Why do people resist the idea that carbs are worse than fat?

I think there are a number of issues:<p>1 - People relate fat the nutrient to fat the body type because they share the word "fat". Not much to do there. In high school I was taught that carbohydrates were "energy" and fat was "waste". People should probably be taught the right way our biological systems operate.<p>2 - Medical authorities have worked with the best science they had available at the time, and are almost always managed by bureaucrats, not physicians. This isn't limited to the governmental level; hospitals, medical organizations, medical schools... the people in charge often have administrative training, not medical training. As a subpoint; sure, medical authorities have led us astray with nutrition information, but let's not jump to the conclusion that they have done something intentionally evil here.<p>3 - It's hard to prove any one way is the right way because of so many variables, including genetics, activity level, co-morbidities, and so on. More importantly, when something is right for 95% of people, that also means it is wrong for 5% of people. In the absence of easily testable datum, those anecdotes get a lot of attention. And even if it were easily testable, 5% of the time it would be wrong.<p>To me, the key is two-fold:<p>1 - People need to be educated about the facts of how their biological systems function. They need to know how calories work, insulin and blood sugar regulate, and gain a general appreciation of the science of their bodies.<p>2 - People need to be willing to "listen to their bodies" and experiment. That's the only way to know what really works for you, because you ARE different than everyone else. A healthy diet isn't just about finding mathematically optimal foods, it's about finding stuff you like to eat, that fills you up, that you can eat in moderation, that is easy to make. You need to be willing to mix health and convenience, taste and availability, etc... and that takes a bit of time to figure out.

I'm always surprised at the theories people are willing to believe about obesity, particularly people on hn. It really sounds reasonable to so many of you that the cause of the obesity epidemic is people actually listening to nutrition advice from the medical establishment and following the food pyramid?<p>My view of what has happened is this: technologies and ingredients were invented by food manufacturers over the past half century. Foods manufactured using these technologies have the following advantages: cheap, high mouth appeal, non-perishable, convenient. They also have the following disadvantages: calorie dense, difficult to metabolize, addictive for some people.<p>For most peopele not explicitly making food decisions with a mind to control their weight, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.<p>At the same time as this was happening, most of the reasons for people to expend calories vanished. As far as I can think of, the only reasons left to burn calories are pleasure and weight control.<p>In this sort of context most normal, perfectly rational people will end up getting fat. The only people who won't are: athletes, people with strong metabolism (this usually goes away with age), and people who dedicate themselves to not being fat.

The "fat is evil" thing that happened in the latter half of the 20th century is going to go down as the biggest scientific fuck up ever.<p>The very people who were given all the authority and trust, and who were supposed to protect human life, actively killed people by pushing carbs as healthy and fats as unhealthy.<p>They directly caused spiking obesity, the #1 medical issue in our society.<p>Repeat after me: The biggest health issue in our society was directly caused by the health authorities. This means doctors, medical researchers, and governments.<p>Heart disease, cancer, and obesity are all linked to carbs now. Millions and millions of people have died because they followed the advice of the scientific authorities.<p>When the general public figures out how wrong the scientific and medical authorities were for SO LONG and SO LOUDLY... public trust in science is going to be maimed for generations.<p>If you can't trust them on the #1 public health issue - the #1 killer of humans - what can you trust them on?

People resist the idea because the answer is too simple. "Fats" are better than "Carbs". So lard is better than a banana? Ugh.<p>It's not the broad category of "Fats" vs "Carbs". It's the TYPE of food. Eat good food. Period. Not something made in a factory. Twinkies: out. Soda: out. Standard pizza with refined grains and loads of cheese: out.<p>Eat healthy food: the right meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lots of water. Don't eat crap. Exercise.<p>It really isn't rocket science, but when we make one food group "bad" and the other one "good" just so we have another excuse to eat junk, we lose.

God I remember when everywhere (even in school) was hooked on the "you are killing your kids with butter, eat margarine" line.<p>Of course, then they banned it most sensible places because of the hydrogenated/trans fats. Shocking that something made by chemical process by companies with large sums of money will be heavily advertised and pushed to people over, say, something that can't be patented by any one body.<p>Similarly, carb laden foods are cheap to produce and will last even if stored badly, you just have to try going out to dinner to an "average place" and try not to eat something where the dish is not mostly potato, noodles, rice, or flour based (pasta, bread, pizza base) to see why industry wouldn't think it was great if carbs came with health warnings.<p>Having said that, It strikes me from experiences in the past that everyone reacts differently to the mix of carbs and fats in their diet, but everyone seems to react to good amounts of protein, so while I'm not sure either should be demonised, clean sources of protein should be made more important.

