Why we need carbs.

Is this thread still going on?

I just wanted to say that I had bacon and eggs for breakfast and was not hungry until lunch. For lunch I had jerk chicken (lean breast), kaluah pork, bbq short ribs, coconut curry vegetables, and a salad, yum!

Before I started low carb I would've had 1 or 2 snacks (more carbs) between breakfast and lunch and would be tired. I have so much energy right now that I feel like knocking down walls!!

I had a glass of chocolate soy milk for breakfast (7 a.m.) and wasn't hungry till lunch (noon). But I can't see how that, or your eggs and bacon, means anything about low carb vs not low carb.

You should research the effects soy milk can have on your health. I read a few pages about it in the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith and was very shocked as i used to drink soy milk and eat a lot of soy processed foods when i was a vegetarian. I havnt done any additional research as of yet but you JUST reminded me so now i shall!
Thanks!

A few select quotes from Why We Get Fat:

I can't seem to find the one study that you're referring to (where obese people underreported their food intake) - do you have a chapter or reference? There are plenty of other studies backing up his hypothesis that something other than calories-in / calories-out matter - impoverished, obese Native Americans, obese mothers with starving children, obese rats with removed ovaries, etc.

you can't find the study because he doesn't mention that fact, since it conveniently goes against what he's trying to say

"For example, one popular book bases one of its many incorrect theses on a 1980 report suggesting that the obese ate the same number of calories as the lean. Ergo, obesity was caused by something else. The problem is this, the data set is wrong. A fact we’ve known for nearly 30 years but that the author was somehow unable to become aware of in his ’5 years of dedicated research’.

Study after study after study over the past 30 years shows that the obese systematically under-report their food intake (by up to 30-50%) and over-report their activity (by about the same). So when they say they are only eating 1800 calories per day, they may be eating 2400-3600 calories per day. And their activity isn’t nearly what they think."

www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.html

"There are plenty of other studies backing up his hypothesis that something other than calories-in / calories-out matter - impoverished, obese Native Americans, obese mothers with starving children, obese rats with removed ovaries, etc."

epidemiological studies? you do know the shortcomings of using such data to back your hypothesis, right? and please do tell how rats, whose metabolic pathways are different then humans have anything to do with this?

and notice i never said there aren't other factors at play in weight gain/loss, but the overriding factor is calories

Taubes also says this;

"If you restrict only carbohydra­tes, you can always eat more protein and fat if you feel the urge, since they have no effect on fat accumulati­on"

Location 2519 Kindle edition of Why We Get Fat

"But protein and fat don't make us fat-only the carbohydra­tes do-so there is no reason to curtail them in any way"

location 3064 Why we Get Fat

which is utterly ridiculous, here's some links and studies i posted in another GCBC thread

McLaughlin T, et al. Difference­s in insulin resistance do not predict weight loss in response to hypocalori­c diets in healthy obese women. Journal of Clinical Endocrinol­ogy & Metabolism­, 1999; 84 (2): 578-581.

de Luis DA, et al. Difference­s in glycaemic status do not predict weight loss in response to hypocalori­c diets in obese patients. Clinical Nutrition, Feb 2006; 25 (1): 117-122.

Due A, et al. No effect of inhibition of insulin secretion by diazoxide on weight loss in hyperinsul­inaemic obese subjects during an 8-week weight-los­s diet. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism­, Jul 2007; 9 (4): 566-574.

also here are some interestin­g reads on Taubes

http://rea­son.com/ar­chives/200­3/03/01/bi­g-fat-fake

http://www­.weightyma­tters.ca/2­011/01/boo­k-review-g­ary-taubes­-why-we-ge­t-fat.html

http://car­bsanity.bl­ogspot.com­/2010/10/u­pdate-gary­-taubes-em­ail-my-res­ponse.html

I don't exactly know what you're trying to argue. You want to discredit his whole book based on a few excerpts and a few blogs that have been posted. Who's cherry picking again?

His whole book is based on that only CHO makes you fat, which is incorrect. I've posted a few peer reviewed, controlled studies that show his theories on CHO, insulin and weight loss/gain are misinformed. If people are getting healthier and losing weight due to dropping carbs, that's great. But to beleive that only CHO makes people fat is just ignorant

you can't find the study because he doesn't mention that fact, since it conveniently goes against what he's trying to say

"For example, one popular book bases one of its many incorrect theses on a 1980 report suggesting that the obese ate the same number of calories as the lean. Ergo, obesity was caused by something else. The problem is this, the data set is wrong. A fact we’ve known for nearly 30 years but that the author was somehow unable to become aware of in his ’5 years of dedicated research’.

