Quote:
Originally Posted by ReginaW
Martin, you're setting up so many different logical fallacies, I'm not even sure where to start in reply!
First you bring in fat stores in pregnancy, but point to the wrong reason fat is laid down in pregnancy -- it isn't for adequate fat to go to the fetus/baby, but to insure two things....first is energy required during labor (there was a huge paper a few years ago about the benefits of ketosis for delivery and the role of body fat stores to acheive ketosis during labor) and second isn't for supply of fat to the baby, but for lactation - so the woman has adequate stores of energy to produce milk to feed her infant.
Which interestingly Martin, if carbohydrate was not part of the human diet, why then is breastmilk rich with fat and carbohydrate? It's actually "low" in protein (by gram weight - it's actually the right amount by weight of the infant and its requirements for amino acids). If it were that we only need protein and fat, the first perfect food - breastmilk - would contain no carbohydrate!
You mix apples and oranges, making the implication that by my statement that carbohydrate is indeed part of the human diet that it then must mean a high carbohydrate diet is normal. I have never said that, nor do my words imply such....re-read what I wrote, and it's clear I said that carbohydrate has a place in our diet and I believe it is to serve an evolutionary advantage to maintain us, by allowing us to accumulate adequate fat stores, to survive and reproduce.
DO NOT FORGET a woman is infertile without adequate body fat stores - low body fat renders the female reproductive system null-and-void....it won't work without the right level of body fat......without a means to lay body fat, how exactly do women - if they consume a mostly carbohydrate-free diet - lay down body fat if you....as you suggest....cannot without carbohydrate?
Ah - but we do lay down fat and can in the absence of carbohydrate because it is NOT the carbohydrate driving fat storage, it's the INSULIN....right? So what else potentially allows us to lay down fat in the absence of carbs? Anyone? Anyone? Ferris?
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I wasn't clear enough. Sorry.
I meant that the baby grows fat immediately after birth to insure it a supply of fat from its own fat stores. Indeed, the mother's milk contains an agent that would make it so: Lactose.
Now it's your post that contains logical fallacies.
If the woman's fat stores is intended to induce ketosis during pregnancy, why do women mostly have gestational diabetes? Ketosis and diabetes are mutually exclusive because one is induced by the lack of carbohydrate while the other is induced by the presence of carbohydrate. Unless you meant ketoacidosis but I think you meant what you wrote. If we claim that carbohydrate is a natural part of the human diet, we have to accept the gestational diabetes is also part of the normal pregnancy and we have to exclude ketosis.
If breast milk contains lactose, it's to insure the baby grows fat which in turn is to insure he has an adequate supply of fat during a critical growth period where fat is absolutely essential. On the other hand, we grow lactose intolerant which tells us that breast milk is not the normal adult human food. Maybe this is an evolutionary advantage that would push us to eat an actually adequate food like fat meat during the period succeeding weaning. You mention yourself that breast milk contains insufficient protein and it would continue to contain increasingly insufficient protein for a growing child. These are two unambiguous arguments against carbohydrates and dairy as part of a normal human diet.
I don't need to attribute you implications for me to extend the logic behind carbohydrate being a food. It's merely the next logical step.It's the next logical step because carbohydrate causes us to eat more carbohydrate therefore a high carb diet is a normal human diet if we see carbohydrate as food. That's the logical chain. You don't have to write anything else for this chain to develop if all you write is the very first part. It will develop whether you like it or not.
Women already have the means to lay down more bodyfat than men without the ingestion of carbohydrate. It's written in their genes. That carbohydrates cause excess fat accumulation is merely coincidental. It is not what causes women to store fat differently from men. Ingesting carbohydrates merely emphasizes those genetic differences by amplifying those areas where fat accumulates more and less. However, there is a point where the gender differences disappear but I guess we're not talking about this but still I think there's something to be said about this.
You could argue the carbohydrate hypothesis here but before you refute my advice in other threads, you'd have to show that I claim that both women and men accumulate fat with equal efficiency with equal amounts of carbohydrate. I never claimed this. On the contrary, I adopt the Taubes view of gender differences in fat accumulation.
Indeed, if women accumulate fat more readily than men and should do so even without ingesting carbohydrate and this should be sufficient for normal pregnancy, wouldn't women need to reduce their carb intake even lower than men to achieve the same results? The hypothesis that carbohydrate is a normal part of the human diet is refuted again.
It's a logical fallacy to claim that carbohydrate is a normal part of the human diet if it simulates the normal surplus fat accumulation that occurs without ingesting carbohydrate.