[Subby]

Thanks for sharing, John.

[Gary_W]

Originally Posted by xMenace

I found this guy today. I know nothing about him, but his articles are interesting and appear well researched. Online Nutritional Information and Nutritional Facts - Second Opinions, UK


Obesity: Carbs, Not Fats Cause Weight Gain - Second Opinions, UK

.

Interesting article. But a couple of throwaway comments made earlier on really do make me doubt the content. I'm not saying it's all rubbish by any stretch of the imagination, it's just that it's difficult to take it as being accurate and objective when these two statements are in the first two paragraphs:

1 - Carbs are the only foods that increase body weight. I know this is heresy to the 'healthy eating' dictocrats, but it is demonstrably true.

2 - All carbs are digested very quickly — within a few minutes.

So let's look at these two statements.

1 - Are you telling me that if a person sits in a bed and eats 8lbs of minced beef in a day (all cooked in butter) and then washes it down with heavy cream and then does that forever that they will be unable to put on weight? I'd like someone to explain this to me as my chemistry is shakey. It just doesn't seem right that the body cannot store any fat whatsoever if it isn't fed any carbs.

If this is the case, how on earth do all of the ancient civilisations that we keep hearing about ever grow? They would be born, get fat on their mother's milk (due to the carb content) and then stay at that weight forever due to eating no carbs. All of the seal meat and whale blubber just goes in one end, keeps 'em going whilst it's in their stomach and then goes out of the other end. All a complete waste as 'the only food that can increase body weight is carbs'. If this is true, the ancient civilisations must be kicking themselves that they couldn't find any corn syrup as a few more of them might have survived.

I may well be missing some deeper point? Anyway, over to point #2

2 - To say that ALL carbs are digested within a few minutes is misleading to say the least. The extreme simple carbs (corn syrup, pure sugar) are indeed digested pretty much straight away. The vast majority of food that people consider as 'carbs' is a heady brew with bits of fibre, water, fat and protein mixed in. Try eating chick peas and tell me they absorb 'within a few minutes'. I guess the get out of jail free card is that the word 'few' has a wide scope.

Oh, and I just looked up 'Dictocrat' to see if I am a 'healthy eating dictocrat'. Dictionary.com didn't know what one of those was. I guess a 'beurocratic dictator?'

[fgummett]

Originally Posted by Gary_W

if a person sits in a bed and eats 8lbs of minced beef in a day (all cooked in butter) and then washes it down with heavy cream and then does that forever that they will be unable to put on weight?

I know I'm gonna regret this and my sincere apologies if I am over-simplifying the biochemistry... but that is largely true.

Dietary Fat is broken down into free fatty acids which are small enough to move into fat cells BUT they are only stored in fat cells as Triglycerides... which are too big to move back out of the fat cells.

In order to bind three fatty acids molecules together as a Triglyceride, the body requires both insulin and Glycerol -- three fatty acids + Glycerol... hence the name -- which it gets from glucose.

Dietary carbohydrates are also converted to Fatty Acids and stored in the same way, as Triglycerides.

Without both insulin and Glucose this cannot occur, and with high-levels of insulin fat is only ever stored, never released.

Think of the stereotypical untreated Type 1 D -- not an ounce of fat on them... no insulin.

Perhaps the answer to your total carnivore in real life; is that Amino Acids -- from dietary Protein -- and some very few Fatty Acids, can be converted to Glucose by the Liver (Gluconeogenesis) but as this a limited amount, so is the volume of Triglycerides which can be re-esterified as described above... which will naturally limit excess fat.

As to the rest, there is no reason why they would not grow normally in terms of skeleton, muscles etc...

[EdnBama]

Unless I'm reading your explanation wrong, Frank, it doesn't answer Gary's question.

[fgummett]

Fat can only be stored if there is a supply of insulin and glucose.

Eating carbs increases the levels of insulin (in a non-diabetic) and provides plenty of glucose.

Carbs. are also stored as fat... same as above.

Eating fat + protein only, does not [immediately] increase the level of insulin and does not provide much if any, glucose... therefor fat cannot be stored.

