From October 29th through November 4th, let's talk about the Prologue A Brief History of Banting from Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Our moderator Charles will be chiming in with his comments later today, but I welcome YOUR reactions and thoughts to what you read in that opening chapter of the book.

Incidentally, if you have never read William Banting's Letter on Corpulence that was mentioned in the prologue of GCBC, then CLICK HERE to get your FREE COPY of this very small book. It will give context to what Taubes wrote in this part of his book.

Okay everyone, you wanted this discussion area, so let's get started!

"To attribute obesity to 'overeating' is as meaningful as to account for alcoholism by ascribing it to 'overdrinking.' " - Jean Mayer, Harvard Nutritionist, 1968.

GCBC, in the prologue, sets out the argument Taubes seeks to make throughout the rest of the book. This argument, first, is that research in the dietary causes of obesity has been hampered by concentration on the fat-cholesterol hypothesis of obesity, and a self-reinforcing feedback of research in this area which highlights results supporting it and discards results in contradiction. Secondly, Taubes collects the data that support the alternative, that obesity is a hormonal disorder caused by sensitivity in certain individuals to carbohydrates and elevated insulin levels, and shows this hypothesis to be the stronger, and should at least be looked into.

The prologue begins with the experience in the mid-nineteenth century of William Banting. Banting was obese and tried everything to lose weight. When he found that a low-carb diet worked for him, he wrote a pamphlet on his experience. The medical establishment attacked his pamphlet. The one thing I take away from this discussion is that nothing has changed, even in the internet age.

I just received in my email box an article from Total Health Breakthroughs in which author Anthony Colpo tells us "To successfully lose weight, you must burn more calories in a given time period than you take in, no matter what diet you are following.", "Time and time again, tightly controlled metabolic ward studies have shown no difference in the rate of weight loss on high- or low-carbohydrate diets of identical caloric content.", and lastly, the old argument "Because you are eating previously "forbidden" foods, like steak and eggs, that do such a great job of filling you up, you may feel like you are eating more than before. However, if you have lost weight since you began eating this way, then the reality is that you are eating fewer calories."

Needless to say, I cancelled my subscription immediately. In the internet age, one can see the outright lie of the flawed studies, and his own ignoring of the studies which prove the metabolic advantage of a low-carb diet, which we will discuss in later chapters. Further, he makes the claim, absent ANY studies, that we are just more filled on low-carb, and so eat less calories. But, the fact that even when we have access to the biggest amount of knowledge ever at our fingertips, that lies can be spread and believed over the truth, tells me that we will never reach a true age of enlightenment. We have to find our own truth, because the truth out there is often met or exceeded by the untruth, and this will never change. Experiences such as Banting's will never completely go away. I admit, I used to have more hope for science and society, but Taubes' book ended that for me. I am left wondering what other research is being hindered, and lives and health being squandered, by the medical research community by their unscientific mode of thought.

In discussing Banting, it was also shown that back then, as today, many of the ideas leading to a low-carb diet came from diabetes research, in this case, Dr. William Harvey. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Two other things of note, Taubes previews the ideas surrounding how primitive societies develop the "diseases of civilization" after they start eating the way we do in the "civilized" world. And, he also decries that specialization is so rampant in science that we are spending more time studying how genetics might affect obesity rather than looking for something simpler. This is Occam's Razor, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. This simple explanation is that what the dietary and government "experts" have been telling the public is what is making them sicker and fatter. Obviously, it is much easier to do a few thousand gene sequencings than to admit they're wrong.

Taubes was attacked for his original article in the New York Times Magazine so much, his disclaimers have to be stated even though ridiculous. For instance, when he quoted someone in his article as a point of information, his critics would come at him and say "that guy doesn't believe in your carbohydrate hypothesis!". Taubes never said he did, but by using that source in his article, the idiot critics thought they were making a valid argument against him by saying one of his sources didn't agree with him. Total bull, but if that is the sort of argument that prominent scientists and researchers and experts think is valid, it is no wonder the science is in such an awful state. It also shows how politics trumps science, and seemingly always will.

