Tue, Oct-03-06, 19:15
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New Member
Posts: 2
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Plan: My own
Stats: 155/155/155
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Location: Northern California
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Good article to poke fun at. Enjoy!
I thought this would be a fun article to poke fun at. Enjoy! 
Its truly amazing how much misinformation is out there.
Here is the original link http://www.martygallagher.com/diet/diet
Quote:
An Alternative to Atkins: Beyond Low Carbohydrate Diets
By Don Matesz
Although scientific studies now confirm that Atkins, Protein Power, South Beach, and other low-carbohydrate plans can produce some weight loss over the short term, these diets produce mediocre weight loss in the long run, do not meet many human nutritional needs, and may promote premature aging and degenerative diseases. Low-carb plans don't qualify as health enhancing diets. Studies comparing meat-based low-carbohydrate and plant-based reduced-fat diets indicate the low-carbohydrate diets might produce greater weight loss in the first six months, but beyond that the plant-based approach works better. Although low-carb diets have been used for more than 30 years, the National Weight Control Registry database indicates that less than one percent of 2,681 people successful in maintaining weight loss of greater than 30 pounds for more than a year have used reduced-carbohydrate diets. So far, the most successful people have used carbohydrate-rich diets in which fats on average provided only 24 percent of calories (1). A 2002 research review found the scientific evidence strongly supports reducing dietary fat, not carbohydrates, as the best method for preventing obesity (2). (More below.) Some low-carb advocates assert that Nature designed humans for a meat-dominated, low-carb diet. In fact, we have none of the unique characteristics of carnivorous animals, such as cats, but we have many characteristics designed for a plant-dominated diet, including requirements for nutrients only plant foods adequately supply.
Humans produce enzymes for digesting starch, including one present in our saliva. Carnivores have no starch-splitting enzymes in their saliva. We also have taste buds which guide us to enjoy the sweet flavor provided by carbohydrate-rich plant foods. The human gut differs significantly from the guts of obligate carnivores (3). The human stomach forms no more than 25% of the volume of the entire digestive tract. Most of the human gut volume (55-70%) lies in the small intestine. In contrast, in carnivores, the stomach typically forms the largest part of the gut (dog, 62%; cat, 70%), and the small intestine comprises less than 30% of the total gut. Our gut also features haustrated (pouched) small and large intestines, a characteristic typical of animals adapted to a plant-dominated diet, not obligate carnivores.
Only strictly or strongly herbivorous animalsprimates, rabbits, capybara, and wombathave an appendix. Our appendix produces starch-splitting enzymes, clearly adapted to a starch-rich diet (3). Our brain requires a minimum of 50 to 150 grams of glucose daily; starchy plant foods provide the most glucose; meat provides none. To prevent carbohydrate shortage, our muscles and liver can store 400 to 600 grams of carbohydrate in the form of glycogen. Our muscles store glycogen because they run most efficiently and with most endurance fueled by carbohydrates (4). Carnivorous animals make their own vitamin C and obtain little from their diet of meat. We don't make vitamin C and must get it from fruits and vegetables, because we need more than meat provides. Carnivores can't produce vitamin A from beta-carotene, but can consume large amounts of vitamin A without ill effects. Healthy humans can produce vitamin A from beta-carotene but can't detoxify preformed vitamin A (found only in animal foods). If a pregnant woman eats more than three times the RDA regularly, her child may suffer birth defects. Just 3 ounces of beef liver contains more than 9 times the RDA for vitamin A. Children have developed vitamin A toxicity by regularly eating a chicken liver spread that provided a daily average of up to three times the recommended vitamin A intake (4). Carnivores require preformed niacin (vitamin B-3) in their diets (5). Humans don't require dietary niacin; we can make it from tryptophan, an amino acid supplied by plants. Humans eating high niacin doses can suffer liver damage and peptic ulcer.
