Talk me through this new study please!
 

I'm transitioning from a mostly whole foods plant focused diet, to a moderate carb diet that's greatly reducing my whole grains, fruit and legumes intake while increasing fat and protein. And then I read this, which lines up with so many of the other things I've read about whole grains, fruit etc being important for long term good health etc. Sooo, for those of you who have who've been doing lower carb a lot longer than I have-please take a look at the article/study and convince me that I haven't made a mistake by switching over to a lower carb way of eating :p

(the sodium part of the study lines up with what I've read in other places, so no argument there)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/onwe...h-sodium-intake
http://www.healthdata.org/research-...analysis-global

This is the part that really got to me (from first link) "Of the top 10 dietary factors that cause the highest number of deaths globally, eight of them are related to low intake of healthy foods rather than high intake of unhealthy foods."
But most of these foods are the ones I've been cutting way down on/out, since I started switching to lower carb last week.... so is my diet going backwards?

Health data-- this is a world study and not useful in that it is a world summary. Some areas of the world are still improving their diets as in getting enough; some have completely adopted the SAD; and in the US many have moved to vegan and are experiencing health problems adding to poor health as much as SAD.

Salt--that is a big subject.

Whole plant diet is still good-- keep eating real whole foods. I do. Just add in REAL meats and real fats. I have moved away from vegetable oils, decreased AS, increased water in stead of sugar free drinks.....

What are you changing? Can you be more specific?? (Are you including bacon and nitrate /BHA meats?? Yummy but has risks for cancer. )

Changes I've made so far:
-from 4-5 servings of whole grains a day, down to 0-2
-from 3-4 servings a day of fruit, down to 0-1
-from 1 serving a day of beans, down to 0
-from having root veggies 2-3 times a week, down to 0
-from fat free dairy, to full fat for the most part (as I use up what I have in the house)
-from 1 serving of red meat a week, up to 1 serving almost every day
-from 1-2 servings a week of chicken, up to a serving every day
-from 0 eggs to 1-2 every day
-started using olive oil 1-2 times a week, from 0. I don't really use any other liquid oils

Those are the main changes I've made in the past week. Even with a plant focused diet I did eat bacon a few times a week and continue to do so, but for me that means 1-2 slices per time, since I just use it as a flavoring for dishes/salads etc. I can work on cutting this out, but it's so darn tasty and I can get it for $2lb :yum:

I also have used artificial sweeteners ever since I started my active weight loss phase, 7ish years ago, and continue to use 1pkt of splenda per cup of coffee and then I do drink diet soda, but have cut this back to 2 cans a day/have added more water, since last week. I have a goal to get this down to 1 can a day and then completely eliminate it this year. I've just started drinking LaCroix a few times a week, which is a good substitute for the carbonation!

eta: thinking about it some more, I've also cut out all 'white' grains since I started lower carb, which is another 1-2 servings a day of grains that I've removed. And I went from 1-2 servings a week of seeds/0-1 servings a week of nuts, up to a serving of one of them every day, (either sunflower seeds or pistachios).

Great details--- I can only see "healthy" in your changes. Eggs are very nutritious; meat like beef has nutrients that are only in beef like absorb-able iron and B12; AS is a reasonable level.

Yes, bacon is very very yummy!!!

Grains-- I read Wheat Belly and saw grains and glutin in a whole new light. Grains are a new food to humans, and the newest varieties are different from the old ones. Some people who cant eat the new wheats can eat the old varieties ( not commercially grown) without problems.

I do eat beets once in a while as again a specific nutrient only in beets.

Overall, I think your new food choices are great. Maybe just change up the nuts if you can.

Good luck.

But if they're bad, then why do studies like the one I posted above say that they're an important part of a healthy diet? Why do Blue Zones have the healthiest, longest living populations in the world and they eat mostly plant based diets that include beans and whole grains? I'm feeling so darn confused right now :daze:

I appreciate your input, just trying to sort through everything right now and get things figured out :)

Totally understand. I went thru confusion too, and kept pulling info together until reached this conclusion:

Health is not as simple as eating ONE food. MEaning there could be many reasons why Blue Zones are healthier-- could it be that they fast more, ie calorie restricted at times??? COuld it be the level of stress is different? COuld it be they exercise more? Or less pollution?? Could it be extended family life is rich and rewarding?? Could it be the American food is contaminated with herbicides and pesticides and antibiotics ???

Looking at only food is only looking at one piece of the pie.

These studies are NOT cause and effect studies. Meaning the diet cannot be pointed at and say THAT is why we are healthier. Maybe there is something else that the study did not capture that is the real driving force behind better health.

I do try to find a nugget that could make my health bettter. So for example, legumes. I looked to find the old ways of preparing them from dried beans to make them a better food source. Soaking, rinsing, soaking, rinsing--- does change the phytochemical burden; and then cooking them of course.

B17 is NOT a vitamin that is regarded as valuable here in the US; but it is more prevalent in other diets around the world. We have developed sweeter and less bitter vegies and removed the B17. Yet no one says " stop eating the arugula" or " dandelion greens will kill you".....lol....