I resist the idea that carbs (and HFCS for matter) need to be demonized. The article mentions peoples tendencies, but one tendency the anti-carb crowd relies on is how people want to find a smoking gun or silver bullet solution.<p>The article doesn't really do much to prove anything since rarely did the elite eat the same thing as the peasants. Throughout history kings and queens usually ate much better than the peasants. This would include more meat, alcohol, spices, sugar, etc...

What's more radically different between people who are healthy and people who are not is how much they exercise rather than what they eat. There is much more worldwide cultural variation in what people eat, and much more individual variation within each culture, among healthy people than there is variation in the exercise level of healthy people. But seeking to change diet to change health sounds easier than getting more exercise, so that's what gets in the news (and on HN, over and over and over).<p>Doing serious scientific research<p><a href="http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html" rel="nofollow">http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html</a><p>with controlled experiments and careful observation and follow-up on human nutrition is extremely hard. I recall a local television news documentary about a dietary study from the 1970s in which experimental subjects were confined 24/7 in a lab for many weeks (they must have been compensated handsomely to agree to participate in this experiment) and fed EXACT portions of food that were weighed with extreme precision. Oddly, I don't recall particularly what hypothesis that study was set up to test, but I do recall that it was described as the first experiment that relied on feeding subjects exactly measured portions of known foods (and excluding subjects from access to foods they chose for themselves) while involving lengthy (weeks of time) follow-up. It's still exceedingly rare for studies of human nutrition to have careful experimental designs. (And even at that, I suppose most of the subjects of that experiment are still alive, but I don't know if anyone is doing follow-up observations of those subjects in any manner.) Instead, we get inferences from Egyptian mummies (as in the submitted article) or from other uncontrolled case studies that never even had careful observation to begin with. That really isn't science;<p><a href="http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html" rel="nofollow">http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html</a><p>that is trading anecdotes, and third- or fourth-hand anecdotes at that.

I've found the fat hypothesis - 'fat makes you fat' - to be false, or at least not to apply to me. I am not exactly anti-carb - I eat potatoes, and a little rice - but I have been eating a diet that I guess you could call 'Paleo 2.0' for the last 7 months or so. The basic goal is to minimize my intake of grains, fructose, and legumes, and maximize that of saturated fats. I also happen to be vegetarian, so for me this means a diet of mostly dairy and vegetables (and limited fruit). I eat a lot of full fat Greek yogurt (Fage brand, typically), butter, cheese, eggs, very dark chocolate (85+%), potatoes, etc. I eat until I'm full and I never count calories. I probably cheat 1-2 times a week on average, usually by eating something rice- or corn-based (Chipotle, corn chips, an Indian meal with rice, etc.).<p>I didn't do this to lose weight - I wasn't exactly a big guy - but there were some surprisingly quick effects. After about 5-6 months I'd dropped from around 155 lbs to 135 (+/-2), and I've been stable there for a couple months. My waist went from 33" to 30" and my body fat went from around 21% to 12%. Had a checkup a few weeks ago and, other than very low vitamin D, the doc said I was pretty much in perfect health.<p><a href="http://archevore.com" rel="nofollow">http://archevore.com</a> is probably a good resource, if you want to know more about the diet itself.

Well, my guess would be: Because "evangelists" on both sides use words like "worse" to reduce complex issues to sound bites.

A more subtle reason for the pro-carb bias is it provides justification for vegetarianism since most vegetarian diets are much higher in carbs than fat. Vegetarians, animal rights advocates, and people who may eat meat but nevertheless are against promoting it because of their concern for the environment want to believe that their more moral diet is also healthier. The easy way to do that is by lending their confirmation bias to any scientific study that maligns high fat diets and thus meat eating and to ignore contrary research findings that does not confirm their bias.

I think the real answer is because it is more systematically profitable to sell carb products and (food) companies are really really good at selling things to people.<p>It is interesting to see comments on this forum that involve the strategy of reasoning with the public to get them to accept their idea.<p>Next time you see somebody drinking a soda explain to them what fructose does metabolically to their bodies. Your message is a lot less effective than seeing a polar bear mommy drinking a coke on a wintery day or seeing kobe bryant dunk a basketball and popping open a bottle of sprite.