One of the reasons the book was less-than-easy to get through for me was my despair at, to put it bluntly, how bad science is in general. I will never trust another media report on science. Even an individual study's own summary and conclusion can misrepresent the data contained in the study itself. So, unless I read the entire thing, I won't trust it at all. Now that I've said this, hopefully I can not be so down in my posts of this book discussion from here on in, and I look forward to the views expressed here!

Curt

I hear ya, Curt, and can understand your cynicism about the way scientific studies are promoted in the media. It's better to look at the data for yourself and come to your own conclusions based on the facts. That's all Taubes is asking people to do in his book.

His disappointment with the researchers who have been given the power to influence health policy and diet information is at the crux of the prologue. Taubes lays the groundwork in this opening chapter of Good Calories, Bad Calories that we need to all question the conventional wisdom that we all just "believe" is true.

I agree with Curt on one thing, although I am an avid reader, this book is super heavy and hard to get through. However, it contains an important message and is worth the effort.

So far I really have not seen anything that I have not heard elsewhere, as to the effects of low carb dieting on health. However the point that science can be driven so much politically is scary, especially as it relates to Keys. I thought the story about Eisenhaur was quite interesting as well.

While this book may be hard to digest for the layman, I hope it will raise the awareness amongst high profile experts on health such as Dr. Weil. Because there is no better way to get the message to 100's of 1,000's of people.

What I find truly amazing is all of the studies done both before and after Key's hayday, that were totally discounted because they were not politically correct.

ITA that if the majority of us on this site would just look at our own experiences with low carb, not much other validation is needed as to whether it's healthy and it works. We have only to pass the word in any way we can.

I was all revved up to begin with chapter 1 and forgot about the prologue. I'll be ready for next week anyway.

Low carb as we know it started with Banting, though it probably pre-dates him. It is a great place for Gary to start. It's curious that Banting didn't eat butter. Some have explained that, since unsalted butter tastes sweet, they assumed it had sugar. We're a little smarter today, but the basic principles are there. Atkins & others just picked up on them.

On this whole calories in-calories out thing seems like nonsense. However, Dr. Mike Eads pointed out in a recent post, there is some validity to it.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/2007/10...nd-weight-loss/

He points out that: 'These two laws of thermodynamics can be summed up cleverly. The first law says you can’t get something for nothing, and the second law tells you that you can’t break even." There are ineffeciencies in all natural processes, so "The second law can kind of be summed with this equation: calories in = calories out + entropy."

You do have to burn the calories, but with low carb, we do it in less obvious ways. The processes of buring fat & protein for fuel are less efficient than the process of burning glucose. Hence, there is more entropy involved in burning fat & protein, rather than glucose.

I don't subscribe to any of Colpo's stuff, but I haven't completely blown him off either. He still has some good stuff and nobody's perfect. I'll just take his rants with a grain of salt.

The Prologue can be broken down into five topics, that I would like to explore over the next 5 days.

I. Banting's contribution
II. Banting's effect
III. A Casual look at what we'll later term the "Fat Hypothesis"
IV. Diseases of Civilization
V. Taubes' Function and Goals for his work

I. Banting's Contribution

I personally found the 36-year old, five-foot five Banting to be one of the the most interesting personalities that we find in this entire book. This was a fellow who suffered many of the ills that plague us today. He was an affluent British man, so he was far more concerned with how he looked to society than maybe some of us are. He had no family history of obesity, which was very strange when you think about it. Most of us have obese family members or at least a parent or grand parent that we can look back on.

Mr. Banting exercised. This exercise caused him to get hungry and therefore he ate. Today, we would call this a lack of willpower, but his experience is what we find most often. I can still remember back to when exercise of any kind was referred to as "working up an appetite." When I finished running yesterday, I had a big appetite.