Among humans, Eskimos have had ample opportunity to develop carnivore-type characteristics and ability to thrive on a meat-dominated diet. For many generations the Eskimos obtained about 90 percent of their calories from meat and fat from seal, whale, caribou, and fish. Yet scientists have not found any evidence that Eskimos have special genetic adaptations to this carnivorous diet (5). Since the liver handles cholesterol and fat metabolism and detoxifies by-products of protein metabolism, carnivore livers have special metabolic features adapted to a high-meat diet. Eskimos lack these features (5) and physicians have reported that primitive Eskimos suffered from liver enlargement related to their diet (6). When Eskimos traded in some fat and protein for carbohydrate, their livers reduced to healthier size (6). Although they had a remarkable resistance to dental decay and ischemic heart disease, Greenland Eskimos also experienced a high incidence of hemorrhagic stroke, possibly cause by their high fish diet (7,8), and they had a total cancer incidence similar to cancer-prone Danes (9). A 1986-88 study of 50 nations found Danish women have the highest incidence of cancer (at all sites), and Danish men have the 12th highest incidence (9).
Although the robust, strong, and active Eskimos ingest at least 2000 milligrams of calcium daily from fish bones, researchers report they have the world's highest rate of osteoporosis (10). Without eating alkaline fruits and vegetables, not even that very high calcium intake can neutralize the acid produced by their calcium-depleting high-protein diet (10). Some authors say only modernized Eskimos develop cancer and osteoporosis because they eat refined carbohydrates. If refined carbohydrates cause cancer, the Thai people should have more cancer and osteoporosis than the Eskimos, because Thailanders eat a diet based on refined white rice and wheat noodles. Not so. In 1986-88, Thailand enjoyed the lowest cancer incidence of 50 nations tabulated (9). Danish women had a cancer incidence 3.8 times that of Thai women and Danish men had a cancer incidence 3.3 times that of Thai men (9).
Thai and other Asian people had less osteoporosis than Americans (or Europeans) who eat far more calcium (11), disproving the idea that high-carbohydrate diets cause osteoporosis. Asian rates of osteoporosis have been climbing in hand with increasing Westernization of Asian diets (i.e. increased meat and dairy food intake). According to renowned anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who lived with primitive Eskimos for several years, they had an average lifespan at least 10 years shorter than Americans. Stefansson specifically noted that Eskimo women "usually seem as old at sixty as our women do at 80" (12).
Weston Price's High Carbohydrate Dental Health Diet
Some authors give the impression that Dr. Weston Price, D.D.S. recommended a low-carbohydrate diet. In fact, Dr. Price recommended eliminating refined carbohydrates in favor of using fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. The diet he recommended for stopping progression of dental decay included all of those carbohydrate-rich whole foods. In Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Chapter 22, "A New Vitamin-Like Activator" Dr. Price recounted the following mid-day meal he provided to mission children suffering from dental decay:
4 ounces of tomato or orange juice with 1/2 teaspoon of cod liver oil and 1/2 teaspoon of butter oil
16 ounces vegetable and meat stew containing tender meat, bone marrow, and "finely chopped vegetables and plenty of very yellow carrots."
Cooked fruit with "very little sweetening"
Whole wheat rolls with "high vitamin" butter
16 ounces of fresh whole milk
Conservatively estimated, this one meal would provide at least 82 grams of carbohydrate: 5 grams from juice, at least 15 from the stew, at least 20 from the fruit, at least 20 from one roll, and 22 from milk. He provided this meal once daily. The food the children ate at home "consisted of a highly sweetened coffee and white bread, vegetable fat, pancakes made of a white flour and eaten with syrup and doughnuts fried in vegetable fat." This diet apparently contains no vegetables, fruits, or animal products, and provides lots of sucrose (table sugar), the favored food of Streptococcus mutans, the bacteria involved in tooth decay. Streptococcus mutans does not thrive on starch. According to Dr. Price, the one nutrient-dense meal he provided daily "completely controlled the dental caries of each member of the group, as determined by x-ray and explorer examination." Unfortunately, to my knowledge, this study has never been replicated, and because of poor study design, we have no idea which of the foods were responsible or necessary for the improvement in the childrens' dental health. Dr. Price attributed the improvement largely to "a new vitamin-like activator" he believed to occur only in animal fats. However, since he never ran a control experiment leaving out the animal fats, or only adding the animal fats, he failed to prove that the animal fats or other animal-source nutrients were the key ingredients. The benefits could have come from reducing sugar and adding the vegetables, fruits, and whole wheat providing plant-source vitamins and minerals absent from the refined food diet.
Do Carbs Turn To Fat?