Because people say, "I am getting so fat!", not, "I am getting so carbed!" So they equate calories from fat being converted directly to adipose tissue.

There's money in carbs and not in fat.<p>This answer may sound glib, but not if we consider the facts surrounding the issue.<p>- The propaganda for carbs and against fat has been overwhelming over the years. Most people are not likely to believe anything other than what they've been taught.<p>- Our economy relies heavily on what we can generally call "the carb industry." If people are being harmed by too many carbs, they'll take medicine (like they're trained to) and that builds another industry. Why would anybody (politicians, industry leaders, corporate science) want to change that?<p>- Besides, carbs are beautifully packaged, cheap, and readily available. Why would anyone want to re-think that?

"Fat is worse than carbs" is a very successful meme because it passes a superficial "evidence-checking": it's fat, so it's gotta make me more fat, right? A mechanistic, false-newtonian, 17th century understanding of biology. A fallacy of common sense.<p>Plus, it's been touted all over the place for decades. Of course it catches on.<p>Keep calories in general low, paying special attention to carbs. Don't forget to lift some weights. Feel free to do other types of exercise if you wish. Voila, instant fat management.

Correlation != causation.<p>Let me guess the root cause of this "fat is evil" meme. People who love fat are often gluttons. They eat what they want, in large quantities, and don't care about the consequences. They also consume huge quantities of processed sugar, which is now found to be "bad", and don't eat their greens.<p>Health freaks avoid fats and sugar, living on lean meat, veggies, and grains. This may not be optimal, but it's better than Big Macs, Cola, and fries.

I guess I haven't been paying attention but I thought the Atkins diet from a few years ago had been discounted as an unhealthy fad diet. But now I'm reading that it has been scientifically proven to be the healthiest diet. Is that right? Are carb-filled fruits and vegetables supposed to be less healthy than for example fried bacon?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that studies and/or those who do them are not very trustworthy? I have watched studies conclusively prove that eating chicken eggs will:<p>kill you sooner, make you live longer, have no measurable effect, cure cancer, cause cancer, and defeat communisms (joke)<p>Similar cycles for other types of food. Similar cycles various types of activity.<p>Having watched this for so long, am I really going to suddenly believe that carbs are evil, that I should found a new moral system (and a new diet) on the latest studies which, in my experience are going to be shown wrong in a few years anyway. Or should I just go ahead an eat the way I've observed the people who live to be old eat?<p>Related: look up the story of the boy who cried wolf.

My beef is that nutritional "experts" tend to reverse their "advice" every 5-10 years.<p>- X is bad - No, actually X is good. - No, it turns out X is actually bad after all. - No, actually it's Y that's causing all our problems. - Wait, no, it's Z.<p>And then along comes the marketing blitz.<p>"No salt", "Sugar free" "glucose free" "gluten free" "made with cane syrup" "cholesterol free" "fat free" "no saturated fat" "no trans fat" and now "carb free", no doubt.<p>And then the vitamin supplement and herbal crowd come out to flog their latest crackpot diets and exercise regimens and trans-yogic-meta-druidic-ninjutsu-meditation.<p>Yes, I rage much :P

So many of these articles do not distinguish between simple and complex carbs and lump them all together. There is a difference between 20g of carbs from a piece of fruit vs 20g carbs from, say, pasta.

Neither should be demonized.

There are many reasons why people resist the idea that carbs are worse that fat. For one thing, no one has proved that "carbs are worse than fat." It's a silly, over-simplified assertion.<p>Also, fats are the most calorie-dense macro-nutrient. If your calorie intake is greater than your calorie expenditure you will gain weight. You could easily supplement your diet with a 300 calorie bar of chocolate twice a day and your daily calorie intake skyrockets from 2,000 to 2,600. Over time this will lead to obesity if your activity level doesn't rise or if muscles don't grow.<p>Each tablespoon of oil adds 100+ calories a the dish.<p>2 slices of bread: 160 calories, 60g of peanut butter: 350 calories.<p>Carbs are good. You need carbs. Without carbs, your body overuses ketogenesis for energy, releasing toxic byproducts into the blood that cause kidney and liver damage.<p>Too many carbs at once leads to unstable blood sugar and insulin levels. The consequences of this are poorly understood, especially in healthy, active people. But intuitively, daily large spikes in blood sugar and insulin response are probably not a good thing. The good news is that eating high GI carbs with fiber, protein, fats, and sugars mitigates the spikes.<p>While not as calorie-dense as fatty foods, lots of high carb foods are low fiber, low protein, and low moisture with minimal micronutrients and still have very high calorie/weight ratios.<p>(Calories-in &#62; Calories-out) in a sedentary lifestyle leads to increased body fat and weight gain which leads to cellular stress inflammation causing insulin resistance, which leads to more weight gain and more severe metabolic problems.<p>The whole carb vs. fat debate is a waste of time.

