Why is the Federal Government Afraid of Fat? (NYT)

Psychgrrl

I found the article interesting, but the "nutrition" label completely cracked me up!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/opinion/why-is-the-federal-government-afraid-of-fat.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

RodaRose

Wow. They need to catch up.

Recognizing this new evidence, the scientists on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, for the first time in 35 years have sent recommendations to the government without any upper limit on total fat. In addition, reduced-fat foods were specifically not recommended for obesity prevention. Instead, the committee encouraged consumption according to healthful food-based diet patterns.

SunnyPacheco

2% pork and 2% nacho cheese? Sounds delicious.

Orphia

Nice article!

Kalikel

Before this is taken as an "Eat More to Weigh Less!" or "Pizza is the best diet food!" let us not miss this part...

This is not to say that high-fat diets are always healthy, or low-fat diets always harmful. But rather than focusing on total fat or other numbers on the back of the package, the emphasis should be on eating more minimally processed fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, fish, yogurt, vegetable oils and whole grains in place of refined grains, white potatoes, added sugars and processed meats. How much we eat is also determined by what we eat: Cutting calories without improving food quality rarely produces long-term weight loss.

DeguelloTex

Cutting calories, period, rarely produces long-term weight loss, if the 5% success rate can be believed.

Liftng4Lis

SunnyPacheco wrote: »

2% pork and 2% nacho cheese? Sounds delicious.

Agree!

kshama2001

Kalikel wrote: »

Before this is taken as an "Eat More to Weigh Less!" or "Pizza is the best diet food!" let us not miss this part...

This is not to say that high-fat diets are always healthy, or low-fat diets always harmful. But rather than focusing on total fat or other numbers on the back of the package, the emphasis should be on eating more minimally processed fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, fish, yogurt, vegetable oils and whole grains in place of refined grains, white potatoes, added sugars and processed meats. How much we eat is also determined by what we eat: Cutting calories without improving food quality rarely produces long-term weight loss.

Amen.

kshama2001

DeguelloTex wrote: »

Cutting calories, period, rarely produces long-term weight loss, if the 5% success rate can be believed.

It cannot:

95% Regain Lost Weight. Or Do They?

''That 95 percent figure has become clinical lore,'' said Dr. Thomas Wadden, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. There is no basis for it, he said, ''but it's part of the mythology of obesity.''

Dr. Kelly D. Brownell, the director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, said the number was first suggested in a 1959 clinical study of only 100 people. The finding was repeated so often that it came to be regarded as fact, he said.

Since then, nearly all studies of weight-loss recidivism have followed patients in formal hospital or university programs, because they are the easiest to identify and keep track of. But people who turn to such programs may also be the most difficult cases, and may therefore have especially poor success rates.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/25/health/95-regain-lost-weight-or-do-they.html

kshama2001

Psychgrrl wrote: »

I found the article interesting, but the "nutrition" label completely cracked me up!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/opinion/why-is-the-federal-government-afraid-of-fat.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

That's worth some pixels:

DeguelloTex

kshama2001 wrote: »

DeguelloTex wrote: »

Cutting calories, period, rarely produces long-term weight loss, if the 5% success rate can be believed.

It cannot:

95% Regain Lost Weight. Or Do They?

''That 95 percent figure has become clinical lore,'' said Dr. Thomas Wadden, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. There is no basis for it, he said, ''but it's part of the mythology of obesity.''

Dr. Kelly D. Brownell, the director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, said the number was first suggested in a 1959 clinical study of only 100 people. The finding was repeated so often that it came to be regarded as fact, he said.

Since then, nearly all studies of weight-loss recidivism have followed patients in formal hospital or university programs, because they are the easiest to identify and keep track of. But people who turn to such programs may also be the most difficult cases, and may therefore have especially poor success rates.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/25/health/95-regain-lost-weight-or-do-they.html

The failure rate is still unbelievably high, to the point where people in the field talk among themselves that it's almost, not quite but almost, impossible.

I hear the Minnesota Starvation Study was also done on a limited number of people. Does that necessarily mean it's inaccurate?

STrooper

I have been reading Maffetone's most recent books and he makes a similar argument for higher fat content (for higher fat burning), noting that up to half of the carbs we ingest convert to fat because of overactivation of the insulin cycle. My fat consumption tends to be a lot closer to 35% of my calories except during the last week prior to a marathon.

Kalikel

DeguelloTex wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

DeguelloTex wrote: »

Cutting calories, period, rarely produces long-term weight loss, if the 5% success rate can be believed.

It cannot:

95% Regain Lost Weight. Or Do They?

''That 95 percent figure has become clinical lore,'' said Dr. Thomas Wadden, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. There is no basis for it, he said, ''but it's part of the mythology of obesity.''

Dr. Kelly D. Brownell, the director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, said the number was first suggested in a 1959 clinical study of only 100 people. The finding was repeated so often that it came to be regarded as fact, he said.

Since then, nearly all studies of weight-loss recidivism have followed patients in formal hospital or university programs, because they are the easiest to identify and keep track of. But people who turn to such programs may also be the most difficult cases, and may therefore have especially poor success rates.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/25/health/95-regain-lost-weight-or-do-they.html

The failure rate is still unbelievably high, to the point where people in the field talk among themselves that it's almost, not quite but almost, impossible.

I hear the Minnesota Starvation Study was also done on a limited number of people. Does that necessarily mean it's inaccurate?

I think the reason for failure is a multifaceted thing. Our flat cells want to get full and will forever send messages to the brain asking for more fat. As far as they know, it never ends. Enzymes hang out, waiting the chance to store fat. Lots and lots of people approach weight loss as something they do, not as permanent changes. Whatever they do, if they don't keep it up forever, it becomes a risk that they'll gain it back. Then throw in all the various reasons people overeat that aren't worked through in therapy...

I don't know that it's 95% but it's very true that once you've been obese, it is much harder to remain thin than it is if you were always thin.

The odds are stacked against us and it's something we should all remember, for sure.

I know I think about it every day and work toward being at a point where, when I'm done, I'm prepared to maintain it. I try very hard to get myself into such a groove that gaining it back would be difficult. I'm about 2/3 through my weight loss and 3/4 through making it a thing I can do forever. I think, lol.

Unknown

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