I cannot see a legitimate argument for anyone claiming that grains in ANY form are healthy. Humans cannot eat "whole" grains.

I have no quarrel with some very low carb vegetable matter though I choose not to eat it. But grains and legumes? No way. I would put fruit in the not-good category as well. What is fruit but sugar with Vitamin C and a few other nutrients?

I certainly don't think everyone has to go ZC or VLC. But there is no way you can compare the human necessity for cholesterol and saturated fat to a need for glucose. How is it that most report the highest energy in ketosis? Because we are quite capable of using fat for energy; in fact, the body prefers fat for energy. We make only that amount of glucose we need. There is no necessity to injest sugars to get glucose in our bodies.

Not true at all. "Lowest rung on the evidence ladder" means that the evidence is not reliable, only suggestive. Such evidence is *frequently* proven erroneous due to confounding factors. That is *why* it is called the lowest rungs of the ladder. If it were much stronger than that, it wouldn't be on "the lowest rung of the evidence ladder."

I'm pretty sure he doesn't, but if you can find an interview or a quote from his book where he says that only refined carbohydrate is bad, I'll take back what I said.

Maybe, maybe not.

I agree. I don't eat grains, nor do the Kitavans.

Evidence is what it is. You can try to brush it away, calling it "observational", but it's still evidence. I agree about the confounding factors, but these factors must be really strong if they can produce the opposite result. And if they are so strong, they could be more important that the factor in hand.

To refute a theory, you need to find an example that contradicts the theory. The philosopher Karl Popper has written a lot about this (falsification), and you may want to read his work or a summary.

In short, suppose your theory is that "all frogs are green". You don't need a double-blind prospective study with 10,000 frogs to test this theory. If you happen to see a single red frog in your garden by chance, your theory has been falsified.

Suppose your theory is that "too many carbs cause diabetes and obesity". If you happen to find a society that eats a high-carb diet and never gets diabetes and obesity, your theory has been falsified. As M Levac said, perhaps Dr Steffan Lindeberg has got it wrong. Perhaps the data is bad, for some reason. But if it's not, then ...

Which carbs are being replaced? That's the question. Carbs from grains or from tubers? The Kitavans don't eat grains or sugar or any other industrialised food.

They have no symptoms and they live long, healthy, productive lives (that is, if they aren't murdered, don't fall from a cliff or die of an infectious disease). They have what really matters.

Okay, but I'm not even convinced carbohydrate is a cause.

It's not that simple. A study with 100 subjects is better than a study with 10 subjects, for instance, but if 10 subjects is all you need, why are you going to analyse 100 subjects? The evidence is what it is. Explain to me why it's suggestive, not reliable, in this *specific* case. Don't just mention a general rule and hope it applies to all cases.

An observational study isn't very good because it reports a few differences between two or more groups that may be very different. Say, for instance, you observe that the average American is richer than the average Chinese and also that Americans wear socks more frequently. You can't conclude that wearing socks makes you rich or being rich makes you wear socks. There are many differences between Americans and Chinese besides the ones you have observed that could explain the data. But suppose you had a theory that rich people never wear socks. This poor observational study would completely debunk it, as rich Americans do wear socks. Sometimes such a study is all you need.

The Kitavans don't eat grains, whole or refined. They get all their carbs from fruits and vegetables.

A fruit is made of thousands of different substances combined in precise amounts. Do you know what each of them is for and how they interact with each other? Not even nutritionists know.

You don't need any cholesterol and saturated fat in your diet. Your body can make as much cholesterol and saturated fat (from carbs) as it wants. I'm not telling you not to eat cholesterol and saturated fat though. Even though they aren't essential, they are probably good for you. The same argument is true for carbs. You can't claim they are bad just because they aren't essential. Not being essential doesn't make a nutrient bad. It's true for saturated fat as well as for carbs.

Not all cells prefer fat. In fact, you would die really fast without enough glucose in your blood. First you would faint, then go into a coma, then bye-bye klowcarb ...

True, but there is no need to ingest saturated fat and cholesterol either. Yet you and I ingest a lot every day.

Hey, you're the one who said evidence of the lowest rung was good enough. If it *is* good enough, then it's not lowest rung. You're not making sense. It was your own statement. If the evidence is so good you only need 10 subjects, then by definition it's not of the lowest rung.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7FbmdSCjHQ

Now do you want to take back what you said?



I am studying for a masters in medical science, so I know all about Karl Popper thanks. I know enough to know that your comparing the one observational study to finding a red frog is a logical fallacy. A red frog is conclusive evidence, an observational study is a mish-mash of so many different factors that to isolate one factor and draw conclusions of cause and effect based upon it is deeply unscientific. I suggest you re-read Karl Popper's work and then read up on levels of evidence.



