Re: Bekele & Big Macs

On 2006-08-31, Mark Hutchinson <marhutch@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Donovan Rebbechi said...

Here are my assertions -- which ones specifically are wrong, and
why ?

OK, that's better. Let's see what we can do with this.

(1) overconsumption of calories will make you fat

Yes, that's pretty much about as simple as rocket science. No one
is arguing otherwise. However, if you had *read* the article, you

I read enough of that verbose rambling editorial to grasp that much ...
but I'm already familiar with that argument.

[snip]
Calories derived from carbs, especially simple carbs, have a
strong effect on the production of insulin.

But this is greatly overrated. The way Atkins tells it, you would think that
we are all diabetic.

Sure, if you drink a dunkin' donuts coffee with a scoop of sugar, or a "big
gulp", or some corn-syrup laden junk, you will have problems (the fructose
doesn't help either for other reasons)

[snip]
So the source and nature of the calories, not just the absolute
numbers consumed, has a direct effect on weight. If your insulin

No, it's indirect at best.

[snip]
(2) It's harder to overconsume carbs that come with a substantial
amount of dietary fiber, or carbs that have large unit volume per
calorie.

Strawman time again?

No, that's just one of my claims. I wanted to know if you agreed with it
or not.

No one is arguing that it is not harder to overconsume fibrous or
bulky foods, which are typically also more complex carbs with a
lower glycemic index and load.

Great!

What is argued is that it is even
harder to overconsume foods rich in fats and proteins.

So for example, would you say that it's harder to overconsume heavy cream
than, for example, apples or spinach ?

If you substitute fats and proteins for carbs, you will not be
able to eat as much.

I don't think that's true, unless you're talking about *grains* as opposed
to *carbs*.

They are simply more satisfying and make you
feel more sated.

Also has the drawback that high protein foods are more expensive.

If you take in protein that ultimately ends up getting converted into glycogen,
that's an awfully expensive (and probably not very healthy) way to get carbs in
your diet.

It's a fact. And when you feel more sated, you
tend to eat less. Simple as rocket science.

(3) Eat more than you burn and you get fat.

Yes, but that's meaningless to this debate. We all agree that Fat
= Food Intake - Energy Expended.

Great!

The trick is to determine how
you get people to limit the intake. The way you *not* do that is
by encouraging them to limit the intake of fat calories. Why?

Sure. You encourage them to lay off the junk food instead.

[snip]
It's very tempting to simply blame the poor self-discipline of
people when considering the causes of the obesity epidemic. The
problem is that people have always been "undisciplined", so one
must look to other causes. It's absurd to believe that in the
early 80's people just decided all of a sudden to become that
much more "undisciplined".

Instead of blaming the people, it's a lot more logical to suspect
the nutritional recommendations being promoted during this same
time period -

Not if those recommendations are ignored.

The Kenyans and Ethiopians follow a diet not unlike the USDA food
pyramid. It doesn't make them fat. But then, they don't consume high
fructose corn syrup.

namely, the USDA food pyramid emphasizing the

The USDA food pyramid is medieval nonsense, but note that it doesn't
recommend consumption of large amounts of high fructose corn syrup.
If people really did follow the USDA food pyramid, sugar consumption
would have dropped.

substitution of carbs for fat. A simple cause-and-effect
relationship.

You haven't even come close to establishing cause and effect. To do
that, you have to do more than show that two events coincide. Even if
I believed your argument, at best you have shown that it is *plausible*
that this is the cause. It's almost impossible to demonstrate causality
without an intervention and controls (that's why it's still being
debated).

(4) Fats were never "eliminated" from the diet

True, and they are unlikely to be. The key is that during the
period in question the proportion of fat in the American diet went
down, whereas the proportion of carbs went up.

What about the absolute amount, the number of grams of fat ? Did that
go down also ? Or did it go up ?

And in the same
period obesity also went up dramatically. Coincidence? I don't
think so.

I don't think so either. I think if people keep everything constant, and
consume extra carbs, they will get fat.

And if you wish to make the argument that obesity is caused by
lack of exercise, there is no evidence to suggest that Americans
are exercising any less than they were 20-30 years ago. If

There is a lot of debate on this. Not everyone agrees with you. Like
consumption, expenditure is really hard to analyse without interventions.

anything, the proportion of people exercising probably went up.

The proportion of people going to gyms went up. But it's not the yuppie
gym-going crowd that are getting fat.

The evidence still point to carbs as the culprit.

(5) speculation that widely available processed food is the
problem. You actually agree with this (or at least the article
does), you're just more specific about blame attribution.

We ate fats, proteins and complex carbs for a couple of million
years. We are very good at processing those substances. Simpler
carbs did not become abundant until the advent of agriculture in
the last 10,000 years. Refined foods have been generally
available for only a few hundred years. We are simply not designed
evolutionarily to process refined foods properly.

Great, so we agree on this.

(6) most people know what "junk food" is, and what it isn't.

And how do they know this?

Nutrition labels, even casual attention to popular media is enough to
enable one to make "healthy"/"unhealthy" distinctions with reasonable
level of accuracy.

The USDA Food Pyramid has been
encouraging them to eat lots of carbs.

Where is high fructose corn syrup on the USDA food pyramid ?

Do you think most people
will know the glycemic difference between a beef hamburger patty
and a french-fry? They both come from a "junk food" place, right?
But are they both junk food? Perhaps you'd care to define exactly
what junk food is.

Most people would have the common sense to know that a french fry is
junk food, and so is a big mac. The big Mac is stuffed full of calories
(not just fat and protein).

I would wager that most people would correctly guess that a home-cooked
beef pattie on wheat bread is healthier than a big mac, though they might not
know why.

(7) If they ate less junk food, they would end up consuming fewer
calories, fewer high GI carbs, less saturated fat, less trans
fats, etc.

If you define "junk food" as largely simple carbs, then I would
agree. Trans-fats are a different health risk. The jury is still
out on saturated fats as a health risk.

As I have attempted to point out (and you should do your own web
research on this),

Let's just say I've been reading exercise physiology books and studying up
on this stuff for years. I have done more than read a few random web
articles. But thanks for the advice anyway.

a diet high in fats and proteins will not make
you fat. So when you eat a hamburger, it is the bun, not the beef
that will make you fat.

Atkins would be proud of you.

But it's ultimately the calories that will make you fat. Not everyone on low
carb diets magically loses weight. Especially if you don't use common sense and
consider the diet to be some sort of license for gluttony, you are likely to
be disappointed.

Of course if you're running the sort of mileage that both of us run, you will be
pretty damn lean unless you try really hard to avoid it.

[snip]
Try it sometimes. All you have to lose is fat itself.

I have popout veins on my abs. I do not need to get any thinner. My exercise
schedule means that I do need to take some carbs. I prefer a diet that has some
carbs anyway. I am not diabetic, so I see no need to go on a diet designed for
diabetics.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/
.

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