Beans in moderation. Good source of protein, some vitamins and some fiber. Good carbs for some people; too much carb for some one else. I moved them to the once in a while, not everyday catagory putting meat in its place.

Meats are a complicated subject because just how contaminated is the meat is debateable; whether or not it is altered is not debateable. IMHO organic grass fed meats/ dairy/eggs most closely mimics the wild meats we ate for millions of years.

The eggs from my chickens are NOT the same as the store eggs. I do eat both. The hens spend the day traveling around the farm scavenging the natural foods and the eggs taste and look different than store eggs-- and have MORE omega 3 and vit A naturally.

You have good questions-- hope this helped somewhat. Keep reading here on this forum and you will find all the "information" that gets debated and discussed so you can make a choice that fits you. ( though we do favor meat is good; and coconut oil, and eggs. lol)

Unfortunately, most studies only cause angst rather than provide a real answer. You will find this too discussed and how researchers manipulate data, or the study is not a very good one, yada yada......

Sad but true.

I'm not sure if anyone before 30 years ago ate whole grains except for farm animals.

The first thing I always do with study headlines like this is find a link to the study itself. For all we know, the article we first read may simply be a regurgitation of some pre-written press release that was sent out to media outlets for the express purpose of achieving maximum exposure, rather than actual journalism where somebody actively seeks out the story. Best to go beyond the headline and go straight to the source, where possible.

In this case, the study itself is published here.

I had a read of it a couple of weeks ago. To my relatively unqualified eyes, the raw data seems fine in terms of how much of which nutrients are being consumed in different parts of the world, even allowing for the inherent weaknesses in 24 hour diet recall as a method of data collection ("please tick everything that you ate yesterday from this list").

Where I would start to challenge the findings is when that raw data is compared to the recommended levels of those nutrients. Those recommended levels were set by calculating the amounts associated with the lowest risk of death, the key word being "associated". For example, eating red meat may be associated with a small increase of risk in developing cancer, but since smokers also tend to eat more meat than non-smokers, any direct association with meat and cancer can't really be proven without first addressing the confounder. So, to claim that we eat too much red meat on a basis as weak as this, is itself pretty hollow.

Any recommended levels of anything should really only be defined through data from higher-quality experimental studies, i.e. trials. Observational data proves very little on its own, and in this case, we're talking about observational data based on other observational data, which is even worse. So to me, there really is nothing meaningful to see here... but we see it anyway, because people know that catchy headlines sell and details don't really concern the majority of audiences these days.

If you haven't read The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz, I'd recommend it. It's interesting - in a depressing kind of way - to understand the lengths to which some people will go to get their message out, regardless of its accuracy to the truth.

To my mind this is not a study. It is instead a clever statistical manipulation of unreliable data to reach a result that confirms already present biases. These results are then turned into a headline to get people to do what they have already been told to do and which we already know does not work to enhance the health of many if not most people who follow this advice.

Thank you so much for this, you make a lot of sense and I'm feeling better about moving forward! I'm going to take a deep breath and just tackle things one at a time. I'm feeling good about the most of the changes I've made so far so I'm going to keep going with those, and then I'm going to do a lot of reading (which I enjoy anyways, so win-win!), on various low carb subjects. I just got a notification from the library that I have 4 books in, if I'm remembering correctly I think they're all Atkins related (either his books or spin-offs). So I'm going to start there and then work forward from there :)

Thanks for the insight, and I'm going to see if my library has The Big Fat Surprise since I haven't read it!

eta: just put a hold on the book :)

Huh, that would be interesting! I'll have to look into that some more and find out when whole grains became a 'thing' :)

It definitely feeds into what's all over the news right now, with dietary recommendations going more towards plant based. I admit I've completely fallen for it too, and would have continued embracing that style of eating except I've started having a harder time maintaining my weight and then the bloated stomach was driving me nuts-no discomfort but I'm vain and just hated how it looked :p One week lower carb (not even super low carb, averaging 60ish net carbs a day), and the bloat is pretty much gone. I've also lost a few pounds as well. No PMS issues this month either, which is really unusual. Soooo, maybe main-stream media reports really are 'fake news' :lol:

I remember the more hippie-dippy types talking about eating whole grains back in the 60's. Granola was introduced to a lot of teens/twenty-somethings back in '69 at Woodstock. (there wasn't enough food available to feed the hundreds of thousands who showed up once it became a free concert - a local farm commune in the area offered very small cups of granola for free to anyone who was hungry, telling the recipients "It's not much, but it's really good." I had a real jaw-dropping :bash: moment when I saw that in the Woodstock documentary a few years ago.)


I remember a lot more talk about whole grains in the mid to late 70's. More and more people were starting to talk about how good it was for you to eat things that were "whole grain-y" by the early 80's. So it's actually getting close to 40 years since the whole grain movement really took off.

What Grav and Jean wrote. Learn the difference between observational and experimental studies here: https://www.dietdoctor.com/observat...imental-studies

But before you worry about studies, you should probably think about Why you decided to go Low Carb. Your intro said you wanted to knock off a few pesky winter pounds, and you did that in a few days of healthier eating. You note a few minor health issues that might be improved by eliminating grains. This is a good article to read with the first question to answer before you proceed:

https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb...b-right-for-you