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Author | Topic: More on Diet and Carbohydrates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
NoNukes writes: Again, adding salads does not make a difference with respect to guidelines regarding low fats and high carbohydrates. Perhaps you'll note that I asked for such examples. I tried to respond to your request for examples by pointing out that no claim had been made regarding what you were requesting examples for. The specific exchange:
Percy in Message 79 writes: NoNukes writes: Tell us instead about the low fat, high carb items Mickey D's added to their menu at the request of customers. I don't know who Mickey D is, but the point being made isn't that they added low-fat/high-carb items to their menu in response to customer requests. What they did and do is stay aware of public perceptions and stay responsive to them. In other words, you evidently thought we were claiming that McDonald's had added low-fat/high-carb items to their menu in response to customer requests, and so you asked for examples. But that was not a claim that was being made, so it would make no sense to seek out examples. I do believe instances exist where companies have responded to explicit customer requests, but I don't think it's a primary avenue of change. I think the primary avenue is via marketing research, which takes a wide variety of forms, including canvasing customers. What I tried to do was describe what I think really happens, namely that members of the highly competitive food industry attempt to remain sensitive and responsive to public perceptions of dietary health lest it become a competitive issue that negatively affects them. If you want an example of this happening, I think Coyote's example of McDonald's eventually adding salads to its menus is a good example, but if what you require for evidence is internal marketing memos then clearly we cannot provide them. But obviously it was a competitive issue, because if I recall correctly, McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's all added salads to their menus within a year or two of each other, at least in our area.
Just to be clear, there seems to me to be a timing problem with associating the menu changes at McDonald's with people getting fat while following gubmint advice. People were already blaming McDonald's for being unhealthy and kids were already fat at that time. I agree that the fast food industry was one of the last to jump on the low-fat bandwagon. Given the industry it doesn't surprise me. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Jon writes: Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks you're blaming the government. Yes, I know, I'm well aware. You seem to think I'm being inconsistent and sending conflicting messages, so let me see if I can clarify. It only became necessary to clarify that the blame is actually distributed when you focused on my references to the government as knee-jerk "blame the government" complaining. Since you've raised that complaint I've been much more clear that the blame should be distributed, but I do believe the blame begins with the government because the guidelines they issued lent legitimacy to the science and to the advice from health organizations and the diet advice community.
It's made even more ridiculous by stuff like...
quote: ... followed by...
quote: I explained this back in Message 61. My link to the 1980 guidelines was incorrect. It turned out to be a link to the 1990 guidelines. I apologized for the error. I don't know what more you want. But the 1980 guidelines were even more damning because they contained this gem:
1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans writes: The major sources of energy in the average US. diet are carbohydrates and fats. If you limit your fat intake. you should increase your calories from carbohydrates to supply your body's energy needs. The emphasis on whole grains is not only an emphasis that has been lacking from American eating habits, but it's one that even you agree with... Yes, that's true, but the message about whole grains isn't the message that got across. The message that was much more effectively communicated was "fats bad, carbohydrates good". Remember, the advice we're talking about isn't a government brochure that most people didn't read. It's the advice from a multiplicity of sources as it was perceived by the public. What most people remember from the government is the food pyramid, it's base filled with high carbohydrate foods:
You're all over the place. The only thing that stays consistent is your desire to blame the government (and now also anyone who gave similar advice). And I think I and others have demonstrated with ample evidence that that blame is wholly misplaced. Well, who am I to stand in the way of such determination. I'll close with a quote from Nina Teicholz's introduction to her book:
quote: --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Jon writes: I explained this back in Message 61. My link to the 1980 guidelines was incorrect. It turned out to be a link to the 1990 guidelines. I apologized for the error. I don't know what more you want.
Yes, but that isn't why I was bringing it up. I was pointing out your inconsistency and apparent inability to read your own sources. You're talking about the 1990 guidelines. Yes, I missed the reference to whole grained breads.
But the 1980 guidelines were even more damning because they contained this gem:
1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans writes: The major sources of energy in the average US. diet are carbohydrates and fats. If you limit your fat intake, you should increase your calories from carbohydrates to supply your body's energy needs. Well, sure. The government stated a fact and then advised people not to starve themselves. What of it? Well, don't forget that the guidelines also advised reducing fat intake. Let me put the advice to reduce fat intake from page 9 together with the advice I quoted earlier from page 10 about increasing carbohydrate intake:
1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans writes: But for the U.S. population as a whole, reduction in our current intake of total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol is sensible...The major sources of energy in the average US. diet are carbohydrates and fats. If you limit your fat intake. you should increase your calories from carbohydrates to supply your body's energy needs. And that in a nutshell is the government advice to reduce fat intake and increase carbohydrate intake.