Mr. Banting found the right person at the right time, like many of us found Jimmy Moore or whatever figure that led us here. He found Dr. Harvey, who happened to take a trip to Paris and heard the great physiologist Claude Bernard lecture on diabetes. Dr. Harvey was a dentist, yet he passed on knowledge that he learned to Mr. Banting. How many of our doctors today would advise us in a field that is not our specialty?

They didn't wait for tests or science, they only tried what seemed to be a logical and sound reason. "If meat and dairy would check the secretion of sugar in the urine of a diabetic, the complete abstinence from sugars and starches might do the same." Harvey knew that carbohydrate was used to fatten animals and that in what we now call Type 2 Diabetes, "the whole of the fat of their bodies disappears". Therefore, perhaps a diet that excludes the fattening agents would "arrest the formation of fat."

Mr. Banting was unaware of the identity of, or the work of the doctors who presented the ideas to Dr. Harvey. This is an important distinction that will be found throughout the book. The answer to obesity and the diseases of civilization is found across several disciplines of study. It's almost impossible for any one doctor to know the latest research of every field and to find the common linkages necessary to control obesity and chronic disease. Medicine has become far more specialized today than it was in Banting's time and therefore it is much more difficult to get information, assuming one is even looking for it.

However, it's clear that in the 1800's in France, there were three doctors who were expounding on research which linked obesity to dietary carbohydrate. As Dancel noted, "carnivores are never fat but herbivores often are." Brillate-Sevarin recommended "more or less rigid abstinence from everything that is starch or floury."

Since blogging wasn't so popular then, Mr. Banting published a free book, written to the general public which described "what worked for him." Rather than just trying it, here comes the media and the "experts" claiming that:

1. It was old news; meaning that this information was readily found in medical journals, or known to doctors; and,

2. The diet was dangerous and particularly injurious to the credibility of the physicians that tried to apply the diet.

Sound familiar?

EXCELLENT points to ponder, Charles! I especially like the comment about Banting finding the "right person at the right time." Yes, it was a dentist who told him about low-carb which may seem a bit odd. But think about how many chiropractors, for example, who promote alternative health measures like livin' la vida low-carb today. We need MORE medical professionals to use the knowledge and experience they have gleaned over the years so they can pass it on to their patients.

The Banting example DOES sound VERY "familiar," Charles. But the key difference in today's society is the evidence that proves much of what Banting wrote about is either here or coming soon. Plus, there are a lot more people who are fat and sick with the very ailments that were destroying Banting's health. The time is now for us to make some noise about "what works for us" and to share it unashamedly.

GREAT JOB, Charles!

I want to add to Jimmy's comment, "to share it unashamedly". This lack of spreading the knowledge goes back to Banting. As Charles mentions, Banting's leaflet was critized as old news that doctors already knew. But Banting didn't know this and he said so to whom ever would listen, unashamedly. Even though he was very modest and somewhat intimidated by professional medical people, he tried to help those he could with his experience. I mean what is good science with all of its double blind clinical trials but concentrated experience. Bravo for Banting!

From now on, I'm changing my vocabulary. I'm no longer on a diet or having a 'way of eating'. I'm now banting! What a great word! It's simpler than a way-of-eating and has a lot of great underlying meanings that the word diet doesn't have nor any of the negative meanings that the word diet does have.

Thanks Jimmy and everyone for starting this discussion. I'm revved.

I'm so revved that i forgot to tell the story about my former boss. I saw him Sunday at a farmers market. This guy is a 65+ year old civil engineer who runs his own consulting company. To see him at farmer's market was a complete surprise.

I had gone to this out of the way market to get some chicken livers from the farmer who supplies my raw cream. Well, up walks my old boss and says Hi. I stare for a full minute before I recognized him. He had lost 50 plus pounds! On a guy of about 5' 7" or so that's a lot of weight.