Repeated metabolic studies in controlled conditions have shown that people convert only small amounts of starch to stored fat. When human subjects overate as much as 1000 calories (250 grams) of refined starch daily for one week, on the seventh day they were converting less than 10 percent of the carbohydrate to fat, producing only 10 grams of new fat daily from the process (13, 14, 15). At this rate, a person would have to overeat (on top of a calorie-adequate diet) a daunting 10 four-ounce potatoes or bananas, or about 20 slices of whole grain bread, every day for a whole year to gain one extra pound of fat. If you increase your starch intake, this stimulates your body to burn more glucose, and the body usually stores any excess as glycogen, not fat (15). If you manage to eat more starch than needed to fill your glycogen stores (generally a difficult task), the body has to expend about 25% of the carbohydrate calories to convert them to fat (15). In contrast, eating a high-fat diet does not stimulate your system to burn more body fat, and if you eat more fat than you burn daily, more than 95% of it will become body fat (15,16). Your body burns a mix of carbohydrate and fat daily (the proportion depends on your activity level). To lose body fat, you have to eat less fat than you burn. Some studies suggest cutting fat may be more important than cutting calories.
Anti-carb propaganda suggests that people can get fat by over-eating starchy vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. A medium potato or banana supplies about 100 calories. The average woman who needs at least 1500 calories per day would have to eat more than 15 four-ounce potatoes or bananas daily5 potatoes at every mealjust to meet her minimum caloric needs. I think few if any people can overeat such foods. To become overweight you must eat more calories than you burn. People can easily overeat calories when from fat-rich food because fats provide up to 45 times more calories per unit volume than vegetables and fruits. For example, a 4-ounce sweet potato (about 5"x 2")about one-half cupfulsupplies about 117 calories, while a half-cupful of oil or fat supplies 1,120 calories, nearly 10 times more. In general, vegetables and fruits fill you up long before you can eat enough to fill you outnot so for fats and oils.
If you eat a combination of starches and fatty foods that exceeds your caloric needs, your body will store any excess calories from fat as body fat. You can force your body to run on dietary fat by reducing your starch intake, but your energy levels will drop because your body prefers to burn carbohydrate, and your breath rate will increase because burning fats requires more oxygen than burning carbohydrates. In fact, your body can't fully burn fat unless it has a constant supply of carbohydrates, so cutting carbs also means you get less energy from your fat. Some low-carb diet advocates blame carbohydrates for diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. They ignore the fact that the healthiest populations in the modern world consume high-carbohydrate diets. People in Okinawa eat a high-carbohydrate (55%) diet, and have rates of heart disease, cancer, senility, and diabetes that fall among the world's lowest. Okinawa also has the world's highest proportion of disability-free centenarians. Japanese, Greeks, and Kitavans eat diets similar to the Okinawans, and have rates of degenerative disease much lower than Americans.
According to the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), diets rich in plant foods, especially vegetables and fruits, provide our best protection against cancer. Recently an AICR-established expert panel reviewed 247 studies investigating links between vegetables or fruits and cancer. An eye-opening 78 percent of those studies showed vegetables and fruits help to prevent cancer and none showed a negative effect (17). No evidence indicates that any animal products provide this level of benefit. Numerous studies also show that diets rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains also provide protection against osteoporosis, diabetes, and heart disease.
Insulin Errors
Low-carb diet advocates blame insulin released after meals for obesity and claim that only high-carbohydrate foods raise insulin. They also routinely confuse the natural insulin rise (and fall) that follows meals with chronic hyperinsulinemia. Whereas chronic hyperinsulinemia indicates disease, we require a post-meal rise in insulin for proper utilization of nutrients. Scientists also have found that depressed insulin response to meals predicts future weight gain (18). Post-meal insulin peaks trigger satiety centers in the brain that depress hunger and appetite (18). This means that meals rich in high-glycemic carbohydrates suppress the hunger center whereas meals high in fat do not. This may explain why Asians remain slim eating diets based largely on high-glycemic white rice and noodles, while Americans eating lots of lower-glycemic white sugar along with high-fat foods (which suppress glycemic responses) seem to have insatiable appetites. Although diets high in refined sucrose (table sugar) and fructose (granular or high-fructose corn syrup in processed foods) probably do promote insulin-resistance and hyperinsulinemia (18), no evidence supports and much refutes the idea that whole food carbohydratesvegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumescause insulin-resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Low-carb diets include plenty of protein-rich foods. Did the low-carb gurus mention that the high protein foods they advocate also stimulate an insulin rise after meals (19)?