<i>My reading led me to believe that sugars and grains in my diet were the culprit and, sure enough, once I cut those out and increased the amount of animal fats in my diet, I lost 50 pounds. (I always had and continued to eat a lot of vegetables, too.) I have never felt more energetic or clear-headed.<p>So, yes, my personal experience tells me Taubes is correct, just as Horgan’s experience tells him Taubes is incorrect. But, importantly, I would not have had my experience if I had not read the nutrition literature with an open mind.</i><p>The last sentence is unjustified and probably incorrect. A lot of people get fed up with their weight, resolve to make a change, and then lose a bunch. Adopting an exciting new idea and making a change is the crucial part, not the validity of the idea. I lost a lot of weight as a vegan (over thirty pounds), got into the best shape of my life, relaxed my rules, and gained a little bit back. Did I gain that little bit back because veganism was the answer and I failed to be faithful to it? No, it was because the initial novelty and enthusiasm wore off. It's the same pattern no matter what the actual composition of the diet is. Low-carb diets' biggest contribution to weight loss has been to provide a psychologically viable option for meat-and-potatoes people who felt unsatisfied or alienated by the "hippie" food that low-fat diets would have had them eating.<p><i>the health effects of a high-carbohydrate diet often are not visible as weight gain—that Egyptian princess, no doubt thin as a rail (have you ever seen a fat mummy?), had a level of atherosclerosis that today would have doctors scrambling for a bypass operation</i><p>Now, this part is actually interesting and I await more information concerning the heart health of people who exercise and maintain a healthy weight on different kinds of diets.

Since moving to only /expressly/ eating carbs once a week (as in the 4 hour body book) I've lost a stone and gone from 24% body fat to 17% - all in about 8 weeks.<p>Plus my /gut/ feels a hell of a lot better now I'm not eating bread, and when/if I do I get a pretty rough stomach.<p>People don't realise just how bad processed carbs are. We didn't them for centuries and only do now as they are sold to us cheaply.

These anecdotal arguments back and forth are interesting, but they're not science. I mean, where's the details on the methodology? Where are the data? Why do we listen to/argue about the various experts, instead of digging into the actual research that's been done?<p>If you're looking for studies on the topic, check out these two videos:<p><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-847196066367535747" rel="nofollow">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-847196066367535747</a><p><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1719204869171202407" rel="nofollow">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1719204869171202407</a><p>It's basically a survey paper in video form, presented by one of the researchers. It has actual graphs! With error bars!<p>The corresponding book is pretty good too, it's called the China study.<p>Personally, I trust statisticians on health much more than biologists. It's nice that there's a biological basis for the conclusion, but trying to argue diet based on the metabolic process seems like a stretch, especially when it conflicts with what's observed.

Over-consumption of everything is bad. Cake is great, cake is fun, but if you eat it everyday you'll probably get fat because it has a lot of calories. And hey, a lot of calories isn't bad, it's just if you eat more calories than burn you'll gain fat. And that's OK, until you start to get so fat that it decreases your quality of life. Body like a loosely tied ballon, if push air into it -- it'll get big, but on itself it'll lose weight.<p>On another topic, I'm usually pro-legalization of every drug that's out there. But there's a lot of people out there who just put random shit into their bodies in unreasonable quantities without understanding of what they are doing, making stupid excuses. AND IT'S JUST FUCKING FOOD. If heroin or coke become legal, we'll probably see a lot of people overdose. Which I'm fine with, technically. I just now start to understand why some drugs are illegal.

We are predisposed by our Victorian ancestors to assume that anything which gives us great pleasure must also be bad for us. Hence fat is believed to be worse than carbs.

Blame the media, they portray fat for the reason people are fat, the do not educate these people with the truth behind complex carbs and simple carbs and how the body responses to these. Some fats are good for you such as olive oils contain mono saturated fats which is great for your body and those can be found naturally in meats. But trans and saturated fats are hard for the body to respond to. It comes down to educating people of what they are eating.