Anyway, I had talked to him about four months ago about low carb diets (bants?) and my wonderful experience with it. I had lost 40 pounds on the Bernstein bant even though that was not even my goal to do so. My soul purpose on the bant was to control my blood sugar with which I'm doing very well thank you. My last A1c was 5.5 down from 7.0 on the extreme ADA diet.

Haivng him thank me over and over again was just pure joy. I'm still joying it. BTW, I could not have helped a better person than him.

Jimmy, I was wondering if one of the questions you could ask Mr. Taubes would be whether he would consider putting together a condensed version of his book at some point in the future?

I realize that the whole point of the book is to tell the WHOLE story of nutritional research, and is not so much about just "practical advice."

But, being a VERY slow reader, with somewhat frequent attention difficulties (which I hate, because I do love to read, but it takes me so long to get through one book!), I know I will not be able to read GCBC. Okay, technically I am "able" to do so, but in a similar way to someone being "able" to read the entire Bible. It takes a lot of time/perseverence, etc.

Also, I think that the message would reach many more people if it were offered in a more palatable format. Just a thought. ?

Hi all
just joined the blog
might i say how much i enjoy Jimmy's inimitable, and irrepressible, blog. Definitely the best for constant news.
Many, including Jimmy, of the people responding to this site seem to be on the more extreme end of the weight spectrum - at least formerly, since their successes on low-carb.
i am one of those who never got fat, and has no family history of weight problems.
but i am one of the many who suffer the same symptoms of Western "diseases of civilization". name;y poor blood sugar control. Here in the UK, the National Health Service had been at a loss to treat or even diagnose my energy fluctuations. They failed to test or diagnose properly, even the so-called specialists were clueless. I came to Atkins five years ago having suffered for 20 years from daily energy slumps, the shakes and faintness.
As Taubes shows, his "carbohydrate hypothesis" explains why the same cause can affect different body types, while having differing degrees of effect.
The Atkins book described my condition - a revelation to one who had never had such symptoms explained by any medic. I tried it and was cured in a day. I have never looked back.
i now subscribe to the Paleo/Weston-Price concepts and proudly slim and fit.
all the best to you Jimmy and all who write on this blog

Markus

I am really hoping that this thread gives me the condensed but thorough version of Taubes book so I don't have to read it all myself. By the way, Dr. Eades put the entire Banting pamphlet on his blog recently. Very interesting to read Banting's own account.

For those interested in the Banting book that Dr. Mike Eades posted for FREE, get it here. Very quick read and is basically Good Calories, Bad Calories put into practical action. READ IT!

Avalo, congratulations on your success. I like the change in the language to Banting, although many people will look at you even stranger than they do now if you use that word. Although, it would open the door of opportunity to explain it!

WanderingSoul, I'm sure a condensed version of GCBC would do well and even a GCBC for Kids to help the youth understand these concepts, too. It's out of Gary Taubes' hands, but could happen if the book continues to perform well. For adults, though, it is BEST to make yourself read through the entire 400 pages of content. WELL WORTH IT!

Welcome Markus and it's good to have you here from across the pond.

Marnae, Avalo is exactly right! The purpose of this discussion here over the next six months is to condense it all down to the core messages. Be sure to zero in on the posts that our moderator Charles writes because he puts it in very simple language for everyone to understand. We'll be taking a chapter a week, so keep coming back for the new chapters.

THANKS for the stimulating conversation so far everyone! KEEP IT UP!

Markus! You and my DH had similar experiences! Altho he has gained 30 #s or so over the years, and does have obesity and diabetes in his family, he had bad "energy" problems. He had been tested for blood sugar issues for years asserting that something is "wrong". He'd get shaky, sweaty, almost to the point of fainting, and even when it wasn't that severe, he had low energy and had bad slumps where he could just sleep for hours in the middle of the day. But alas, no diagnosis.

I dismissed Atkins in 2002 when the new book came out and everyone and their brother went on it. My father had died of a heart attack at 52, his cholesterol out of control, so the very thought that I should eat bacon instead of a banana seemed ridiculous. So I dismissed it without reading it and went on my merry way eating low fat/high carb and failing miserably. By the way, DH's triglycerides were 660. Yes, you read that right.

