Hard Science About Diet

If you haven&#x27;t read either of Taubes&#x27;s books, please do. I highly recommend Why We Get Fat[1]. It&#x27;s a spectacular piece of scientific journalism. If that&#x27;s too much for you, try one of his talks on the same topic[2].<p>When I first encountered the idea that we do not get fat from eating too much and that calories weren&#x27;t responsible, I thought it ludicrous—the body can&#x27;t disobey the laws of physics! Thermodynamics! But after seriously thinking about the idea, I realized Taubes was providing a far more complete understanding of metabolism. The human body doesn&#x27;t run on calories, it runs on food. Yes, we can easily learn the caloric content of food, but that&#x27;s largely irrelevant. What&#x27;s important is how food affects the body, not its raw energy content. I see this misconception time and time again, especially among smart people who like to reduce the human body to merely a physical machine, often ignoring the whole biology thing.<p>I think the hormone theory of obesity is correct and I think these studies will prove it. But even if they show otherwise, this type of research is long overdue and we all stand to benefit from the results.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Why-We-Get-Fat-About&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0307474259</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://youtu.be/ywRV3GH5io0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ywRV3GH5io0</a>

For me the answer is simple. If I eat 2500 calories a day of vegetables, nuts, meat, eggs and fruit I have trouble finishing it all. If I eat 2500 calories with grains and sugar included I&#x27;m starving at the end of the day and it takes every ounce of will power not to eat 3000 calories. It might well be calories in, calories out but what I eat makes it dramatically harder or easier to regulate the calories in.

Holy crap, talk about burying the lede.<p>There&#x27;s a table at the bottom of the article that contains the tl;dr about the scientific studies referenced. All are still underway, there are no published results yet.

Fascinating that the core study the article focuses on is using strictly male subjects. I thought this had been a controversial approach[1] for quite some time now - yet they still claim the study&#x27;s main goal is &quot;doing it right.&quot;<p>[1]: <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/phys-ed-what-exercise-science-doesnt-know-about-women/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;well.blogs.nytimes.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;06&#x2F;30&#x2F;phys-ed-what-exerci...</a>

After 150 comments have been made, maybe 6 people will stop to read this. But I feel compelled to contribute a bit of what I&#x27;ve learned about obesity.<p>I was the medical director of an obesity treatment clinic for 10 years, working with thousands of obese patients.<p>The most important lesson is that obesity is a disease, and each obese person has a different disease. Each case requires a unique treatment approach. &quot;Cookie-cutter&quot; methods won&#x27;t cut it.<p>I&#x27;m convinced that obesity is the most complex disease the art and science of medicine has ever faced. I can&#x27;t even begin to describe the mind-boggling complexity of the situation.<p>A minimalist outline: factor in participation of the endocrine system (insulin resistance, role of cortisol, thyroid, reproductive hormones), the immune system products promoting obesity, as well as adverse inflammatory effects of adiposity contributing to metabolic disarray, and the brain&#x27;s functional role in metabolism involving highly intertwined connections of neuronal circuits regulating metabolism and sleep&#x2F;circadian rhythms. And so I could go on for gigabytes on these subjects, even before citing the enormous list of references.<p>Short answer: all of these body systems (neural, endocrine, immune) are interactive. Think many:many relationship with &quot;many&quot;==trillions. Therein are the solutions to obesity. Small needles, huge haystack.<p>Short answer: all of these body systems (neural, endocrine, immune) are interactive. Think many:many relationship with &quot;many&quot;==trillions. Therein are the solutions to obesity. Small needle, huge haystack.<p>A few years ago it was mentioned at a conference that at the time over 250 human genes (and their peptide products) had been identified to play a role in obesity. Considering the multitude of known and potential gene&#x2F;environment interactions, what simple &quot;cause and effect&quot; paradigm could we glean?<p>So yes, many obese patients respond favorably to low CHO, high N diets. Altering PUFA intake to approximate a 1:1 intake of N3 and N6 EFA in adequate amounts is warranted. Elimination of physiologically incompatible trans-fatty acids in the diet is absolutely necessary. Mono-unsaturated or saturated fats within calorie constraints are not usually an issue. Behavioral approaches are always indicated.<p>Just remember, each of us is different, our systems are inherently quirky, and tremendous variation is common. The above general rules are fine to start with, but be prepared, understand the &quot;reality paradox&quot;: exceptions are the rule and not the exception.

I read some time ago that there are only three dietary advices for general population backed by science:<p><pre><code> 1. Eat food. 2. Not too much. 3. Mostly plants. </code></pre> I wonder if anything changed since then.

