Low Carb High Fat

[The Jogger]

Is cholesterol the real devil it is made out to be or is it sugar. I have been researching the LCHF way of eating and the more I read and watch, the more I feel we have been conned by the food industry.

This really does make sense in my view.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...big-fat-surprise-about-nutrition-9692121.html

http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf

 

[Fab Foodie]

Is cholesterol the real devil it is made out to be or is it sugar. I have been researching the LCHF way of eating and the more I read and watch, the more I feel we have been conned by the food industry.

This really does make sense in my view.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...big-fat-surprise-about-nutrition-9692121.html

http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf

Can't say I'm surprised.
One thing is clear is that the rapid rise in Obesity in the UK especially childhood obesity correlates very well with the rise of the low fat/high carb diet in the early 80s ... can't say I ever thought this a good idea.
(OK Correlation is not causation).

Moderation in all things, low processed foods, high veg seems a good way forward to me.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Feck! I've just agreed with The Jogger!
Except ... it's wasn't the Food Industry wot did it, it was the medical/health/diet/fad industry. My lot just provide the means ....

 

[The Jogger]

Feck! I've just agreed with The Jogger!
Except ... it's wasn't the Food Industry wot did it, it was the medical/health/diet/fad industry. My lot just provide the means ....

Come on FF you know it's not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last

 

[Fab Foodie]

Come on FF you know it's not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last

Damn ... you got me!

 

[Arsen Gere]

There was an interesting Horizon programme by Dr.Michael Mosley on this subject and meat. It looks like processed meats are the real bad things, lovely stuff like bacon and sausages. There was another study which picked up on L-carnitine (found in meat) which was based on giving people high doses and it looks like the bacteria in the gut convert it to stuff that causes heart attack's and strokes. It is interesting to see that some of the research is shifting to the bacteria that live on us and in us. They are thought to be responsible for the health giving benefits of oats too. I got a nutrition expert who had been working with the elite triathlon team to come and do a talk. He had adjusted some diets to include more fats to enable them to complete races without running out of energy.

 

[gurninman]

I live on a low carb, high fat diet
I'm diabetic and was 127Kg at the beginning of July.I'm now 111Kg, feel fitter than I have for years and never feel hungry.My blood sugars are spot-on, so much so that I don't need meds any more.
HDL/LDL ratio much improved, too.All while eating butter freely, pork chops with crispy fat on, full cream milk and loads of eggs and cheese.I was a real carb addict, could eat mounds of rice /pasta/spuds but now only really miss fresh bread on occasion.A lot of recent studies have shown that saturated fat isn't the big evil we've been taught.Rather, eating a low carb diet really precludes processed food - so no money to be made from big business.No wonder we don't see it pushed more heavily, eh ?

 

[srw]

Rather, eating a low carb diet really precludes processed food - so no money to be made from big business.No wonder we don't see it pushed more heavily, eh ?

You mean - other than the millions of books and food products sold under the lable of "Atkins"? I've lost count of the number of places I've seen "low-carb" ready meals available recently.

So far as I can tell, the real issue is that people eat more than they need - it's elementary physics. There are a heck of a lot of reasons why that happens, which is a fascinating topic touching on psychology, biology, marketing and chemistry. With the possible exception of the fat-sugar combo no individual food or ingredient is intrinsically bad, but it's all very available, expectations of portion sizes have increased, and the food (sorry FF) and marketing industries have got very good at persuading us to consume it.

 

[yello]

Not sure what it has to do with "physics", elementary or otherwise.

Type the name 'Robert Lustig' into the search bar and read what he has to say about sugar. Interresting stuff.

Carb itself is not, IMHO, the devil. It's the type (fast v slow sugars) AND the amount/balance of it in our diets. We're probably eating more carb percentage wise in our diets than 20/30 years ago, both knowingly and unknowingly. There's sugar in some processed foods that you'd not expect, nor see as necessary.

I think there's a great deal more to be learnt about diet and nutrition. I believe it to be both more complex and more personal than we're popularly lead to believe. Suffice it to say, I believe the simplistic 'calories in, calories out' mantra to be misleading.

 

[Flying Dodo]

I've been on a low carb/high fat (a.k.a ketogenic) lifestyle for 18 months now. Prior to starting this, I weighed around 81 kg (I'm 6ft) and it had taken me a couple of years to get down to that from around 87Kg. Virtually eliminating carbs (especially sugar) meant I lost 8 kg in 8 weeks, and after about 3 months, my weight stabilised at 70 kg, and my beer gut, which previously I couldn't get rid off, has gone.

