Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes

Okay, I'm done. You're just making stuff up while patting yourself on the back for your great work. Continue the ad hominem by yourself.--PercyEdited by Percy, : .

In Message 85 you said: Poking around in Google Scholar a bit, apparently the French paradox is their low rate of CHD (obesity wasn't mentioned) in light of their high intake of saturated fat (carbohydrates weren't mentioned). No wonder I couldn't find it, since I was including carbohydrates and obesity in my search. From the abstract for Wine, alcohol, platelets, and the French paradox for coronary heart disease: This is from Recent national French food and nutrient intake data: The falsity of your claim that carbohydrates are somehow associated with the French paradox is consistent with many of your other claims.--Percy

Well, you certainly have an interesting way of making your case, but it doesn't seem to me one that many will find convincing.--Percy

Taubes doesn't say that the insulin response to carbohydrate intake increases VLDL production.What Taubes does say is that J. W. Gofman's research from the 1950s showed that increased carbohydrate intake correlated with increased VLDL levels. Gofman's technique was to use an ultracentrifuge to separate out the various lipoproteins from blood plasma. Details are sketchy without having the paper in hand (Diet in the prevention and treatment of myocardial infarction is not available on-line), but there's no hint from Taubes that Gofman was analyzing internal metabolic pathways involving insulin or anything else.Poking around on Google Scholar, I did find a paper concerning a study on rats from 1984 that also indicated a correlation between carbohydrate intake and VLDL levels: Short term essential fatty acid deficiency in rats. Influence of dietary carbohydrates. This article does not mention insulin, but it does mention the correlation between carbohydrate intake and VLDL levels. This is from the abstract: Here's what might be a very significant paper by Krauss et. al. (Krauss appears in Taubes book, I think beginning in the chapter you're reading now) titled Effects of a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet on VLDL-triglyceride assembly, production, and clearance. In the abstract it says: For any audience we might have, LF/HC is "low-fat/high-carbohydrate". What the abstract is saying is that an LF/HC diet reduces VLDL clearance while having no effect on VLDL production. If this research from 1999 holds up then it neatly explains how carbohydrates contribute to increased VLDL levels, since reducing the expulsion rate of VLDL while maintaining the production rate will obviously increase VLDL levels.Here's another Krauss paper that makes a similar point in passing: Metabolic origins and clinical significance of LDL heterogeneity. About carbohydrates it says: Again for the audience, phenotype B means a tendency to obesity and high blood pressure. Anyway, what this passage is saying is that a high carbohydrate diet increases expression of phenotype B, i.e., increases obesity and blood pressure, and also increases the levels of small, dense LDLs. More detail is available by following the references (that's what those number are) whose links conveniently appear in the paper.I'm distressed that even after you have the book in hand that you continue to criticize Taubes for claims he does not make, and that you even attempt to discredit his book for one of its outstanding qualities, tracing the research all the way back to the late 1800s and providing references every stop along the way.The urgency you obviously feel to dispatch Taubes' claims is forcing you into many simple errors. This is wasting my time and yours, and it certainly brings you no credit. You claim that the insulin response to carbohydrate intake is to inhibit VLDL production, and whether true or not, no one is disputing this or saying anything to contradict this. Taubes is not saying anything about the cause of the elevated VLDL levels, only the correlation with carbohydrate intake. If what you say is true that it's impossible for it to be produced while insulin levels are elevated, then obviously that's not a factor in the increased VLDL levels. But nobody claimed that it was.--Percy

But Taubes didn't say that high carbohydrate intake increases VLDL production. He didn't say it increases cholesterol plasma levels. He didn't say increases in VLDL half-life was its only effect.There was a lot of other detail in your post, and it would be interesting to visit this information in greater detail, but it's just too difficult to do this because you continually dirty the water with a great deal of nonsense. This discussion has been one of you making erroneous claims and accusations and me correcting them, and it's becoming an unending exercise. Nothing productive can emerge until you start saying things that are actually true. If Taubes is wrong he can only be wrong about things he actually says, not things you falsely accuse him of saying.If you want to embark upon an honest, open and objective examination of Taubes' claims then I'm with you, and we'll let the evidence tell the story. But if you can only continue as you are then I'm really not interested.--Percy

Other than this mention, I couldn't find any reference to an interview in your message. Did you forget to include a link? If you're referring to information in an earlier message you'll have to tell me which one.If you're going to continue to take an adversarial approach then you're on your own. I'm not going on a voyage of discovery with someone who clams up about her own many errors while clubbing me about the head and shoulders for my own and a large number of errors she made up herself. If you want a fight you're coming to the wrong person, and if you want a productive discussion then you're going about it the wrong way.--Percy

This thread has recently passed the 100 message point, so this is a good time to repeat the main points of Taubes' book. They are:

1. Increased carbohydrate intake increases levels of small dense LDLs in the bloodstream, which evidence indicates are a significant contributing factor to heart disease.
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2. Increased carbohydrate intake increases insulin levels in the bloodstream, causing fat tissues to emphasize intake of fatty acids. In other words, carbohydrates make you fat, particularly the refined carbohydrates in bread, pasta, candy and soda.