We need new rigorously controlled experimental studies to tease out the causation patterns suggested by correlations observed in observational studies of human diet. The way to test a causal hypothesis is always, at bottom, to do a controlled experiment.[1] So we will tease out the effects of diet on different people by finding experimental volunteers and subjecting the volunteers to controlled diets, such as those planned for some of the experiments described in this interesting article.<p>This is very difficult to do, as almost all human beings eat when they feel like eating WHAT they feel like eating. Earlier human experiments on effects of diet in the 1970s actually required the experiment subjects to live in the laboratory long-term, and to have every gram of everything they ate during the experiment measured exactly by experiment team assistants. Even at that, those experiments came up with few clear conclusions, perhaps because the experiments weren&#x27;t lengthy enough or didn&#x27;t include enough subjects for strong inferences. Now the experimenting begins again. Whether the currently hotly debated hypotheses about human diet win or lose, it&#x27;s important to put the hypotheses to the test of a rigorous experimental study to advance human knowledge.<p>[1] <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;escholarship.org&#x2F;uc&#x2F;item&#x2F;6hb3k0nz</a>

The body likely has ways of losing weight that are faster than simply eating itself (burning fat)<p>Not all weight is fat<p>Metabolic efficiency varies, including by calorie type<p>Much of the chemical energy output in the body is involved in actually repairing or replacing, not only in expanding the volume of fat reserves or even muscle.<p>It&#x27;s all a thermodynamically-limited bunch of processes but thermodynamics is a limit rather than a driver of energy transformations.<p>Calorie REDUCTIONS don&#x27;t guarantee weight loss because obviously the body can choose to expend less energy. And if the term CALORIE DEFICIT is used, it is not justifiably used because science currently can&#x27;t determine the necessary level of granularity since energy, weight, and measurable metabolic output&#x2F;activity all change in response to factors other than the ones which are thermodynamically relevant, and this makes thermodynamic equations&#x2F;measurement of human dieing problematic. Essentially the system is kind of a &#x27;black box&#x27; and some of the relevant inputs and outputs in the thermodynamic equation are &#x27;inside&#x27; that mathematical &#x27;black-box.&#x27;<p>Edits for spelling<p>Oh and a slightly less vague explanation can be expounded onto the concept of energy transformation to explain why it wouldn&#x27;t always correlate with a weight change...combining or dividing molecules.<p>What if your body doesn&#x27;t have enough energy to go through the processes of burning a fuel source (or the necessarily mistake or vitamins, or other nutrients...)

I think modern food marketing should get more scrutiny here. Aside from the 24&#x2F;7 food ads with Photoshopped hamburgers, there are the new, more caloric, more addictive products. Starbucks, for example, has replaced the traditional American coffee and donut with a latte and pastry combo that has twice as many calories or more. You can&#x27;t sell low-calorie coffee with creamer and sugar (~50 cals) for as much as you can sell a latte (~200 cals).

I have a hard time believing the new theories that fat is not that bad and sugar is the evil. I used to have a diet with plenty of beef and pork meat. Then I went to live for a couple of months in Singapore, and there I ate noodles. LOADS of them, because I loved them. The result was that I lost a lot of weight.<p>In my experience what gets me fat is meat, and what makes me lose weight is eating less meat and more pasta and rice. But I suppose it varies per person.

I don&#x27;t believe its necessary for all the experiments to last that long. Its possible to have shorter more controlled experiments to gain insight to health benefits of particular diets.<p>For example...<p>A British group of volunteers were locked in a zoo and were allowed to eat up to 5 kilos of raw fruit and vegetables per day - but only raw fruit and vegetables.<p>&quot;Nine volunteers, aged 36 to 49, took on the 12-day Evo Diet, consuming up to five kilos of raw fruit and veg a day.&quot;<p>&quot;The prescribed menu was:<p>- safe to eat raw; - met adult human daily nutritional requirements; and - provided 2,300 calories - between the 2,000 recommended for women and 2,500 for men,&quot;<p>&quot;Overall, the cholesterol levels dropped 23%, an amount usually achieved only through anti-cholesterol drugs statins.<p>The group&#x27;s average blood pressure fell from a level of 140&#x2F;83 - almost hypertensive - to 122&#x2F;76. Though it was not intended to be a weight loss diet, they dropped 4.4kg (9.7lbs), on average.&quot;<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXZ1dH7tJWw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=JXZ1dH7tJWw</a> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6248975.stm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;2&#x2F;hi&#x2F;uk_news&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;6248975.stm</a>

Reading the comments so far, it&#x27;s interesting how much people&#x27;s ire gets raised on this topic.<p>Also, have a look at this, originally written&#x2F;published, it seems, in 1958: <a href="http://www.ourcivilisation.com/fat/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ourcivilisation.com&#x2F;fat&#x2F;index.htm</a><p>Makes for a fascinating read, and it amazes me how close it gets to what&#x27;s currently being put forward now (high fat low carb == good).