I'll close with a quote from Nina Teicholz's introduction to her book:
quote: Which I think everyone here has agreed with, either for the sake of giving you the benefit of the doubt or out of genuine agreement. I think if you explain how what you think Teicholz is saying differs from what I'm saying it will help me understand where you're coming from a great deal. Why do you think she calls the nutritional advice a bad idea? Don't you understand that it's because it was bad for health? Here's Teicholz's previous paragraph, again from The Big Fat Surprise:
Nina Teicholz writes: In this period, the health of America has become strikingly worse. When the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet was first officially recommended to the public by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 1961, roughly one in seven adult Americans was obese. Forty years later, that number was one in three. (It's heartbreaking to realize that the federal government's "Healthy People" goal for 2010, a project begun in the mid-1990s, for instance, was simply to return the public back to levels of obesity seen in 1960, and even that goal was unreachable.) During these decades, we've also seen rates of diabetes rise drastically less than 1 percent of the adult population to more than 11 percent, while heart disease remains the leading cause of death for both men and women. In all, it's a tragic picture for a nation that has, according to the government, faithfully been following all the official dietary guidelines for so many years. If we've been so good, we might fairly ask, why is our health report card so bad? Back to you:
The point of contention is whether that 'bad idea' was the cause of all the obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease we see today. That's not a point of contention because it's not something anyone claimed. It's just something you're making up. The actual claim is that the bad nutrition advice played a significant role in the increases in obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Now you're chalking up McDonald's role in all this to their attempt to offer low-fat salads and not the BigMacs they sell by the millions every day. It just keeps getting crazier. Well, yes it is getting crazier as you make up more and more stuff. I still don't understand why you can't see how different what you claim I'm saying is from what I'm actually saying. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 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: 22502 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: 22502 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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Percy Member Posts: 22502 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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Percy Member Posts: 22502 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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Percy Member Posts: 22502 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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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Jon writes: You wanna blame the government? Blame the government. As I've explained several times, I don't want to blame the government. I want responsibility for the problem assigned where it properly belongs, because responsibility for the solution likely lies in the same place. The government bestowed legitimacy upon the inadequate science that blamed fat for the increasing rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and it can take it away. There is one interesting irony to note, however. The government's decades long role in convincing the public that fat was responsible for America's worsening health was very significant, but its role in correcting that impression may be much less. Back when Atkins was first pushing the low-carb diet the science wasn't conclusive and he was hammered, but there's been a lot of research since then, and the science is more and more clearly implicating the true cause: carbohydrates. With the science now painting so clear a picture the government's position may be less relevant. Even though, as Faith has noted, the current guidelines still demonize fat, low-carb offerings are surging in grocery stores. I'm not expecting much change in the 2015 guidelines, but maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar. Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Government advice against cholesterol is responsible for products like this:
But it's been known for some time that dietary cholesterol is broken down and digested and not absorbed into the bloodstream. Cholesterol in the body is produced by the body and doesn't come from dietary cholesterol. The possibility exists that the 2015 version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans may finally drop the advice against dietary cholesterol: Panel suggests that dietary guidelines stop warning about cholesterol in food An excerpt:
quote: AbE: I like this excerpt even better:
quote: Well, yes, you did, and not just about cholesterol. --Percy Edited by Percy, : AbE.
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
nwr writes: Which government advice are you referring to? I'm not sure why you're asking. Is it because you think the government didn't give out diet advice before the first detailed USDA guidelines in 1980? If you're interested in more detail just let me know and I'll dig it out for, but for now just let me provide this short and insufficiently detailed excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Ancel Keys.
quote: In case it isn't obvious after reading this, Keys' research marks the origin of the "fat is bad" dietary advice. I don't know how old you are, but back in the 1950's and 1960's, just like today, the results of research and government studies and advisory groups were occasionally reported in the media. By the time Egg Beaters was introduced there had already been more than a decade of warnings about dietary cholesterol from various groups, including the American Heart Association and the government. Naturally after all this time I remember nothing specific, but I do clearly remember how conscious everyone was of the warnings about cholesterol. Research from as far back as the 1930s showed that dietary cholesterol has little influence on blood cholesterol, and the government has had many opportunities over the decades to make things right, but they never did. There are some positive indications that this year the government might finally make things right with the upcoming 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Jon writes: Do Faith, Percy, or anyone else, have any particular low-carb diets that they would like brought into the discussion? I have no specific low-carb diet to enter into the discussion. My own personal recommendations:
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Bacon is great - in fact, any meat is fine, as long as it's not processed.
I guess when I said that I mostly had in mind my wife's many attempts to make good tasting healthy food, because I've found that low-carb eating can become a bit boring. Invariably, if it tasted good we gained weight. It's surprising how many supposed healthy or low-calorie recipes aren't. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Jon writes: If you want to go in circles over past confusions, you'll have to do that on your own. If you're implying you never denied there was a pervasive "fat is bad" message out there, then it would be difficult to just forget it and move on. I'd feel there was no point replying to you as later you'd just claim you'd actually meant something different. --Percy
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