I eat lots and lots of bread (what you would call "carbs") but basically no meat, and I'm quite skinny nevertheless. I do no sports (I've only recently started to ride my bicycle after a 10-year pause), nor am I on any diet or anything similar. So, yeah, I don't see how carbs are worse than fat.

They are not worse, just different. People are desperate for a single villain to blame for their fat asses.<p>Maintain a balanced diet, keep the total calories down, stay away from cheap processed food, get exercise. It's very simple, but unfortunately there is not a single villain, so people resist.

Argh. This is what I don't like about non-tech, -IT, and -CS articles posted on HN: people go off on tangents with so little (useless) information. I'm sorry to say this article is poor on information.<p>Let's stick to the facts. Complex carbs (brown rice, whole wheat bread, bagels, whole wheat pasta, beans - the list of delicious, healthy complex carbs is long) in moderation does not hinder your health. In fact, your body needs them because it is stored energy. Other sources of energy are used up quicker, such as protein. That's not to say carbs are better than protein. Your body needs both!<p>Now, refined SIMPLE carbs (table sugar, fruit juice, "packaged" cereals, chocolate bars, etc.) are not good for you, and only certain types of bodies with certain physical activity should consume them (e.g., if you are a bodybuilder or if you lift weights a few times a week, etc.). It is still absolutely tantamount that you consume unrefined simple carbs such as strawberries, raspberries, oranges, apples, plum, pear, a long etc., and the number one fruit because of its flavanoid content: blueberries!).<p>Put simply, fruits and complex carbs help you convert what you eat in slow-releasing energy that has less content that is turned into fat (as opposed to refined simple carbs). This steady release of energy is part of "moderation is key". If you have your body working too hard, your heart fluttering/palpitations and overworking it are not healthy, neither is when your body processes everything too slow.<p>The biggest factor when consuming carbs (both simple and complex) is the glycemic levels in your blood. You can't have this fluctuate so much, especially if you're pre-disposed to it, otherwise you throw it out of kilter and it may cause diabetes.<p>I'll keep the fat part short. We need fat, too! Let me be less "headliney". We need polyunsaturated fatty acids; in part, to keep our metabolism going. Foods like avocado, fish, flax seed, leafy vegetables, soybeans, walnuts (nuts), and shellfish. Sure, saturated fats may not be the major cause of heart disease, but lessening it while consuming a healthy amount of polyunsaturated fat and complex carbs might. You can read an article on that here (it's better than the OP's article, but still has its flaws): <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/rethinking-saturated-fat-its-not-your-hearts-enemy/article1462757/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/rethinking-satura...</a> (By the way, this article was published over a year ago.)<p>Having said all that, each body is different. You should tailor your diet to what your body reacts positively to. For example, flax seed is healthy for you, but I know people who get diarrhea from it. Obviously, don't force yourself to eat something your body doesn't like. Listen to your body, because, unfortunately, the science doesn't fully understand all body types.<p>I'm not a fan of fallacies from defective induction, so I shall refrain from an argumentum ad verecundiam on this, but on a separate note, I will say my friend studied nutrition and she has expressed a keen dislike toward the "Food guide pyramid".

On a relevant note, I think Gluten is the main culprit in carbohydrate related health problems. <a href="http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-s...</a>

Because you told them fat was the source of all evil for at least twenty years?

Better question - Why are people always trying to subtract something from they're diet? Wouldn't it be better to just eat a well balanced plate?

why is everyone suddenly a nutrition expert?<p>I know a lot of people who have opinions on what is good for you and what isn't in terms of food. none of them are doctors, of course. in fact, most of them have never taken any science subjects at all, and wouldn't know their ass from a redox equation even if you threw a shelf-full of chemistry books at them.

Simple advise - don't over-eat

Because they are so dang delicious...mmmMMMmmm donuts.

That's funny. There are many studies showing that vegetarians live longer, more healthy lives than omnivores.

The agriculture industrial complex is invested deeply in corn/soy/wheat processed foods and chemicals. Mega billions are at stake. The options for "low effort" and "low price" food are virtually all unhealthy from a diet standpoint. Yet, these foods have been engineered to be nearly addictive. That is why there is rampant obesity. Any diet that largely avoids these foods and maintains reasonable variety is going to be vastly more healthy.

I did quite a bit of research into carbs after being diagnosed Type One diabetic and I wholeheartedly agree with this article. Turns out, carbs weren't a staple part of our diet until the agricultural revolution (17th century?) and then only really caught on because it was cheap and easy to farm, compared to fruit and meat. So there you go. Capitalism has been fucking us for centuries.