Two striking things about dieting. Firstly its a matter of calories in vs calories burnt. Stop eating and you&#x27;ll lose weight so it&#x27;s mostly down to your controls, conscious or unconscious. Secondly everyone starts at about 8 lbs at age 0 and ends up about 140lbs at age 18 give or take 50% and that&#x27;s not down to conscious planning - the unconscious bits of the brain make kids hungry if they need food and to not eat and run around if they have too much. And the mechanisms are powerful - no kids remain at 20 lbs because they choose to. When adults get obese its seldom because they choose too but because the unconscious bit goes wonky. I think the US mostly due to sugary food and not much exercise. It&#x27;s interesting if you look at the book &#x27;French Women Don&#x27;t Get Fat&#x27; that it&#x27;s mostly a recipe book but her actual story was she went from France to the US for a year or so, hit the sugary snacks and piled on the pounds and then on her return her dad was horrified so she dropped the snacks and the weight went. So a mix of factors there.

&quot;Gardner&#x27;s study stems from his previous research, which suggests a diet&#x27;s effectiveness may be due to how insulin-resistant the dieter is at the outset.&quot;<p>What if it also depends on the subject&#x27;s microbiota, which would be impacted by a number of things including the (unwanted) consumption of residual antibiotics in meats.<p>Seems like the more we find out, the more questions there are.

What about calorie counting? I think the best way to lose some fat is to add up the sum of the calories of what you&#x27;re eating, as the day goes by. In time, this will create an ability to know which foods are too rich and which are ok. Also, they allow management of appetite&#x2F;hunger by allocating the rest of the calories for the rest of time. I personally found it much easier to eat on a budget of 1200 or 1400 calories a day than following a regime that forbids some kinds of foods or aims to make food less palatable. I lost 30 pounds that way and was able to keep my new weight in the following 5 years. I used an iPhone App for actual counting and calorie database lookups. Also, physical activities can be tracked and added up to the daily budget. If I walk for 2 hours, then I can have an extra meal, if I want to take it.<p>TL;DR Calorie counting makes for mindful eating and changes habits, without suffering.

Am I missing something? Is there any actual information in this article beyond<p>* Science in general and nutritional science specifically may or may not be sketchy (And this is news?),<p>* There are at least three ongoing, very interesting, apparently well-designed studies exploring the topic, with an emphasis on <i>ongoing</i>, and<p>* These three studies are the children of a researcher who lost weight when he changed his diet, an Enron billionaire, and Gary Taubes, a science journalist with a history of being very, very partisan. (No, really, go read <i>Bad Science</i> and then track down <i>Polywater</i> by Felix Franks---different scientific episodes, but with roughly similar hoo-ha involved; I&#x27;m talking about the <i>style</i> of the two discussions.

I firmly believe in the saying, &quot;You get sick because of what&#x27;s eating you and not being of what you are eating&quot;.

&gt;NuSI&#x27;s starting assumption, in other words, is that bad science got us into the state of confusion and ignorance we&#x27;re in. Now Taubes and Attia want to see if good science can get us out.<p>NuSI&#x27;s approach to test long-standing food science assumptions.

This seems intellectually interesting to me but it&#x27;s frustrating because I feel it takes what is a relatively simple issue and makes it needlessly complex. Yes, maybe there is some amount of optimization you can do with your diet, but the simple fact is that there is a not a single study in the history of science which has been able to demonstrate eating at a caloric deficit and gaining weight. Show me an obese person not eating significantly too much.<p>From the practical standpoint of actually trying to lose weight&#x2F;get people to lose weight, the challenges in nutrition are almost entirely around compliance (how to ensure someone sticks with the program) rather than substance (what people put in their bodies). Most people know, within reasonable terms, how to eat healthily. It may not be the most optimal way possible (perhaps keto or some other diet is), but if we spent more time studying how to teach compliance I think we&#x27;d be making a lot more progress towards stopping obesity.

If anyone can find a sentence from the article that would make a more descriptive title, we can change it. This is one case where subtitles and the opening paragraph both fail us.

I think it&#x27;s important to note that every individual is different. I&#x27;m surprised that gene therapy has not made any inroads into weight loss management and diabetes&#x2F;hypertension prevention. In an ideal world, diet and exercise should be tailored to your genetic makeup, instead of the &quot;one size fits all&quot; brute force approach.