Cut Refined Carbs Only
If you want to minimize your body fat and maximize your health and disability-free lifespan, cut refined carbohydrates, but don't stop eating carbohydrate-rich whole foods. Choose a produce-dominated diet wherein, by weight or volume, at least 65% of your food comes from vegetables and fruits. Divide the remainder among whole grains, nuts, seeds, and modest amounts of lean wild or grass-finished animal products. Use visible oils and fats sparingly. This will give you the most nutritious diet possible.
References
1. Wyatt HR and others. Long term weight loss and very low carbohydrate diets in the National Weight Control Registry. Obesity Research 8 (suppl 1):87S., 2000.
2. Astrup A, et al. Low-fat diets and energy balance: how does the evidence stand in 2002? Proc Nutr Soc 2002 May;61(2):299-309.(abstract)
3. Milton K. Primate Diets and Gut Morphology: Implications for Hominid Evolution. In: Harris M and EB Ross, editors, Food and Evolution. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987: 93-115.
4. Whitney EN, Rolfes SR. Understanding Nutrition.West Publishing, 1993. For discussion of muscle fuels, p. 450, for vitamin A, p. 349.
5. Milton K. Hunter-gatherer dietsa different perspective. Am J Clin Nutr 2000;71:665-7.
6. Schaefer O. Eskimos (Inuit). In: Burkitt DP, Trowell HC, eds. Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981:114.
7. Bjerregaard P, Dyerberg J. Mortality from ischaemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease
in Greenland. Int J Epidemiol 1988 Sep;17(3):514-9.(abstract)
8. Kromann N, Green A. Epidemiological studies in the Upernavik district, Greenland. Incidence of some chronic diseases 1950-1974. Acta Med Scan 1980;208(5):401-6.(abstract)
9. http://seer.cancer.gov/publications...sk/rates38.html Web page by: National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Cancer Rates and Risks. Accessed 7/11/04 on the World Wide Web
10. Mazess R. Bone mineral content of North Alaskan Eskimos. Am J Clin Nutr 1974;27:916.
11. Lau EM, Lee JK, Suriwongpaisal P, Saw SM, Das De S, Khir A, Sambrook P. The incidence of hip fracture in four Asian
Countries: the Asian Osteoporosis Study (AOS). Osteoporosis Int 2001;12(3):239-43.(abstract)
12. Stefansson V. Adventures In Diet, Part III. Harper's Monthly 1936 (Feb):189.
13. McDevitt RM, et al. De novo lipogenesis during controlled overfeeding with sucrose or glucose in lean and obese women. Am J Clin Nutr 2001;74:737-46.
14. Acheson KJ, et al. Nutritional influences on lipogenesis and thermogenesis after a carbohydrate meal. Am J Physiol 1984;246 (Endocrinol Metab 9): E62-E70.
15. Flatt JP. The Biochemistry of Energy Expenditure, pp. 101-16 in Bjorntorp P and Brodoff BN, Obesity. New York, JB Lippincott Co, 1992.
16. Flatt JP, et al. Effects of dietary fat on postprandial substrate oxidation and on carbohydrate and fat balances. J Clin Invest 1985 Sep;76(3):1019-24.(abstract)
17. http://www.aicr.org/press/pubsearch...asso?index=1104
18. Elliot SS, et al. Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome. Am J Clin Nutr 2002;76:911-22.
19. Holt SH, Miller JC, Petocz P. An insulin index of foods: the insulin demand generated by 1000-kJ portions of common foods. Am J Clin Nutr.1997 Nov;66(5):1264-76.(abstract)
© Copyright 2004 Don Matesz. Readers may reproduce one copy of this article for personal use or to distribute to friends, so long as any copy you distribute includes my name and the web page address.
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Last edited by Rombus : Wed, Oct-04-06 at 12:46.
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another egomaniac!! 
80-fold when subjects were switched from low- to high-carbohydrate intake." This contradicts his 'carbohydrates don't turn to fat' statements.
A nutrition major heard some of the discussion and later asked me what I thought was an ideal diet and I facetiously said, 'Well, we are humans, so I guess the perfect nutrition would be other humans!' Suprisingly, she said that was sensible and had a lot of merit. I'm fairly sure she was serious and never turned my back to her in class from that point onward. 
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