Then I got ahold of the South Beach Diet. I put us both on it and we lost weight, DH's trig numbers fell to about 220, and his energy "crashes" as we called them stopped. I have found that I need to be even more carb restricted, so I do Atkins now, but I have DH and the kids on South Beach.

Pretty amazing/sad that NO doctor ever once told him to get the carbs out of his diet. I wish now that my father had been told to.

II Banting's Effect:

1. Provided people with a means to safely lose weight and keep it off.
2. Identified "sugary and starchy" food as a cause for "undue corpulence."

This suggested to people that they didn't become fat because they ate too much. They became fat because they consumed too much of the wrong types of food. By "Banting" they could easily reverse the condition which led to corpulence.

Banting's diet became the forerunner of a number of diets that varied slightly yet provided effective weight and hunger control for 100 years following the release of his Letter on Corpulence.

In 1882, Wilhelm Ebstein wrote that fatty foods were crucial because they increased satiety and decreased fat accumulation.

From Banting’s time until today, we can find two constants that everyone agrees with:

1. Carbohydrates must be minimized to reduce weight.
2. Meat, fish and fowl constitute the bulk of the diet.

In 1957, Hilde Bruch wrote “that meat…was not fat producing; but it was the innocent foodstuffs, such as bread and sweets, which lead to obesity.”

We learned two reasons why carbohydrates were considered fattening:

1. Because those who have a tendency to gain weight, eat them to excess.
2. Perhaps carbohydrates:
a. Induce continued sensation of hunger
b. Induce less satiation per calorie
c. Induce the body to store calories as fat
d. Are cheaper so therefore people eat more of them.

We learned that in literature, as well as from the great Dr. Spock, and Gary Taubes’ own mother, the well-known view that the amount of carbohydrates consumed is directly related to how much weight one gains. We can imply from this that clearly they were referring to the majority of people. I’m sure that there can always be a person or two for whom there is some other cause, but from a dietary perspective, this is what can be done in the majority of cases to lose weight.

What changed?

By the 1980’s, it’s clear from the major events that happened, such as the British nutritional guidelines and Jane Brody’s best-seller, that carbohydrates, once considered fattening, had come to be regarded as healthy.

This was unprecedented!

“The medical authorities were concerned with heart disease, not obesity. They presented no dramatic scientific data to support their beliefs, only ambiguous evidence, none of which addressed the efficacy of low-fat diets in weight loss.”

This to me was the real turning point. It’s fascinating to me that weight control was a secondary notion born out of a desire to prevent heart disease. The fact that it has never been shown to prevent heart disease, much less control obesity, has never deterred its proponents.

“The gluttonous American”

Think about today and how many people have this view? There are many who think that somehow 9/11 was justified because of the gluttony of America, that we think we’re better than others, we lack humility, etc.

I think it’s very easy to feed this particular mindset in people and blame the victim for bad things that happen. It’s easy to blame an obese person and reason that it’s symptomatic of America, that we have too much and others have too little.

I’ve been eating out at restaurants since Friday of last week, and I can assure you, very few of the people in those eateries ordered meat and fat like I did. The menus in restaurants contain very few meat dishes in comparison to carbohydrate choices. The very nicest restaurants did offer Duck and Rack of Lamb, but there were no poor people in those places. Moreover, it takes very little roasted duck to satisfy hunger, yet it takes a great deal of pasta.

All of us know that people in our daily lives eat 70% carbohydrate and 30% meat yet despite these observations, our government still insists that we eat too much and do too little.

What do you think?