You need to qualify that statment with 'Relative to us', in fact if they don't fall off a cliff or die of an infectious disease, they can live until about 80, that's not even remarkable, plenty of people in cultures eating grain do that, even without access to medical care. If they were living until 120, then that would be surprising.



There is actually good evidence showing that lack of fat in the diet leads to gallstones and neurological problems. Saturated fat is the most nutritious and least susceptible to oxidisation fat out there.

I'm not an advocate of eliminating carbs completely from the diet if you are an otherwise healthy person, but to say that sweet potato is equivalant and interchangable with animal fat as a source of nutrition is a statement that ignores most of what we know about our physiology.

I posit that the kitavans would be even healthier and maybe live even longer if they replaced some of the carbs they eat with animal fat. But hey, that study would never pass an ethics committee so all we can do is speculate based on our current knowledge of physiology.

Like I said, you try to eat only protein. See how far you go.

When glucose is ingested, insulin rises and fat is locked in fat tissue. How is that efficient? How much total body mass requires glucose for fuel? Compare this number to the total body mass which can use fat or its derivatives. When we ingest glucose, insulin rises and all cells are forced to use glucose for fuel regardless of whether they require it or not. Then find a reason why we should force this big body mass to use glucose for fuel just because there's this tiny body mass that requires it. Remember, eating glucose makes insulin rise and subsequently locks fat in fat tissue thereby creating a fuel deficit. When we don't eat glucose, insulin doesn't rise as high, fat is not locked in fat tissue, there is no fuel deficit. Especially considering that when we don't eat glucose, we must eat fat. What's your barometer for efficiency?

When you pretend that eating glucose is more efficient than converting protein into glucose, you miss the big picture. Because when we don't eat glucose, there's the insulin factor, then there's the dietary fat factor and the dietary protein factor and all of the attendant consequences of ketosis. One of which is that those tissues that prefer ketones for fuel become much more efficient like the brain for instance which consumes about 30% less fuel when it runs on ketones. So what's your barometer for efficiency?

Tissue doesn't "like" to store glucose, it's forced to store excess glucose because we eat it. Once we stop eating it, this store is smaller because we don't actually need to store that much glucose in our tissue. Everything you, and the rest of the world for that matter, know about glucose metabolism comes from the fact that we eat it. When we don't eat it, the whole picture changes and things you thought you knew don't apply anymore.

Now look at what happens when we eat both carbohydrate and fat. Carbs make insulin rise, fat is locked in fat tissue, the fat that we eat goes into fat tissue as well and is locked as well, there is still a fuel deficit. The picture doesn't change. Do you still vote for that?

I made a concise post and you took it apart without considering the point. Well, the point was that fuel (in physiological term this would be ATP or adenosyne triphosphate, the actual fuel of our cells) was an unquestionably essential part of our diet and you missed it. Anything that causes this part of our diet to increase is good, anything that causes it to decrease is bad. Did you know that we have a multitude of hormones that tell fat tissue to release its fuel? Did you know that we only have one hormone (insulin) that had the potential to lock this fuel in fat tissue if the conditions are appropriate (like eating carbs in a chronic fashion)? So again, what's your barometer for efficiency?

Assuming that they, in fact, digest all the carbs that they eat. Considering the evidence, I'd say that's too big of an assumption.

Not true: It must be repeatable. So when was the Kitavan diet repeated and where are the results? Until then, I'll rely on the low carb evidence which has been repeated ever since it's been figured out. And the results are always the same: Low carb is better than anything else. Except zero carb of course but that's just my opinion.

Do you mean that we must eat carbs otherwise we'd faint, then go into a coma, then we'd die? What if we ate nothing, when would the end come? Look, your example is not based on any fact that either you, or me, or anybody else knows so what's the point to say it? Right, there is no point other than to win a theoretical argument. But the facts don't support that theory. Your argument fails. So it's not "in fact", it's "in theory". Even then, how much glucose is "not enough"? 50mg/dl? 25mg/dl? 17mg/dl? How much exactly? That theory is vague.

OK this is interesting. So what happens if we eat a lot of carbs but only a little fat? The carbs make insulin rise but there is only a little fat to get locked into the fat cells and the body just uses the glucose and sends the leftover to the liver to get processed for later use. What if you don't eat that much extra? You just use the glucose you need and in between meals use your glycogen and if you still don't eat, start dipping into fat stores. Do I have this right?

So the real problem seems to be eating too much fat with carbs or if you want to eat fat then you have to drop the carbs to get rid of the insulin response so you don't store the fat right away. Maybe that's why the kitavan diet works, it is pretty low in fat and since the kitavans have eaten that way their entire life they have no problem using glucose as energy efficiently. Most of us have pretty wrecked glucose/insulin systems so it works better for us to drop the carbs to bypass the whole insulin thing.

