Author Topic: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?  (Read 197815 times)

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #50 on: 29 January, 2013, 08:45:32 am »
Good Calories Bad Calories is the American version of "The Diet Delusion" . But "Bad Science" is probably his best book.

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #51 on: 29 January, 2013, 08:53:56 am »
I'm wondering if the reduction of carbs in my diet is making me more sympathetic to conspiracy theories.
 There's an awful lot of money being made from carbohydrates. It's not in the interests of global conglomerates for fat people to stop eating sugar. Who funds the research? Gatorade?

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #52 on: 29 January, 2013, 09:11:52 am »
And Kellogg's?

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #53 on: 29 January, 2013, 09:12:06 am »
There is money in selling food. Stick sugar in food, it tastes good (particularly to young people). Tastes good, we eat more, companies/shops sell more.

Sugar + fat is even more of an appetite stimulant. Terrible combination if you are trying to control your weight.  'scuse me, I need to go get some chocolate.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Andrew

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #54 on: 29 January, 2013, 09:55:03 am »
This is so refreshing to me. I'm enjoying the discussion. This kind of sums it up for me..

Quote
I'm not saying he's right. But he prompted me to think more about the problem.

I've kept my interest in low carbing pretty much to myself as such talk seems to upset some. I have no idea what 'the truth' is but I find this particular alternative worth looking at and experimenting with.


Chris S

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #55 on: 29 January, 2013, 10:14:53 am »
I'm wondering if the reduction of carbs in my diet is making me more sympathetic to conspiracy theories.
 There's an awful lot of money being made from carbohydrates. It's not in the interests of global conglomerates for fat people to stop eating sugar. Who funds the research? Gatorade?

Not to mention Big Pharma, in whose interest it is to keep us sick.

Find a cure for metabolic syndrome, and the statins market would disappear.

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #56 on: 29 January, 2013, 10:19:45 am »
Chris, I'm assuming that was tongue in cheek.

A lot of my family died young from heart disease and they certainly weren't stuffed with sugar and excess carbs (due to rationing).

The ones that are still alive are alive due to modern drugs and surgery.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Chris S

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #57 on: 29 January, 2013, 10:50:46 am »
I didn't in any way wish to cast aspersions on your family, mrcharly.

But by and large and genetics aside, CVD is mostly avoidable. Drug intervention does wonders for keeping people alive and well.

My doctor once said to me "Chris, two thirds of the people in my waiting room are there because of their lifestyle choices."

(That was when I was having my "Well Man" session when I turned 40, and he famously said "I hope you're not making too many plans for your retirement...")

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #58 on: 29 January, 2013, 10:55:09 am »
I find it very hard to understand why we evolved such a crappy fueling scheme as the carbohydrate/insulin/glycogen model - that at best gives you a few hours of activity before you have to eat again, or fall over - whilst sidelining a much more efficient, cleaner, and longer lasting fuel supply - in the lipid/ketone model.

Which leads me to think - perhaps our fixation with carbohydrate has in fact flipped us all around. That in fact, we evolved to primarily use the lipid/ketone system and subsist on minimal quantities of carbs (berries, nuts and leafy stuff - perhaps tubers), and our carb/insulin/glycogen fuel supply is actually an emergency supply for rapid response such as flight or fight, which requires fast acting energy input that only anerobic chemistry (glycogen) can provide.

The large quantities of carbs in the typical western diet has to be processed by insulin. If it's not used immediately for fuel, it's stored in the fat cells for later, and we get a bit fatter. Whilst this is going on, stored fat is preserved and you are fueled mainly  by dietary fat and glycogen.
If you've got obese, and want to lose body fat, you need to sideline insulin as much as possible, so as to free up the mobilisation of stored fat. Several forms of diet do this indirectly - even just cutting calories does, because proportionately you cut more carbs than anything else. Removing sugar and refined carbs also helps, as these give the biggest insulin response.

The problem with cutting calories but still eating a high carb diet is, you get hungry. Equally, if you exercise more - you get hungry.
Two things:
1) Think about how our pre-agricultural ancestors lived. What Mr Charly said is one aspect of this -
Quote
In a time when we didn't have heating, quick energy sources that either got used or stored as fat are a great thing.
.
Another is that the only way they had to store food for long was in their own bodies. Obesity was not a problem. Starvation was. Get hungry when you're exercising, even though you have fat reserves - so what?  Get hungry when you cut your calorie intake below the level needed to sustain body weight? Doh! Of course! What would you expect?