[fgummett]

Originally Posted by EdnBama

Unless I'm reading your explanation wrong, Frank, it doesn't answer Gary's question.

Oh.. you mean he is being pedantic and using the strict meaning of the word "weight" when clearly the discussion is about excess fat?

[Gary_W]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for the reply.

I see the analogy about a T1 (untreated) having no fat on them, but surely this is not the arguement? AFAIK, a person cannot survive without insulin for very long at all. Before injectable insulin was discovered, if you got T1 you died. Yes, you could put it off a bit by eating in a certain way but ultimately you are a gonner.

So with that in mind, anyone alive (that will stay that way) has insulin in their system whether they eat carbs or not. And, with a T2, there is loads of insulin floating around.

As it is the insulin that stores the fat, surely a T2 eating the diet I described will put on weight? As, indeed, would anyone else that has any insulin in them? Again, I don't actually know the answers to these, but they seem sensible to me.

For this reason, the article is misleading as it is saying that it is only carbohydrate that puts on weight due to it stimulating the production of insulin. But as you can't live long-term without insulin then what is the article getting at?

[fgummett]

Originally Posted by Gary_W

As it is the insulin that stores the fat...

Insulin is required BUT so is Glucose -- TriGlycerides remember

---

This type of ketogenic diet was used for Type 1 D before the discovery of Insulin but as others have correctly pointed out: for a completely zero-insulin Type 1 it will ultimately fail, as some insulin is required just to keep the body ticking along, without even eating any carbs.

---

And as others have pointed out, is practically impossible to eat completely zero-carbs -- most real foods combine the macro-nutrients. The point of the article is that eating freely of carbs (especially highly -refined like HFCS) makes the fat storage process go into overtime.

---

Another consideration -- which fits in with a couple of discussions here today -- is that even the Inuit (in some areas) had access to things like blueberries in season, and they would eat them in great amounts... probably leading to some excess fat BUT as soon as Winter came around all that extra would get burnt off -- a natural cycle which we have broken with our year-round access to fruits out of season.

[REDLAN]

Originally Posted by xMenace
I found this guy today. I know nothing about him, but his articles are interesting and appear well researched. Online Nutritional Information and Nutritional Facts - Second Opinions, UK

Did anyone read the references? Well I did. Amusingly they don't actually support the authors contention. Actually it's not clear that they actually support anything in particular...

Extended effects of evening meal carbohydrate-to-f...[Am J Clin Nutr. 2002] - PubMed Result

This one for instance measured the effect of high fat versus high carb meals taken the evening before - it found no effect on glucose or insulin levels in the morning for either meal. For high fat meals it found no significant effects on peptide YY (in other words the subjects weren't less hungry on the high fat dinner).

Role of brain insulin receptor in control of body ...[Science. 2000] - PubMed Result

mice missing an essential insulin receptor in the brain. Researchers conclude that the receptor plays an important role in regulation of energy in mice - not entirely surprising.

Then there was the fasting hyperinsulinema in Pima children - which was predictive of weight gain. Interestingly in this population insulin resistance seemed to protect against weight gain.

This finding was repeated for Sigal RJ, El-Hashimy M, Martin BC, et al. High insulin resistance protected against weight gain when faced with high levels of insulin

The Kreitzman paper proposes for very low calorie diets

Evidence is presented that ultimate compositional changes with weight change may be individually specific and that body composition may be predicted from weight considerations alone.

Not sure that this means anything at all...

and for the last study

Insulin mediated inhibition of hormone sensitive lipase activity in vivo in relation to endogenous catecholamines in healthy subjects.

the authors concluded that insulin inhibited this enzyme more than being stressed. Hormone sensitive lipase mobilises fats, and is suppressed by insulin. How this gem supports the authors contentions

From my reading, the article appears to be a re-rendering of Gary Taubes' hypothesis about carbs and obesity. There is of course a whole bundle of evidence that would support this notion and that is this...

If carbs make people fat, then if you take fat people and put one lot on a low carb diet and the other on a low fat diet, you should find that people lose more weight on the low carb one.