The point that we aren't too fat because we ate too much, but rather too much of the wrong kinds of foods is an important distinction. When I spoke to a local Curves group on Saturday, you should have heard the collective gasp when I said I ate about 3,000 calories a day. They just couldn't understand how I could maintain my weight eating that many calories and I explained that the absence of carbohydrates allows my body to get away with eating more fat--which has more than TWICE as many calories. That is a major paradigm shift that must happen in the minds of people before we can get past the "portion control" lie we've all been led to believe is true.

Charles, I ate low-fat and virtually never let white flour or white sugar pass my lips for years. I would never have come up with the idea to eat low-fat on my own. And it was the absence of fat, calories, and satiety that let the carbs take over.

Jimmy, I used to go to Curves (loved it!) and one night we were all talking about Subway's LC wrap. The manager said, "Well, it might taste good but how can that be healthy at over 600 calories for one serving?"

I started Curves the same day I started Atkins. I had the greatest monthly weight loss at that franchise every month for the first 5 or 6 months that I was there. I was eating all that I needed to feel full and energetic while most of runners up were trying as hard as possible to eat as little as possible and confessing their "failures" whenever not having enough to eat got the best of them.

I also especially remember one session when I admitted (with my name on a banner behind me) that I ate chocolate at least 3-4 times a week.

<GASP>

Banting had tasty, satisfying food. IMHO, much of the success of LC comes from the chemistry, but a lot of it is due to luxury. It's a tasty, satisfying way to eat.

I just heard back from Gary Taubes about a more bite-sizedversion of his book and here's what he said:

It may happen, but not in the short term. Actually it's not out of the question that the paperback version may come in two forms: one with the original content, and one a mass market abridged version.

It's the latter one that would fit the bill of what we're talking about. Probably a year or so away from being released, though.

Well, a year will give the people's doctors a fighting chance to sound like they really do know what they're talking about when it comes to diet and obesity. I call that fair!

Banting's effect - well unfortunately his effect was not great enough to prevent me from going blind in one eye. And when you realize how many people have been seriously hurt to the point of dying at a young age, his effect fell way short for many people. Of course, the blame for this lack of impact was not his. I mean he published many pamphlets with his own money to get the word out. The fault or more correctly the lack of curiosity by the medical/scientific community was to blame.

The interesting subtopic of GCBC was the whole good science, bad science theme. Banting experienced the bad science first hand. He found some amazing medical advice basically from France. He found that it worked for him and many of his friends and readers of his pamphlets. But the medical/scientific community went into defense mode instead being curious. What was it about not eating carbs made an overweight person lose weight? That lack of curiosity is pure and simple BAD science. My question to Gary is: How can the science community be made more curious and less well greedy?

Avalo, I know Gary would say welcome to the challenge he sees as a journalist every single day. It is at the heart of GCBC as much as anything. As long as financial interests come first, there will be less curiosity and more greed for the sake of protecting the dollars generated. Follow the money...sadly.

III A Casual Look at what we'll later term the "Fat Hypothesis"

As reported on Good Morning America this morning, saturated fat is the bane of our existence and we are fat because we overeat and are sendentary.

As H.L. Mencken observed, "There is always an easy solution to every human problem, neat, plausible, and wrong."

Since the 1960's we actually have been eating less saturated fat, red meat, and fewer eggs. However, we've been eating more lean poultry, and fish. Our fat intake is down 10% to 35% of our total calories. Our cholesterol levels are down as well as hypertension and possibly the chance of having a heart attack. We don't even smoke as much as we used to. However, there is no evidence that we're any healthier. There is little evidence of the incidence of heart disease declining.

Taubes reports that the medical industry has actually gotten better at treating the disease, but the rates of those with heart disease has not diminished. In other words, we're dying less from heart disease, but we're still getting it. As Taubes writes, "In any functioning scientific environment, the observation that the incidence of heart disease has not noticeably decreased, would serve as compelling evidence that the hypothesis is wrong."

As we saw on Good Morning America today, public health officials continue to insist that the obesity epedimic means that we don't take their advice and shun physical activity while eating too much fat. Fortunately for us, there is livin' la vida low carb.