Dr. Ron Krauss features prominently in Taubes' book, and in a November 2, 2007, Talk of the Nation program on NPR they were both interviewed by Ira Flatow, here's the link: Not All Calories Are Created Equal, Author SaysDuring the interview Krauss often tries to moderate what he feels are oversimplifications that Taubes makes, but the two are largely in agreement, which makes sense since a significant portion of Taubes' book is based upon Krauss' research. On the subject of heart disease, at approximately 16:00 in the interview, after describing their initial suspicions about fat and LDL cholesterol, Ron Krauss says: Dr. Krauss reinforces this again around 18:50: So the lesson of Taubes' book is that to reduce the risk of heart disease and obesity, lower your carbohydrate intake.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

According to anecdotal reports I've read on the web, people regain the weight they've lost as frequently on low carbohydrate diets as on low fat diets. One of the reasons I wanted to try a low carbohydrate diet was to try to understand why this is so, and now I think I have an inkling.First a status report: after about 7 weeks I'm down 10-1/2 pounds. I'd been on a plateau for a couple weeks before losing another pound in the last few days.It would be nice to lose weight faster, but I have to be careful. If I lose weight too fast, my experience in the past has been that I lose stamina. On the tennis court this translates into having to quit before being done, which frustrates partners no end.Anyway, the low carbohydrate diet continues to be one where there is no hunger, especially not of the raw, gnawing kind that overcomes all willpower. Taubes calls low fat/low calorie diets near-starvation diets (usually 1600 calories/day or less), but I call them willpower diets. You can maintain a willpower diet for as long as your willpower exceeds your hunger. Hunger always wins eventually. It works on your mind causing you to daydream about food in the middle of the day, and it wakes you from a sound sleep. Eventually your mind loses all rational control and you don't care about the diet anymore and you eat. And eat and eat.So if low carbohydrate diets do not cause hunger, why do people go off them? I think I'm beginning to figure out why.First, a low carbohydrate diet is monotonous. There just aren't a whole lot of foods that are very low in carbohydrates. Unprocessed meat is the only food source I can think of that has zero carbohydrates. Anything made with refined flour is off limits. Anything made with sugar is off limits. Starchy foods are off limits. High fructose fruits like grapes are off-limits. Even all-bran cereals have high levels of carbohydrates. There just aren't a whole lot of food choices.But while I think this contributes to the difficulty of adhering to low carb diets, I think the primary reason is that food urges don't go away. They're not as strong as hunger, but they've become a presence in the past couple weeks, and I'm finding it harder and harder to pass up pastry, candy and ice cream, even though I'm not hungry. I'm beginning to yearn for something sweet.I've been able to hold off this yearning by eating South Beach Diet Snack Bars once a day (about 15 grams of carbohydrates), and by drinking zero calorie/carbohydrate diet soda, but I'm beginning to suspect that they don't work as well as they should. I've read that there's an anticipatory insulin response to glucose intake, one that begins before digestion can actually begin to add any glucose to the bloodstream to cause the pancreatic insulin response. If this response is caused by the taste of sweetness, then these diet foods are counter-productive.--Percy

Mobiogirl's opposition to Taubes has never been rational nor accurate, as her tone and many errors throughout this thread indicate. I'll take the time to point out her more serious errors, but I won't engage in a dialogue because experience to this point indicates that it would be neither productive nor informative, especially given her tendency to jump to conclusions and her many citations of inapplicable research results, not to mention the continual ad hominem.Contradicting her characterization of Dr. Krauss in the NPR interview, this is from my quote of Dr. Krauss in Message 109 about carbohydrates' role in heart disease, and it is very supportive of Taubes: I'll respond to this comment from Molbiogirl about low carbohydrate diets: I'm not sure what precise point Mobiogirl is trying to make, but she has been consistent in this thread in criticizing low carbohydrate diets. The specifics of her criticisms contradict the view of nutritional researchers, who tend to characterize low carbohydrate diets as effective but nutritionally risky, or as a low calorie diet in disguise because of the restrictive food choices.As I described in earlier messages, the older I get, the less effective low calorie diets have become. I've tried to lose weight on three occasions in my life. About 10 years ago I was able to lose weight on 1600 calories/day. About 5 years ago I found I had to go to 1400 calories/day. And starting about a year ago I found that even at 1200 calories/day that I could not lose weight at all.So about 7 weeks ago I switched to a low carbohydrate diet, and though I don't really track the calories, I'd estimate they're around 1600 calories/day. In that period I've lost 10-1/2 pounds, and I'm never hungry.Molbiogirl is claiming it's water loss, as if weight loss will now cease until I cut calories further. We will see, but she certainly seems to have no reluctance to climb out on limbs.Weight loss is not a matter of a simple calorie equation. Losing weight is not just a matter of reducing calorie intake because hormones have far more control. Reduced calorie intake will cause reduced energy expenditure. Increased energy expenditure will cause increased calorie intake. And levels of various hormones have the most control over fat storage. It is probably something related to hormones that makes weight loss more and more difficult as one grows older.--Percy