We haven't evolved an 'off' switch for over-eating because there's no evolutionary need for one. What mechanism could cause one to evolve? We did not evolve surrounded by 24 hour convenience stores. Our ancestors had to work for every calorie.

If a diet does have the effect of switching off appetite when one is overweight, I think that's probably a signal that it's not the diet we evolved to cope with, & is triggering inappropriate reactions.

Purely on evolutionary grounds, I'd expect us to have a preference for foods with a high energy density which give quick blood sugar hits, followed by high energy density/slow release/storable, followed by whatever we can get that has some nutritional value, & with cravings for things which are rich in anything we're deficient in whenever we have dietary deficiencies.

2) Our closest relatives are opportunistic omnivores, with carbohydrate-heavy diets. They eat lots & lots of fruit, but also less sweet vegetables, & a bit of meat - which they sometimes obtain via organised hunts.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #59 on: 29 January, 2013, 11:07:34 am »
I love the way the skinny people know so much about what drives the obese.

Surely, obesity isn't an evolutionary advantage. It makes you less fertile, less able to escape, less fit for survival and reproduction. I can't think of any wild mammals, no matter how as lib their feeding regime who get fat unless there is a specific reason for it. Hibernation, starvation they're 'planning for', insulation against cold water, desert water storage.

I think there's more to it than calories in calories out, because otherwise half the western world is weak willed and lazy, and I just don't believe that's true. I'm not weak willed and lazy, I'm fat. I'm sick of loathing myself because my chemistry doesn't work fast enough.
I don't know if low carb high fat is the answer, but I do know that we don't know everything, yet, and some of the current thinking is at best unhelpful.

Re: Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #60 on: 29 January, 2013, 11:21:57 am »
Haters?  Odd choice of word.  It was a reasonable critique.

Poor choice of words. Taubes is a science journalist. He looks for inconsistencies in research - and quite possibly makes his own as the critique alludes to - and this doesn't win you any friends.

I think there's a lot of mileage in what  Taubes has to say. It's why I'm experimenting...
Very poor choice of words indeed. Perhaps you should think about why you wrote it.

I've not read the book, so can't fully judge the criticism, but it reads to me as perfectly reasonable - and damning. To take one example, the point on under reporting of calorie intake by obese people is, as the reviewer says, very well established. It's been demonstrated even when the subjects were in controlled environments where they knew their food intake was being measured. It's been postulated that it's a cause, not a result, of obesity.

If on reading the book I found Taubes really hasn't taken that into account, then I'd stop reading there, unless I felt like reading on in a "let's see how much more crap there is" mood. It's basic stuff, not a minor error.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #61 on: 29 January, 2013, 11:43:34 am »
I didn't in any way wish to cast aspersions on your family, mrcharly.

But by and large and genetics aside, CVD is mostly avoidable. Drug intervention does wonders for keeping people alive and well.

My doctor once said to me "Chris, two thirds of the people in my waiting room are there because of their lifestyle choices."
That would apply to the family. My father, having lost Mum, Dad, brother (and another brother with serious heart disease), was terrified of obesity and horribly critical of people who were fat. His immediate family were all huge people - and on the whole, physically inactive (so entirely unlike you and boab). My first wife was (and is) a 'substantial' lady and my father was very critical of this.
My dad was physically energetic and did manual work all his life. Mum supervised his eating tho'. So his lifestyle helped keep him going. Still got serious heart disease before he was 65.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #62 on: 29 January, 2013, 11:44:53 am »
Surely, obesity isn't an evolutionary advantage. It makes you less fertile, less able to escape, less fit for survival and reproduction. I can't think of any wild mammals, no matter how as lib their feeding regime who get fat unless there is a specific reason for it. Hibernation, starvation they're 'planning for', insulation against cold water, desert water storage.
I'm afraid you've missed the point. Of course obesity isn't an evolutionary advantage - but that doesn't matter to evolution. Wild animals don't have the opportunity to become obese, so they don't become obese. Therefore, they don't evolve internal mechanisms for preventing it. They don't need such mechanisms. There is no evolutionary pressure to evolve them, no way in which they can evolve. There are external mechanisms which work perfectly well, some of which you allude to.

