Carbs make you fat, but fat doesn't

Jersey_Devil

43932452

Certain fat will be worse of coarse! Like fried in fat and less lean
meat, cheeses, many are greasy based. In moderation and not
often I'm sure anything is okay .. the trouble really is the American
culture ... 'more-more bigger bigger'. Not so much particular macros.

bumblebums

They used data from the USDA for possible macro intake also accounting for food disappearance (food available for sale - wastage = consumed).......nutrition is a wonderful sugarland where grants are given out like candy. Anyway, no, not even close to anything resembling reality.

Okay, I read the paper. I try to avoid reading non-peer-reviewed papers by academics, and this paper was a painful reminder of how badly written these things tend to be.

For the American part of the study, they analyzed the relationships between food disappearance, and estimates of work-related energy expenditures, and data on the macronutrient composition of the food and the BMI of the people. Food an estimate of how much food is available for human consumption, though not a good measure of how much people actually eat because nobody is counting how much of the food ends up in the restaurant garbage can. The energy expenditure measure is particularly bad, since I don't think it is a stretch to assume that people are getting less exercise as the country is becoming more and more suburban. What they do next is look at whether obesity increases as a function of carb intake, while controlling for correlated variables (cointegrated, in time series talk) that tend to increase as carb intake increases. They found the normal expected effects: the less you move and the more you eat, the fatter you get, and the more you eat carbs, the more you eat other things. There is also this crucial passage:

In  comparison,  protein   consumption  shows  a  mixed  pattern,  in  some  cases  associated  with  an  increase  in  weight  (overweight   prevalence)  and  in  others  a  decrease  in  weight  (obesity  prevalence).  Although  revealing,  a  limitation  of   dynamic  OLS  and  error  correction  models  is  their  inability  to  account  for  potential  dynamic  interactions   between  the  regressors  and  feedback  effects  from  the  dependent  variable.

This is where I became despondent. In order to assert that intake of carbs is a predictor of obesity, you have to keep protein intake constant, and there is no way to do that with their data because carb/protein intake levels are correlated (in this case, inversely) if you keep calories constant.

There is also the issue that someone noted earlier in the thread about diabetes/insulin sensitivity. Suppose you get fat from eating too much of everything, develop insulin insensitivity, and then eat a high-carb diet while not moving much. Carbs didn't make you fat, but they might make you even fatter than you would be if you were eating a more balanced diet at that stage.

Anyway, this paper is a long way away from constituting conclusive proof of the claim in the thread title.

cwolfman13

It's still calories in/out. when you go low carb, you're just eliminating and/or severely restricting a macro...of course, your calorie count is going to be lower...thus you lose weight. Carbs are easier to store and I would generally agree that sedentary individuals could be well served by reducing carbohydrate intake...but carbs don't make you fat (medical conditions aside). If I ate a **** ton of carbs and had an energy deficit from maintenance, I'm still going to lose fat. Why do so many people, including these studies continue to ignore something as universally sound and simple as the laws of thermodynamics. Study is stupid.

Also...it's been known for quite awhile that dietary fat doesn't make you fat....it's actually fairly essential to losing fat considering it keeps your hormones in check.

LiftAllThePizzas

I'm Asian born in Asia and have a rice - dominant diet. 80% of my calories used to be from white rice and I'm not fat. 5ft2 and 106lbs. The only reason I switch to high protein diet is to build muscles, not to lose fat. My cousin born in the US has a very low Carb diet, she rarely eats more than 1 cup of rice, and weights 20 lbs more than I do with the same height.

Studies also show a lower incidence of colorectal cancers related to traditional Asian and Mediterranean diets.

Studies also show a lower incidence of red hair related to traditional Asian and Mediterranean diets.

Helloitsdan

Ancestral dieting has its merit.

I have a new client in Pakistan who PMed me the other day asking about eating naan style breads.
I replied "if your great grandparents ate it then you should too!"

zyxst

NO.