New Nutrition Study Changes Nothing
kimny72
Posts: 16,023 Member
I thought this article was a nice change of pace from typical study reporting
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/moderate-intake-of-things-linked-to-health/538428/
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/09/moderate-intake-of-things-linked-to-health/538428/
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Replies
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Indeed: Sensible, truthful, well-founded.
But as even its author seems to understand . . . kinda boring.2 -
“The best diets will include a balance of carbohydrates and fats—approximately 50 to 55 percent carbohydrates and around 35 percent total fat, including both saturated and unsaturated fats.”
Quoted for truth.10 -
I have read Moby Dick.
I have even read The Sea Wolf.4 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I have read Moby Dick.
I have even read The Sea Wolf.
Clearly you are out of touch lol.
I read Moby Dick too. I enjoyed it, but to be honest probably wouldn't have read it if it wasn't required for a class. Also read Billy Budd for a class, but don't remember anything except the name, so I guess it was boring too.4 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I have read Moby Dick.
I have even read The Sea Wolf.
Clearly you are out of touch lol.
I read Moby Dick too. I enjoyed it, but to be honest probably wouldn't have read it if it wasn't required for a class. Also read Billy Budd for a class, but don't remember anything except the name, so I guess it was boring too.
Back before internet and social media, I read stuff. I still read stuff, but back then I turned pages. Now, I just scroll. When I was young and poor I subscribed to a service that sent me an expensively bound public-domain book each month, hence those two.3 -
I'm back in this thread already because I want to refer to this bit in the article:
"Obsession with novelty has been called “neophilia.” The term was used as early as 1965 in a story by J.D. Salinger, who was apparently wary of it."
I'm in a discussion about "superfoods". Need I say more?5 -
Can't believe people who are trying to lose weight still talking about eating 55% carbs. How's that working for everyone? Look around.32
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A better question might be, "how is the weight loss going?" I am eating a low calorie diet with about 45-55% calories from carbohydrates and succeeding for the first time in my life. I finally understand how out-of-balance my portion sizes were and believe that paying attention to that has allowed me to have success at weight loss WITH balance in my diet. I don't believe a lower carb diet would help me any better than what I am currently doing. Demonizing carbs isn't helpful, in my opinion. I've seen plenty of fat people who have been low carb for years without significant weight loss. Maybe they are "doing it wrong" or maybe they simply eat too many calories. I think option 2 is probably the more acurate answer. Carbs aren't a bigger "enemy" than calories. Balance is necessary no matter how you like to eat.23
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rfrenkel77 wrote: »Can't believe people who are trying to lose weight still talking about eating 55% carbs. How's that working for everyone? Look around.
Almost 80 lbs lost in 10 months on 50% or more carbs (it's the one macro I sometimes exceed target on). But thanks for asking.20 -
Sorry in advance for the long post! Lot of thoughts on it, thanks for sharing.
CW prevails and is boring, and is counter to capitalism and our neophilic tendencies as a culture. I think the sugar lobby story that broke out semi-recently was the biggest nutrition news to hit in a while, but people knew sugar was bad even before that made headlines. Sad but true for nutritional journalists who hope for the next big "holy *kitten* i can't believe we've been eating [carbs/meat/dairy/legumes/wheat/etc.] all these years!" story to hit: it's pretty much all been said.
The real stories are just how much these industries influence our lives: how our school lunches look, how much processed food we feel is "normal" to eat, how so many in our generation literally don't know how to cook. Food fads thrive because our food culture has been lost. We're on this website not because we eat too many carbs or too much meat or too few avocados... we're here because our society inundates us with subpar food options and promotes sedentary behaviors, and as a result we're all pretty *kitten* lost.
That being said, the "boring" doesn't get promoted often enough; in some circles we did talk about Michael Pollan's body of work, especially his three-rule manifesto (1. eat food, 2. not too much, 3. mostly plants), but this didn't permeate the mainstream. And nutritional journalists contribute to the problem by publishing preliminary/weak studies as canon; suddenly the demons in our diet are everywhere, when the basics really are very simple and boring and were in front of us all along. But that's not what people want to hear.
The author of the article was right: neophilia is the downfall of popular science. The most boring stuff tends to be the stuff with the most data backing it up, and also is the worst at selling things. Truly revolutionary stuff is rare, but science is more exciting when there's a surprise waiting around every corner, things "science can't explain", magic bullets and sorceror's stones and magical elixirs waiting to be discovered that will allow us to transcend our human needs of air, water, carbs, proteins, fats, and a sprinkling of nutrients. The promise of those things sells things. Neophilia and capitalism go hand in hand, and if we let our diets be dictated by the latest trends we will stray farther from conventional wisdom to our peril.
Sigh.10 -
rfrenkel77 wrote: »Can't believe people who are trying to lose weight still talking about eating 55% carbs. How's that working for everyone? Look around.
I lost 80 lbs in 12 months and have kept it off for 17 months and counting and gone from couch to 42.2K, all while eating 55% carbs, 30% fat, 15% protein.
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Whenever people find out someone is trying to lose weight, I've noticed a common question is, "Oh, what diet are you on?"
As if there has to be a label. A fad. A title. A certain method, maybe involving apple cider vinegar or activated almonds. Something, ANYTHING to avoid the boring, prosaic truths contained in that study, and in the countless other studies that say the same thing.