Our problem is that we've eliminated those external mechanisms. For most human societies, external mechanisms remained in place for most people, until very recently (productivity of agriculture meant price of food in relation to average income was too high for most people to over-eat, most work was manual, etc.), but now, for the first time ever, calorie consumption for a large part of the human population is constrained by appetite instead of supply.

I'm not going to criticise anyone for being unable to do something which they have no inbuilt mechanism for. I'm well aware that I have my own motivation problems (& no, I'm not going to say what). But saying it is so is not criticism, whether of individuals or the mass.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #63 on: 29 January, 2013, 02:12:15 pm »
Ever such a lot of fad diets (the one where you cut out gluten, the one where you can't have carbs, the one where you can only squirt lemon juice in your eyes and beat your head against a wall in place of meals) have a whole lot of hokum surrounding the one detail of "stop eating processed food."

I've lost count of the number of colleagues who have brightly told me that they learned they were gluten intolerant after losing half a stone.  The idea that it might just be the loss of their daily Krispy Kreme rather than an actual food intolerance didn't seem to have occurred.  Ditto people who have ascertained that their blood group doesn't permit Krispy Kremes, or found that carbs disagree with them via Atkins, and people who are trying to eat a stone age diet, or even the ones on the Maple Bloody Syrup Diet or the ones who are quite possibly picking through sheep entrails to divine their perfect diet: they all have the one thing in common. Step away from the lovely delicious processed cake.

Julian's posted this -> over there somewhere. Sounds really reasonable, doesn't it?

Until you realise that some of us are ditching the calories from that lovely delicious processed cake, to the same calories from lovely delicious processed double cream. And losing weight.

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #64 on: 29 January, 2013, 02:23:19 pm »
Until you realise that some of us are ditching the calories from that lovely delicious processed cake, to the same calories from lovely delicious processed double cream. And losing weight.
You do make me wonder if the real EvilSubstance here is sugar, in its many forms.

If I could eat butter with butter on it, I would.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #65 on: 29 January, 2013, 02:36:27 pm »
If I could eat butter with butter on it, I would.

I think we had that, at the weekend...

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #66 on: 29 January, 2013, 02:44:29 pm »
curse you.

I'm going to start eating my old breakfast standby again, half a bowl of nuts with enough thick cream to cover them.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #67 on: 29 January, 2013, 02:49:01 pm »
Until you realise that some of us are ditching the calories from that lovely delicious processed cake, to the same calories from lovely delicious processed double cream. And losing weight.

It's not very processed though - isn't it just separated from the milk by spinning it round? If that counts as "processed food" then so is peeling a carrot.
Quote from: tiermat
that's not science, it's semantics.

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #68 on: 29 January, 2013, 03:09:53 pm »
Pasteurized

Separated

<i>Marmite slave</i>

RichForrest

  • T'is I, Silverback.
    • Ramblings of a silverback cyclist
Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #69 on: 29 January, 2013, 03:13:21 pm »
Until you realise that some of us are ditching the calories from that lovely delicious processed cake, to the same calories from lovely delicious processed double cream. And losing weight.
You do make me wonder if the real EvilSubstance here is sugar, in its many forms.

If I could eat butter with butter on it, I would.

I think you've hit it spot on here. I've found when I eat anything sweet I'll be hungry again in a couple of hours.
My other one was always bread.
Rough idea what my day was like
Cereal and toast for breakfast. Blood sugar level drops a couple of hrs later and hungry again but too early for lunch. What to eat?
Sandwich, quick and easy.
Lunchtime another couple of hrs later, Already eaten mid morning so don't want nothing much.
Bugger it I'll have another sandwich.
I cut out a lot of processed food and don't feel as hungry now even with eating less.
I've noticed the same with yogurt, eating named brands with "flavours" in and I'll be hungry again in about 1.5 / 2hrs. Eating natural yogurt I don't get that same feeling.

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #70 on: 29 January, 2013, 03:33:48 pm »
I think one key is the assumption that one has to eat as soon as one feels hungry. If I feel hungry half way between meals, I'll eat only if I feel that the hunger will become distracting. I think that slight hunger means "I can eat", not "I should eat".

