I'm a geek: I read 2 atkins books this week.

Trying to find the "cure" once on for all...
When in reality is a personal jouney not "one fits all" like most diet books wants us to believe...but I'm guilty I still reach for the latest at Amazon/libraries etc

yarwell wrote: »

RockstarWilson wrote: »

I generally go with personal experience and will be trying things out. Moore (or Westman) says that too much protein can be bad for ketosis. However, Dr. Donald Layman's research on protein shows evidence that a certain protein threshold is needed for muscle maintenance or growth (which contain specified amounts of the BCAA leucine). I am going to review his study presented in 2013.

my take home message from Layman was to have ~25 grams of protein at a meal to exceed his "anabolic threshold". 3 * 25 = 75g per day wouldn't challenge most people's tolerance for protein while maintaining ketosis.

Indeed. However, the conflict comes in when people who are in NK do not typically eat in 4-5 hour periods, as the production of grehlin is suppressed due to fat content of meals.

The period of anabolic protein synthesis, according to his data, lasts for about 1.5-3 hours, and then it reaches a catabolic state, requiring more input of BCAAs from protein sources to re-feed the muscles.

The benefits of NK focus on energy expenditure with less nutritional input, as many keto advocates have noted, and the primary focus is on weight loss. But Dr. Layman points out that timing of these meals is important to protein synthesis, and is in contrast to the desired timing of meals if NK is achieved.

RockstarWilson wrote: »

Since it is so accessible, why do we eat so much of it?

I think this is an interesting question, but for many of us I think it's really simple -- we eat it because it's there.

There's no reason for humans to have evolved to stop wanting food when we've had our TDEE for the day. To the contrary, it was probably evolutionarily helpful to be able to eat when food was there beyond TDEE to store up fat for the next fasting/famine period, and being overweight wasn't actually a risk.

What I think has changed since, say, the 80s more than the specific foods available or the actual environment are our food customs. For various reasons people do seem to eat all the time now, and to have food available all the time. For me, the easiest and simplest way to start eating a proper number of calories is just eat like I did as a kid -- at mealtimes plus an after dinner dessert if I've otherwise eaten well that day. (I used to have an after school snack and now I might have a post workout/pre workout snack depending on when I work out.) The side effect of that is that I eat better, since foods I eat at meals have always been pretty nutritious, while extras eaten for social reasons or because there are there have always been where I ate lower nutrient things.

IMO, far more than changing what we ate, the negative effects of the food marketing is that people decided they needed to eat all the time and snack stuff is always available and not merely a special treat. This is also related to the decline of social rituals around eating, like the family meal, and people needing to eat on the go, etc. One reason I keep dinner as my largest meal is I like to be able to sit down and really appreciate the food, to eat mindfully, and that's harder to do at lunch or breakfast, when I tend to be surfing the internet (and at lunch I'm at my desk). Once eating became something we do when doing other things, it made it easier to be something we find enjoyable to do all day or for reasons other than true hunger. Well, at least some of us can fall into that.

mrsbaldee wrote: »

My next purchase.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/04/food_fad_evidence_logic_and_science_can_fight_misperceptions_about_nutrition.html
Here is a quote from Alan Levinovitz's Slate piece, "The Logical Failures of Food Fads"

. . . We’ve been primed to think this way. After all, the world’s most famous myth recounts a dietary fall from grace. Long ago, humans lived in an organic, all-natural, divinely designed garden, free from pesticides and GMOs and processed grains and sugar. But one day an evil advertiser came along and hissed, “Just eat this fruit.” Bam! Suddenly we were cursed with mortality, marital strife, labor pains, and agriculture.

Secular variants on the Eden myth are common in rationalizations of food fads. Adam and Eve get replaced by indigenous tribespeople or traditional Greek islanders, all of whom remain in the proverbial garden, lean and healthy and blessed. In its most recent incarnation, Paleolithic man is the culinary hero, and instead of disobeying God, we modern grain-eaters sin by disobeying the law of evolution.

Superstitious and unscientific food beliefs—the focus of my book, The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat—feature prominently in the research of Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Rozin is best known for coining the phrase the omnivore’s dilemma—which food writer Michael Pollan popularized as the title of his 2006 best-seller—and he has written extensively on how we perceive what we eat.

I was turned off of The Big Fat Surprise in part because the interesting bit (about Keys) seemed like a less nuanced version of Denise Minger's Death by Food Pyramid (which I did like), and because of these pieces:

https://thescienceofnutrition.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/the-big-fat-surprise-a-critical-review-part-2/ (there's also a part 1)

and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/diet-and-nutrition_b_5266165.html (yes, I know, more David Katz).

However, if there's something particularly interesting about it that transcends all this, I would be interested, so please report back. Food and nutrition writing of a wide variety of types (whether I agree or not) is a bit of a weakness of mine, replacing my old fondness for rereading mystery novels and Georgette Heyer (although not yet taking the place of actual literature).

Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Levinovitz did a piece at Slate on the MSG thing: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/07/msg_and_gluten_intolerance_is_the_nocebo_effect_to_blame.html

Wow. Now I dislike this guy. HE decides what others eat? DISLIKE the arrogance.

He's a rotten human being, and besides that, he fails to prove his point by tricking people into eating MSG-laced food and then claiming they didn't complain.

It's true the placebo effect is real. But so is the reverse. Mind over matter. If someone doesn't think something is the matter they are quite likely to ignore all but the most obvious and severe signs that something is wrong, perhaps even at a purely subconscious level, dampening down their body's distress.

We're a hardy species that ate carrion and any plant that didn't outright kill us. Why would we have the ability to trick ourselves into believing something harmed us that didn't without also having the (likely even greater ability) to convince ourselves that rotten meat that kept us alive when we had to have calories went down smooth as butter?

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Levinovitz did a piece at Slate on the MSG thing: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/07/msg_and_gluten_intolerance_is_the_nocebo_effect_to_blame.html

So far, that article in the link is the jist of the first two chapters. He's a bit of an egocentric idiot. I doubt I'll make it through the book.

mrsbaldee wrote: »

nvmomketo wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Levinovitz did a piece at Slate on the MSG thing: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/07/msg_and_gluten_intolerance_is_the_nocebo_effect_to_blame.html

So far, that article in the link is the jist of the first two chapters. He's a bit of an egocentric idiot. I doubt I'll make it through the book.

Oh dear.
I think I'll get the library to buy it lol.

LOL That's where I got mine. I only buy nutrition books AFTER I read them. Most of them are not that helpful.

Orphia wrote: »

nvmomketo wrote: »

I have a friend who gets migraines from MSG. I believe him. He is affected by many foods. He doesn't just get migraines when he eats out at a Chinese place. It's not in his head just because MSG doesn't bother all or even most.

Non sequitur. In fact, that's exactly why the MSG is probably not causing it - if he gets migraines from lots of thing it's probably those things instead of the MSG.

Not that either of us have any evidence, but this is a really bad reason to believe in the MSG lie.

I took nv to mean not just Chinese food with msg but other foods with it added as well.

How is it unethical when no harm would come of it?

I like him. Great article!