Just correcting a few things from Molbiogirl's Message 112...I can't pretend to understand why she is doing this, but in this message Molbiogirl, as she has done throughout this thread, misinterprets what she is reading, or in this case, hearing. Anyone who listens to the interview (Not All Calories Are Created Equal, Author Says) can see that while Krauss believes Taubes oversimplifies the science, he agrees that carbohydrates plays a far more significant role in obesity, diabetes and heart disease than previously believed.I quote Dr. Krauss's key statement on this once again: Concerning metabolic syndrome, we're coming to understand that while some people are more genetically predisposed than others, there is a progression from normal to metabolic syndrome to type 2 diabetes in which carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate intake, plays a significant role.Taubes' important contribution is in calling to our attention to the fact that during the precise period when nutritional experts where telling us to reduce fat intake (which means increasing carbohydrate intake, since we have to eat something), the nation got dramatically fatter and more diabetic and atherosclerotic. Obviously something is very wrong with the dietary advice we've been getting.The past half century corresponds to a dramatic increase in carbohydrate intake, and while the metabolic pathways involved are indeed intricate and complex, anything that affects such a broad swathe of the population across almost all regions and ethnicities cannot be subtle. Increased intake of refined carbohydrates from fast food restaurants and supermarkets is the incredibly obvious common denominator, yet our supermarkets continue to be filled with aisle after aisle of low-fat high-carbohydrate food.Michael Pollan's advice is pretty much on the mark (Michael Pollan is author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food). He echos much of what Taubes says, including how immature the research is into the relationship between health and diet, but he focuses less on the science and more on the general outline of things. He says that if you eat what your great grandmother ate then you should do pretty well. I'd go back further than that and say that if you eat what cave men ate you'll do even better. Our eyes are in the front of heads. We're omnivores with a carnivorous evolutionary background, not glucose processing machines.--Percy

In Message 115 and Message 116 Molbiogirl continues her irrational vendetta against Taubes, and this time she has brought reinforcements in the form of quotes from other researchers who are also, apparently, more than willing to issue caustic comments about Taubes. I'll spare everyone a dreary rebuttal of her many points and just address the first significant one, but it is typical of what has gone before.This is from Message 115 about researcher Gerald Reaven, who appears both in Taubes' New York Times Magazine article (What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?, you need a subscription, but it's free) and in Taubes' book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, that is the subject of this thread.Molbiogirl provides two excerpts from Big Fat Fake: The Atkins diet controversy and the sorry state of science journalism by Michael Fumento that appeared in the March, 2003, edition of ReasonOnline, and I reproduce them here: And what did Taubes write concerning Reaven in his New York Times article? He's featured in a couple paragraphs in the middle of an eleven page article. Here's everything Taubes wrote about Reaven: It appears that Reaven objects not to what he is quoted as saying, which he concedes is accurate, but to being included in an article that challenges the conventional wisdom of his profession. For this supposed misdeed Reaven feels he has the right to issue harsh and unfair criticisms of Taubes. Apparently Taubes' descriptions in his book about the zeal with which some researchers defend their status quo is accurate.I have wasted far too much time already tracking many charges and accusations from Molbiogirl that turn out to be false and without foundation. Why she is so hostilely energized by Taubes position on carbohydrates is a mystery to me, but I'll spend no more time on the content of those two messages. I encourage others who may be interested to investigate their accuracy and post here, but I don't really see much point to it. At this point it has become just a case of waiting for the next diatribe instead of discussing actual science. But if anything of substance emerges at some point I'm committed to looking into it.A brief status report on the diet: huge wedding and family get together combined with the holiday weekend to thrust my diet upon the shoals and leave it in wreckage. I'm up a pound.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I again invite others who may be interested to check out what Molbiogirl says in her latest post, Message 118. I've already wasted too much time checking out her false accusations and jumped-to conclusions.If anyone's interested in objectively exploring this issue, it would certainly be welcome.--Percy

My reaction to Molbiogirl's latest Message 120 is that there's really no point in responding to her until she starts saying things that are actually true. For instance here she accuses Taubes of claiming a cure for heart disease, diabetes and obesity: I don't understand why she's gone so way over the top, but it's just not possible to have a rational dialogue with this type of stuff.--Percy