One hundred fifty years of anecdotal evidence and observation suggest that carbohydrates are fattening and there is simply no evidence to the contrary.

Here is my question for Gary:

He has indicated that he let the research drive his book. Did he ever consider framing any other or additional hypothesis for the book based on his research? E.g. low carb/high fat/exercise or low carb/high fat/exercise or any other additional hypothesis? I just used those as examples. Banting did exercise with no results until he went low carb.

P.S. There was a show on NOVA last night about a NOVA Team training for the Boston Marathon. If I remember correctly, at the end of 8 or nine months they scanned the participants for body composition again to compare with their baseline scan. No changes. All that cardio had not caused any changes in body composition except for one women who consciously dieted.

One of the statements made by the experts (and I am paraphrasing) was that exercise was important for maintenance once you lost the weight but was not a major factor in getting the weight off. Diet was THE major factor. However, the participants did dramatically increase their max VO2.

Carbohydrates=Unhealthy for most people and Banting knew this based on his own experience. And it's not just the refined ones for those of us who are sensitive to carbs as Dr. Andrew Weil so brilliantly stated on the "Larry King Live" discussion of Taubes' book a couple of weeks ago.

MAC, welcome to my forum. I'm pretty sure Gary Taubes would say the framework of his book was borne out of the hypothesis that fat is not as unhealthy as we've been told while carbs are much more unhealthy than we have been told. Of course, the data he came across over the past five years proved that theory exactly.

I have another question for Gary.

The CHINA STUDY was a major epidemiological study about which the New York Times said "The study can be considered the Grand Prix of Epidemiology". I understand that epidemiological studies are NOT randomized controlled scientific studies. With a human population can one really do a valid randomized controlled study? Even Keys in his starvation studies had issues with subjects under lock and key. The China Study purports to show that amongst a genetically homogeneous population that the lower the fat and animal protein in a diet the healthier the population from cancer, etc. This would be defined as a low fat/high carb diet. Given the supposed significance that this was a Grand Prix study, I wonder why I saw no mention of it in the text of the book.

P.S. I am neither biased towards low carb/high fat nor high carb/low fat (assuming refined carbohydates are excluded from both). Whatever approach produces the least chronic diseases is what I am interested in. It is very frustrating to find respected sources from either side who both use scientific studies (and who have no ax to grind as far as I can determine) to support their positions on opposite ends of the spectrum. E.g. Dr. Eades (high fat/low carb) vs. Dr. McDougall (low fat/high carb and vegan to boot). Can they both be right?

How Gary Explain this study
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/66/5/1264.pdf

However, some protein
and fat-rich foods (eggs, beef, fish, lentils, cheese, cake, and
doughnuts) induced as much insulin secretion as did some carbohydrate-rich foods (eg, beef was equal to brown rice and
fish was equal to grain bread).

Sure, they can both be right, MAC. We are all different which is why what Taubes wrote in GCBC is so important. The monolithic government dietary recommendations are proof positive that one-size-DOESN'T-fit all!

So, If the Insulin Index is correct, then this would put a monkey wrench in the alternative hypothesis theory. If Steak also increases Insulin as high as brown rice, then How does fat and protein keep insulin levels down. Should I pick foods lower on the Insulin index to lose weight. If High protein are releasing high insulin too, should I eat more bran cerals because they are lower on the insulin index?

MAC, I think that's a very reasonable thesis. There is nothing in the historical record that suggests that the Inuit diet is necessarily the ideal human standard. It's certainly is not the only human diet that's been demonstrated to produce a near-zero incidence of obesity and modern diseases.

I have related elsewhere in this forum that when I visited Africa, I spoke with a missionary doctor who had worked among the desert people of northwest Africa. Those people ate meat, fat, and vegetables, tubers, and fruits in season.

That doctor told me that in 40 years (seeing many times the number of clients than a western doctor sees), he had never once seen heart disease, colon cancer, appendicitis, or adult onset diabetes. Cancer and obesity were both extremely rare in the rural areas where people did not get city food, where bread was a rare luxury.