Well, unless you're riding an audax, or the like.  ;)

When food supplies are erratic, the distinction is unimportant. You eat when you have food, & then you eat as much as possible. When you have all the food you can eat, all the time, it matters a lot.

It's like the old saying that one should always finish a meal feeling one could have eaten a bit more. Inappropriate advice to a hunter-gatherer, but IMO absolutely right for someone in a food-rich society.

I think we're programmed to eat more than we need, because it's the best way to make sure we can eat enough to get through shortages. Feeling a bit hungry was probably normal for our pre-agricultural ancestors. The "alternative hypothesis" lot who classify obesity as a growth disorder, rather than an expected response to our evolutionary heritage, are wrong. The people with growth disorders are those who don't put on weight when they don't have a restricted food intake. Come a famine, they'd be the first to go.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Julian

  • samoture
Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #71 on: 29 January, 2013, 03:42:43 pm »
Ever such a lot of fad diets (the one where you cut out gluten, the one where you can't have carbs, the one where you can only squirt lemon juice in your eyes and beat your head against a wall in place of meals) have a whole lot of hokum surrounding the one detail of "stop eating processed food."

I've lost count of the number of colleagues who have brightly told me that they learned they were gluten intolerant after losing half a stone.  The idea that it might just be the loss of their daily Krispy Kreme rather than an actual food intolerance didn't seem to have occurred.  Ditto people who have ascertained that their blood group doesn't permit Krispy Kremes, or found that carbs disagree with them via Atkins, and people who are trying to eat a stone age diet, or even the ones on the Maple Bloody Syrup Diet or the ones who are quite possibly picking through sheep entrails to divine their perfect diet: they all have the one thing in common. Step away from the lovely delicious processed cake.

Julian's posted this -> over there somewhere. Sounds really reasonable, doesn't it?

Until you realise that some of us are ditching the calories from that lovely delicious processed cake, to the same calories from lovely delicious processed double cream. And losing weight.

I'm being curmudgeonly :)

I don't have a problem with people working out what works for them - it's none of my business.  I'm sure that for some people the high-fat low-carb thing works well, just as others swear by low-fat high-carb.  Wevs.  What does irk me is the office "Beach Bodies" brigade whose non-dieting diet is pastry for breakfast, kitkat midmorning, sandwich for lunch (or nothing because that's "being good"), bottle of wine in the evening* coming over and preaching to me about their latest fad diet when their weight loss is nothing to do with the new fad diet and everything to do with not being 'allowed' heavily processed high-fat high-sugar foods. I don't believe in miracles and I'm buggered if I'm going to be shamed into drinking lemon juice for dinner for a week just because some idiot** read it in Grazia.



*My diet is not dissimilar to this, except it contains more pork pie.
** Idiots doing Grazia diets are not necessarily in the same Venn diagram as people investigating what eating plans work well for them.

Chris S

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #72 on: 29 January, 2013, 04:02:21 pm »
I've not read about or encountered anyone who didn't show "improvements" in their metabolic state, when they cut out refined carbohydrates like sugar, flour and starch. Plenty of others here with their own Paleo/low carb stories.

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #73 on: 29 January, 2013, 04:29:39 pm »
Flour isn't necessarily any more refined than just being ground up. And that's not what we've been discussing, is it? Cutting out refined sugar & refined starch isn't the same as a ketogenic diet.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Chris S

Re: Ketogenic diet - fad or phenom?
« Reply #74 on: 29 January, 2013, 04:40:40 pm »
Flour isn't necessarily any more refined than just being ground up. And that's not what we've been discussing, is it? Cutting out refined sugar & refined starch isn't the same as a ketogenic diet.

It's a sliding scale. The further you go down it, the more ketogenic you get.

You may be surprised if you were to see what I eat. As I said upthread - it's meat/fish/dairy with salads, non-starchy veggies, and small amounts of berries and nuts. The motivation behind it might be controversial - if Taubes' credentials are that dubious - but the actual diet isn't.

There's a lecture given by Robert Lustig on YouTube somewhere, about sugar/HFCS and obesity. Near the start he says, "Eat real food. There - that's all you need to know. You can go home now". That's kind of what we're doing, eating real food and no refined sugars and carbs.