I tried hard for several weeks to have a rational discussion with you, and I found that it just wasn't possible. I made a number of requests for you to rein in your more caustic and hyperbolic side, to make sure you were making claims that were actually true, and to make an effort to reduce the number of errors by making sure the research you cite actually aligns with your claims. I said on a number of occasions that I couldn't continue discussion with you if you continued this pattern. You ignored this, and so I've ceased discussion with you.You know, the "alienate and browbeat" approach just doesn't have a great record of success, and when combined with excessive error and hyperbole it's just a disaster. If Taubes is wrong then a dispassionate discussion of the evidence will show he's wrong, and it won't have anything to do with how good a mudslinger you are.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I'm going to restate this thread's premise so as to keep the fundamental issues clear.Taubes makes note of a significant contradiction:

• The dietary fat hypothesis has held sway in nutritional circles over the past 30 years. The dietary fat hypothesis holds that diets too high in fat are the cause of the diseases of western civilization: heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and obesity.
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• Over the same past 30 years these same diseases of western civilization have significantly worsened. More accurately, all but one have significantly worsened while heart disease rates remain undiminished.

This is no coincidence, Taubes claims, and his book explains why the scientific research does not support the dietary fat hypothesis, which became accepted in the days when the data was mostly about serum cholesterol levels and before there was much detailed knowledge about HDLs, LDLs, VHDLs, a host of other related factors, the healthy levels of them, and so forth.His book also explains why the carbohydrate hypothesis makes much more sense, based not only upon the increases in carbohydrate intake that have occurred over the same period, but also upon the scientific studies that have been performed thus far. Taubes does emphasize that much more research remains to be done because the carbohydrate hypothesis has been insufficiently explored, the lion's share of research attention going toward the dietary fat hypothesis.Another reason why a low carbohydrate diet makes sense is that throughout much of human evolutionary history, carbohydrates were not a significant proportion of our diet. Carbohydrates have gradually increased in proportion in modern diets over the past few hundred years, but in western civilizations in modern times it has exploded because of the ready availability of highly refined carbohydrates in the form of sugar (sucrose), bread and pasta. We need fat to survive, we need protein to survive, but we do not need carbohydrates. The FDA sets a minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates of 300 grams, but a more reasonable level would be 50 grams, with 200 grams set as an absolute maximum.It is this last point that is made in another book that I've just started reading, Living the Low Carb Life by Jonny Bowden. I wasn't looking for another book about the carbohydrate hypothesis, but I'm hard to buy presents for, so looking for ideas for my birthday my wife looked through the health section of Barnes and Noble for diet/health books with extensive bibliographies and/or footnotes at the end, and she found this one.I'm only about 20% through the book so far. Bowden makes many of the same points as Taubes, but he does it with a greater emphasis on diet, where Taubes emphasis was focused on a broader spectrum of health issues. Bowden does address all the same health issues as Taubes, but much more briefly, but because Bowden's primary focus is diet, his bibliography includes more references to dietary studies than did Taubes'. If I find any that seem like they would be helpful to this thread I'll provide them.Interestingly, while poking around for some of the papers cited by Bowden in the early part of his book where he's recounting the history of dietary research (I found them through PubMed, but none had even an abstract, they were all from the 1950s) I found this paper: Thermodynamics and Metabolic Advantage of Weight Loss Diets. The abstract states: In other words, they're attempting a well grounded scientific refutation of the claim that only calories matter ("a calorie is a calorie"). When one looks into the history of research regarding calories one quickly becomes uncomfortable with the fact that it has become the centerpiece of much conventional wisdom about diets. For example, on page 11 Bowden recounts: And certainly no one could dispute how dominate the calorie hypothesis has become. Calories are listed first on all nutritional labels, and reduction of calorie intake is the advice of all diets based upon the dietary fat hypothesis. But as any experienced dieter will tell you, the calorie hypothesis doesn't add up.Concerning my own diet, I've just broken through my last plateau of 10-1/2 pounds in the last few days and am now down 12 pounds. Some might have noticed that earlier in the thread when I mentioned plateaus it was targeted as a criticism of low carbohydrate diets. But as anyone who has dieted (and that's any diet, low-fat, low-carb or anything else) will tell you, all diets contain plateaus. The common shared experience among dieters is that we seem to be following the exact same diet with the same degree of dedication as before, but for a while weight loss just stops. But if we continue the diet, at some point the weight loss resumes, and we have no explanation for why weight loss stopped or why it started again. Plateaus are in the index to Bowden's book with four subtopics listed, that's how common they are. Anyone who criticizes a diet because those who follow it encounter plateaus is just too lacking in familiarity with dieting to be qualified to comment.The wonderful thing about the low carbohydrate diet is that you're not constantly battling hunger, a battle you'll never win.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.