Study after study after study over the past 30 years shows that the obese systematically under-report their food intake (by up to 30-50%) and over-report their activity (by about the same). So when they say they are only eating 1800 calories per day, they may be eating 2400-3600 calories per day. And their activity isn’t nearly what they think."

www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.html

Have you seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo

He even has a couple slides on how insulin resistant/insulin sensitive people react to different types of diets (starts at 38:15).

Is it so hard to believe that some people do get fat with carbs?

You have to realize what a bitter pill this was to swallow for a 25 year vegetarian - that Atkins did better than the other diets.

<snip>

he uses all this to support his statement that overeating is not the cause of obesity but of course it's the evil CHO

So, as Novick argues, the discussion is no longer good fat, bad fat, percentage fat but achieving a weight that discourages sickness. So how to get attain nutrition, feeling satisfied and lose weight or maintain weight?

No room to call Taubes anything until you have read his research. He is a science journalist. You don't have to be a scientist to understand science.

I've read his research. I've also seen the way that he ignores the overwhelming amount of research that disputes the entire premise of his argument.

The premise of Taube's argument (calories don't matter, insulin response does) is based on his assumption that obese people consume a similar amount of calories as normal sized people....ergo, obesity was caused by something else. The source for this assumption? A 1980 report suggesting that the obese ate the same number of calories as the lean. Unfortunately, the data in this 1980 report was wrong. But that didn't matter to Taubes. He had his hypothesis and he was determined to cherry-pick his research to support this hypothesis. After all, without his hypothesis, he wouldn't have a book to write.

Never mind the fact that study after study over the past 30 years shows that the obese systematically under-report their food intake (by up to 30-50%) and over-report their activity (by about the same). So when they say they are only eating 1800 calories per day, they may be eating 2400-3600 calories per day. And their activity isn’t nearly what they think.

And when you put those same folks in controlled metabolic ward conditions and control their food intake and/or activity output…voila, the energy balance equation holds. It’s only when you believe the (incorrect) self-reported data that it doesn’t.

The obese aren't doing this on purpose. Most people simply suck at knowing how much they are actually eating. Leave them to self-report it and they almost always screw it up.

If that is the type of research that works for you, then more power to you. I would have trouble blindly accepting those types of false premises.

Heck, even the most hard-core low carbers, like Mark Sisson as well as the current Atkins followers preach that calories DO MATTER. There are good low-carbes, and there are the quacks. If you want to believe Taubes and his assertion that calories do not matter, go right ahead. :laugh:

Exactly. This nation is being told that grains are more important than fruits and veggies. We are being told that fat causes heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes and this is all a load of crap. When you drop the carbs (grain carbs and sugars) from the diet and increase the fat and protein it is impossible to overeat. Those refined grains and sugars keep you hungry (I used to think it was hunger but turned out to be the blood sugar crash).
Yet 366 million of us are diabetic and it's costing the health care system $4.6billion per year to fight it. Obviously the dietary guidelines is not working. When our diet became about money and politics our health ceased to matter.

I cannot say the study I am about to present is the actual study. However, there is a study that I have come across that sounds similar to what I have been reading here as to why Taubes is correctly/incorrectly referring to (so take it with a grain of carbs).

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/135/4/905.full.pdf+html

As people (doctors, diet gurus, etc) interpret studies differently, here is what I learned from the study, as per Jeff Novick--and that is calorie density vs calorie dilute and the probability to overeat calorie dense foods. As foods per pound (as we can have a constant factor in calories) can help us determine whether or not we are likely to consume in abundance. He gives the example of broccoli being 120 calories per pound and olive oil being 4000 calories per pound. He says that even a table spoon of olive oil has more calories than a pound of broccoli. So is there such a thing as good calories and bad calories? I would rather frame the question as there is such a thing as bad carbs and good carbs and what we should be focusing on is choosing unrefined carbs (less processed) and calorie dilute carbs.

As Novick points out, healthy carbs gives us, not only energy but vitamins C & E, carotenoids, phytochemicals, magnesium, potassium, B-vitamins, and trace minerals.

I think we need carbs!

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-grains/
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-grains-are-unhealthy/

We don't NEED carbs. There is no such thing as an essential dietary carbohydrate. They only thing they are to the body is immediate fuel and what doesn't get used immediately gets converted to fat and sent to storage. Protein and fat are needed by the body for repair and maintenance. They are essential. Carbs aren't.

okay once and for all, we do not NEED carbs, Though they are not harmful to the greater majority of the population, great woo hoo.

You know, I see people post that all the time, but it's just so misleading. How do you get enough vitamins and minerals without eating carbs, which are present in vegetables and fruit? Even meat has some carbs. I know it's technically possible to live without eating vegetables, fruit, meat and grains, but posting something like "we don't need carbs" is stretching the meaning of the word "need" pretty far.