One more question, if you switch from a glucose burning diet to a fat burning diet, will your body still secrete insulin for a while while you are making the transition? What happens when your body secretes insulin but there isn't any glucose to send to the cells. I'm asking because everytime I try to go lowcarb I get hypoglycemic symptoms so I wonder if I am still making insulin when I eat but since there isn't glucose in the food I'm eating it is lowering my blood sugar too much. Does anyone else have this happen?

Your body secretes insulin every time you eat protein or carbs. With carbs it's more insulin, and with protein less insulin, plus with protein there is also some glucagon. You want to have an insulin response, otherwise you'd be type 1. The deal is to keep the area under the insulin curve small, just enough to "put away the groceries."

If insulin rises but there is no glucose, then your liver has to scramble to squirt out glucose by converting glycogen from the liver into glucose, and also convert protein into new glycogen.

In the beginning this machinery is klunky and slow (because one is so optimized for carb burning only). Over time, the body gets better at it, and then there is the "glycogen sparing" effect where you get better at using less glycogen for the same stable blood sugar.

I had reactive hypoglycemia in the beginning and now I never ever have it. But then my plan is not zc so maybe I don't have those overreactive insulin-based blood sugar lows either.

We are pretty far apart in our goals I think, but I am one who goes for carbs for efficiency and I will try to help you understand.

It's not pretend at the cellular metabolism level. Count how many molecules and processes are required to get glucose from carbs, and then do the same to get glucose from protein.

No and yes. No because of course I don't vote for a deficit. Yes because an insulin response does not always lead to a fuel deficit.

Whether or not there is a fuel deficit depends on what fuel can be accessed and what fuel is being demanded. If I don't overwhelm with carbs but do have some, then fat metabolism is optimized and carb metabolism is minimally engaged.

Both carbs and protein make insulin rise. When insulin is above a certain level, the flow of fat is into storage. When insulin is low enough, the flow of fat is out of storage.

A super sugar eater may have high insulin, high blood sugar, low blood fat.
If intense exercise is demanded, that might work.
If fat-burning metabolism is required, that will be a problem because the fat has been swept out of the bloodstream and no fat can come into the bloodstream.

Or, how about high insulin, low blood sugar, low blood fat.
The demand is for sugar: In this case maybe the liver can shoot out some sugar or if the liver is depleted, crasheroo.
The demand is for fat: crasheroo.

Or, how about high insulin, low blood sugar, high blood fat.
The demand is for sugar: maybe the liver can come to the rescue, otherwise crash.
The demand is for fat: all okay.

And then there is how good is the sugar and fat metabolism.
maybe one is super optimized and the other doesn't work for spit.
Or maybe they are both fabulous teams that take the field when they are needed.

Mine is, a highly functioning metabolism at the smallest metabolic work by organs. I don't think my way is superior or only though, obviously other ways work too.

The amount of fat that gets locked away has nothing to do with the amount of fat we eat. It's all about the amount of carbs we eat. That's what controls the fat tissue. It's not what goes in fat tissue, it's what comes out. Insulin prevents it from coming out. It's much more complex but the simple explanation is that when insulin is higher then fat tissue grows bigger, and when insulin is lower then fat tissue gets smaller. It's not so much that fat tissue grows bigger faster, it's that fat tissue grows smaller slower. Fat is stored immediately and throughout digestion, it's just not released as quickly.

If the Kitavans had some kind of physiological resistance to fat accumulation, then they wouldn't grow just as fat just as quickly as we do when they adopt our diet. Yet they do so whatever makes them lean on their diet has nothing to do with their physiology but has everything to do with their diet. In other words, if we ate their diet, then we would be just as lean. However, we can't readily emulate this diet just by counting carbs. No, we must also emulate the refining level and the digestibility as well.

Do you have a glucometer? If so, then you can find out immediately if you are actually hypoglycemic when you feel like that. You will probably find out that you are not hypoglycemic. You probably feel the effects of the transition period of switching to low carb. It takes a few days and it's well documented in the various books like Atkins and Protein Power for instance. If you continue to feel that way after that period, then maybe you don't eat enough fat. But now we enter the realm of personal advice. I suggest you ask those questions in the appropriate forum.

The point is that even then the scope is too narrow to make a reasonable assessment of efficiency. It's not merely a question of how many ATPs are produced but instead it's a question of how expensive it is for the whole system to rely on dietary glucose rather than to rely on dietary protein. For each ATP molecule produced from glucose, how many more molecules of fat are locked away in fat tissue? You see, it's a question of the total fuel balance. If relying on dietary glucose creates a deficit at the bloodstream, then it's less efficient. If relying on dietary glucose means the brain must spend 30% more fuel for the same processes, then it's less efficient.