more vague with each of your posts as you try to back your position to a level of such generality that it could be true no matter what. The reality is that the guidelines were what they were and had people actually followed them, by your own admission, we wouldn't have all the weight-related health problems in the country that we now have.Love your enemies!
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Percy Member Posts: 22499 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Jon writes: The claim is becoming more and more vague with each of your posts as you try to back your position to a level of such generality that it could be true no matter what. I've been discussing this issue for years beginning with the Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes thread back in 2008, and at no time have I ever claimed that increasing rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease were caused by strictly following the government's USDA dietary guidelines that are updated every five years. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that that was my position, but if I did then hopefully I can be forgiven for assuming people were already familiar with my position after having discussed it here for so long. I don't believe any diverse population could adhere in any significantly thorough way to such detailed guidelines, and I would never make such a claim. My claim remains the same as it was way back in 2008, that Americans have been duped by government guidelines into thinking it was important to avoid fat if they wanted to reduce their chances of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, when it turns out the actual danger is carbohydrates. --Percy
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