And yes they do for the first 6 months. The reason is quite simply that those on the low carb diet eat less than those on the low fat diet. However after 12 months the vast majority of studies show that there is little difference in weight loss between the two. There is in fact a slight weight loss advantage in favour of the low fat diet, but it isn't clinically significant.

Unless our friendly author has some means to explain this rather ****ing and contradictory evidence, then this hypothesis is a dead duck.

"many a beautiful theory has been slain by an ugly fact" attributed to Thomas Huxley

is rather apt here I think.

[fgummett]

Originally Posted by REDLAN

From my reading, the article appears to be a re-rendering of Gary Taubes' hypothesis about carbs and obesity. There is of course a whole bundle of evidence that would support this notion and that is this...

If carbs make people fat, then if you take fat people and put one lot on a low carb diet and the other on a low fat diet, you should find that people lose more weight on the low carb one.

And yes they do for the first 6 months. The reason is quite simply that those on the low carb diet eat less than those on the low fat diet. However after 12 months the vast majority of studies show that there is little difference in weight loss between the two. There is in fact a slight weight loss advantage in favour of the low fat diet, but it isn't clinically significant.

REDLAN, in the past you seem to have taken pride in presenting an objective and unbiased viewpoint... I do not see the same objectivity in this post... have you come down firmly on one side of the argument?

I take particular issue with your choice of words, "the vast majority of studies show"... based on the Cochrane Collaboration review which you posted, we are talking maybe in total 5 or 6 studies? So I suppose that 5 studies would be the same as "over 75% of studies show...".

As for why the low-carb lost more weight in the first 6 months I don't recall the studies being specific about them eating less -- even if they did it was their free choice (they were not hungry) so why is that seen as a negative -- and as for the second 6 months regain, we have previously discussed that in all likelihood they were gradually re-introducing carbohydrates (a la Atkins) which would distort the findings.

[EdnBama]

Originally Posted by fgummett

Insulin is required BUT so is Glucose -- TriGlycerides remember

Actually, triglycerides are a combination of the three fatty acids and glycerol. Glycerol is not "glucose", although glycerol had been categorized as a carbohydrate.

Glycerol: C3H8O3

Glucose: C6H12O6

[EdnBama]

Originally Posted by Gary_W

So with that in mind, anyone alive (that will stay that way) has insulin in their system whether they eat carbs or not. And, with a T2, there is loads of insulin floating around.

For clarity, a T2 does not necessarily have "loads of insulin floating around".

Remember, there are T2s that do not have sufficient insulin at all, and therefore require insulin injections similar to T1s.

[fgummett]

Originally Posted by EdnBama

Actually, triglycerides are a combination of the three fatty acids and glycerol. Glycerol is not "glucose", although glycerol had been categorized as a carbohydrate.

I believe that I already apologised for over-simplifying the biochemistry. Perhaps you can tell us how the body synthesises Glycerol... what does it use/require to make it?

[EdnBama]

In fact:

It is also possible for fat cells to take up glucose and amino acids, which have been absorbed into the bloodstream after a meal, and convert those into fat molecules. The conversion of carbohydrates or protein into fat is 10 times less efficient than simply storing fat in a fat cell, but the body can do it. If you have 100 extra calories in fat (about 11 grams) floating in your bloodstream, fat cells can store it using only 2.5 calories of energy. On the other hand, if you have 100 extra calories in glucose (about 25 grams) floating in your bloodstream, it takes 23 calories of energy to convert the glucose into fat and then store it. Given a choice, a fat cell will grab the fat and store it rather than the carbohydrates because fat is so much easier to store.

Source: HowStuffWorks "Fat Storage and Insulin"

[EdnBama]

Originally Posted by fgummett

I believe that I already apologised for over-simplifying the biochemistry. Perhaps you can tell us how the body synthesises Glycerol... what does it use/require to make it?

"Over-simplifying" is not the same as "being wrong". Or maybe I'm being pedantic.

Glycerol is made from fat.