I only switched after doing a lot of research and reading up about it, including some very technical books by Drs. Phinney & Volek which went into a lot of detail about the changes the body undergoes on a low carb lifestyle, and also about how much the food industry had pumped out the incorrect message in the last 40 years or more, by reducing fat and compensating for the resultant lack of taste by bulking up with various forms of sugar. There's also the naive view that eating fat means that fat is then deposited around the body and also raises cholesterol levels, which isn't the case. Sadly the UK medical industry is quite a few years behind the US, as in the States they're increasingly aware that carbs are the problem, not fat. In fact the diet was first used 100 years ago to help control epilepsy, but it's only recently that they've understood the changes in the brain chemistry as to why it reduces or stops seizures.

I can quite easily do a 100 mile ride at 16 mph and not need anything to eat anything at all, as burning fat is all the body needs. You don't, and in fact can't bonk, as you're not needing to rely on limited supplies of glycogen, which for anyone eating carbs means they have to keep eating. So that also means no more sticky gels when on the bike. And the fact I get to cook and eat with butter & cream is nice as well.

 

[srw]

Not sure what it has to do with "physics", elementary or otherwise.

Type the name 'Robert Lustig' into the search bar and read what he has to say about sugar. Interresting stuff.

The wiki-entry reads like yet another person who's over-simplified a very complex subject. Yes, corn syrup is bad, but not because it's intrinsically dangerous or evil - simply because it's used as a very cheap way to make crap food more palatable, which incidentally also makes it highly calorific.

The physics stuff is simple - when I was doing physics energy was part of physics (it may have changed since the 1980s, but I doubt it). There's a very simple and necessary relationship between the amount of energy you take in from your diet and the amount of energy you expend in living. If you take in (i.e. digest) more than you expend you retain it in the form of fat. That's the law of the conservation of energy in action.

Where it gets interesting is in the biochemistry that means that to a certain extent we can regulate our responses to inputs, by upping our energy expenditure (strictly speaking, conversion into kinetic energy for the real pedants), by digesting less (I'm sure most of us are familiar with the temporary effect on the bowels of eating a very oily meal) or by converting stored energy reserves. Add in the psychology of marketing and ingrained behaviours, both animal/genetic (I must eat when food is available!) and learned (Think of the starving children in Africa!), and you get to this:

I think there's a great deal more to be learnt about diet and nutrition. I believe it to be both more complex and more personal than we're popularly lead to believe. Suffice it to say, I believe the simplistic 'calories in, calories out' mantra to be misleading.

 

[yello]

That's the law of the conservation of energy in action.

Whilst I don't question your knowledge of physics, can you say in all honesty say that you know it applies to biological systems? Are laws of thermodynamics and closed systems applicable in biochemistry?

The reason I mentioned Lustig was because he is has perhaps the most extreme anti-sugar views I have encounterted in all of the reading I have down. I wouldn't judge him on a wiki entry alone!

 

[srw]

Feel free to question my knowledge of physics - I'm no expert. But the point about physical laws is that they always apply. (Insert your own caveat about atomic-level scales and Einstein). I can see no reason why the closed system known online as "srw" should be able to get break the laws of physics. If I eat three filled rolls and two bits of bread pudding, then have a full cooked breakfast and a pint of beer (plus, perhaps, one or two more), while only burning 3000 calories in cycling, it's quite likely I'll convert some of the excess calories to stored energy - aka fat or muscle.

 

[Fab Foodie]

You mean - other than the millions of books and food products sold under the lable of "Atkins"? I've lost count of the number of places I've seen "low-carb" ready meals available recently.

So far as I can tell, the real issue is that people eat more than they need - it's elementary physics. There are a heck of a lot of reasons why that happens, which is a fascinating topic touching on psychology, biology, marketing and chemistry. With the possible exception of the fat-sugar combo no individual food or ingredient is intrinsically bad, but it's all very available, expectations of portion sizes have increased, and the food (sorry FF) and marketing industries have got very good at persuading us to consume it.

Agreed on all points!

 

[Fab Foodie]

Feel free to question my knowledge of physics - I'm no expert. But the point about physical laws is that they always apply. (Insert your own caveat about atomic-level scales and Einstein). I can see no reason why the closed system known online as "srw" should be able to get break the laws of physics. If I eat three filled rolls and two bits of bread pudding, then have a full cooked breakfast and a pint of beer (plus, perhaps, one or two more), while only burning 3000 calories in cycling, it's quite likely I'll convert some of the excess calories to stored energy - aka fat or muscle.

Correct, and some recent work shows that it doesn't matter when or how you eat those calories either.
Fat people eat too much for the energy they consume. That's the bottom line. I eat and drink too much, that's why I'm fat. I have a daughter who exercises too much and eats too little. It's called anorexia. She looks like a skeleton. Anybody can use this technique to loose weight. That's the bottom line.