I don't know how many here have watched it, but it all reminds me of a scene from Ab Fab (UK sitcom):
Saffy: "Look, mum. All you've got to do is eat less and take a bit of exercise."
Eddie: (Rolls eyes in scorn) "Sweetie, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it."18 -
TheSunAndTheRainfall wrote: »Whenever people find out someone is trying to lose weight, I've noticed a common question is, "Oh, what diet are you on?"
As if there has to be a label. A fad. A title. A certain method, maybe involving apple cider vinegar or activated almonds. Something, ANYTHING to avoid the boring, prosaic truths contained in that study, and in the countless other studies that say the same thing. "
I'm guessing you haven't read the study, as it isn't about weight loss at all.
The PURE study looks at food consumption (self reported questionnaires) and tries to drag out of the statistics any interaction between the diets of the participants and health outcomes because "The relationship between macronutrients and cardiovascular disease and mortality is controversial"
The study found thatHigher carbohydrate intake was associated with an increased risk of total mortality (highest [quintile 5] vs lowest quintile [quintile 1] category, HR 1·28 [95% CI 1·12–1·46], ptrend=0·0001) but not with the risk of cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular disease mortality. Intake of total fat and each type of fat was associated with lower risk of total mortality (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, total fat: HR 0·77 [95% CI 0·67–0·87], ptrend<0·0001; saturated fat, HR 0·86 [0·76–0·99], ptrend=0·0088; monounsaturated fat: HR 0·81 [0·71–0·92], ptrend<0·0001; and polyunsaturated fat: HR 0·80 [0·71–0·89], ptrend<0·0001). Higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, HR 0·79 [95% CI 0·64–0·98], ptrend=0·0498). Total fat and saturated and unsaturated fats were not significantly associated with risk of myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality.
but it is important to note that the range of fat and carbohydrate intake reported was limited - the lowest carbohydrate intake quintile was 46% and the highest fat 35%. In part this is because the study is specifcally trying to avoid being dominated by US / European data and hence has a lot of high carb low fat Asian population data in it. The highest carb quintile is 77% and the lowest fat 11% (all median values).
So what PURE tells us is that within those ranges of consumption there's a modest trend to see more deaths (from any cause) in people eating 77% carbs compared to 46% and fewer deaths in people eating more fat (which is really just the same thing as if carbs go up fat comes down). The fact that these high carb consumers are in China and the lower carb ones in the USA may of course be an influence on the outcomes.
It didn't find any indication of fat consumption causing mortality, cardiovascular disease, or stroke - in fact stroke reduced with increasing sat fat consumption in this population but again the high sat fat consumers would be Western.
I don't see how anyone can recommend a particular diet based on PURE, that is just them restating their own beliefs having been given a platform.
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rfrenkel77 wrote: »Can't believe people who are trying to lose weight still talking about eating 55% carbs. How's that working for everyone? Look around.
@rfrenkel77
Are you aware that the healthiest populations with the lowest instance of obesity tend to have high carb diets?
A high carb diet worked very well for me when I was losing weight and also works for long term maintenance at goal weight.
When I "look around" I see people eating too many calories for their too inactive lifestyle. It's not one particular macro that is the problem - it's over consumption.
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The PURE study found that the highest carb consumers had the highest death rate. 7.2 deaths per 1,000 person years in the high carb (Asian ?) eaters, vs 4.1 in the lowest.
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rfrenkel77 wrote: »Can't believe people who are trying to lose weight still talking about eating 55% carbs. How's that working for everyone? Look around.
Thank you for asking.
44% or higher since I joined MFP.
Maintenance since August 2016
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TheSunAndTheRainfall wrote: »Whenever people find out someone is trying to lose weight, I've noticed a common question is, "Oh, what diet are you on?"
As if there has to be a label. A fad. A title. A certain method, maybe involving apple cider vinegar or activated almonds. Something, ANYTHING to avoid the boring, prosaic truths contained in that study, and in the countless other studies that say the same thing.
I don't know how many here have watched it, but it all reminds me of a scene from Ab Fab (UK sitcom):
Saffy: "Look, mum. All you've got to do is eat less and take a bit of exercise."
Eddie: (Rolls eyes in scorn) "Sweetie, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it."
You've made my day by quoting ab Fab.
Can we also work in the "tax the stupid people" line somehow???7 -
TheSunAndTheRainfall wrote: »Whenever people find out someone is trying to lose weight, I've noticed a common question is, "Oh, what diet are you on?"
As if there has to be a label. A fad. A title. A certain method, maybe involving apple cider vinegar or activated almonds. Something, ANYTHING to avoid the boring, prosaic truths contained in that study, and in the countless other studies that say the same thing. "
I'm guessing you haven't read the study, as it isn't about weight loss at all.
Yes, but I was talking rather more generally about faddish thinking and the pursuit of novelty, appertaining to the article itself.
6 -
rfrenkel77 wrote: »Can't believe people who are trying to lose weight still talking about eating 55% carbs. How's that working for everyone? Look around.
*Looks around at so many vets losing or lost eating all the carbs (and protein and fat) including myself*
Pretty well actually!11 -
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