So those diets may be just as good for some people for all we really know. (My bias toward LC makes that hard to admit, but there you have it.)

But in our current culture, given the messages we hear from the government, the AMA, and the health food industry, a higher-carb, whole foods diet is generally lower or much lower in meat and fat than the majority of apparently healthy traditional diets have probably been. IOW, it's not really like those diets.

(Perhaps generosity with meat and fat provides a very natural check on a healthy person's carb appetite. Could be.)

To my mind, these are separate questions:
1. What diet(s) have the lowest incidence of "modern diseases"?
2. What is an effective treatment for obesity?
3. What is an effective treatment for metabolic syndrome?

The same type of diet may not be an equally good answer for all three questions.

I am currently reading Lean Bodies. The subtitle really caught my attention. Now, I would never trade my wonderful LC WOE for his diet (tons of dry and boring carbs, 10% fat), but I think he's got some good things to say on the calorie theory--and I'm impressed with the results that he's seen just from teaching people the real difference between overeating and eating normally.

And it's not what those of us who are overweight think! (We think--or thought--that the less that we can stand to eat, the more likely it is that we will be thin.)

Sheets says that he has known clients who gained on 1200-1500 who could lose on 3000 on his program. I think it's possible that overweight people tend to undereat with more consistency than they overeat. (Thin people sometimes eat a lot!! I think we've all seen the skinny guy or gal eat a really full meal--and wondered how he or she could do that and stay thin.... Maybe there's something to his method of generous eating....)

I'm looking back at my past and wondering about some things along this line. I grew up in a dieting family where obesity was prevalent. I was probably 12 years old when I went on my first diet. Was that good for me? Probably not--and I was of perfectly normal weight at the time. I just didn't have enough life experience to know that the beginning of feminine curves was as normal as it is. :-)

Anyway, there's a lot to this whole subject but I don't believe that Taubes has presented GCBC as more than a (very badly needed) historical overview and challenge to science to do better. I don't think he even suspects that we know all that we could know about these things.

Food odors can cause a release of gastric acid and insulin. It may well be that the body has a "memory" for specific foods. For instance, if you generally eat steak with a baked potato, your body may release insulin when you smell cooked beef based on a prior need.

Here are some interesting facts from the Americal Journal of Clinical Nutrition mentioned in Dr. Mark Hyman's newsletter. Dr. Mark Hyman wrote the UlTRAMETABOLISM book. Maybe this whole macronutrient debate will come down to genetics anyway. So all those low fat/high carb people may be blowing in the wind and each person is different. In any case, Gary Taubes is right that the science is badly done.

"The most important study in that journal was on
nutrigenomics -- the foundational concept of my
book UltraMetabolism. The basic idea is that
food is information, not just calories.

In this study, researchers from Finland took two
groups people with metabolic syndrome (pre-
diabetes) and gave each group a different diet.

Well, sort of. It was different ONLY in the type
of carbohydrates they consumed for 12 weeks. The
rest of their diet was identical -- the same
calories and the same amount of fat, protein,
carbohydrate, and fiber.

The first group had wheat, oats, and potatoes as
the source of their carbs. The second group ate
rye as their source of carbohydrate. (As I
mentioned in my book, UltraMetabolism, rye has
some very special properties because it is
slowly absorbed by the body and has
phytonutrients that help you lose weight and
improve metabolism.)

After the 12 weeks, the researchers took a fat
sample or biopsy and analyzed it to find out
which genes were turned on or off.

So what happened?

In the wheat, oat, and potato group, 62 genes
were activated that increased inflammation,
oxidative stress, and the stress response,
worsened blood sugar balance, and generally
amplified all of the forces in the body that
lead to obesity, heart disease, cancer,
diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease!

It was a 100 percent effect -- NO good genes
were turned on.

In the rye group, 71 genes were turned on that
prevent diabetes, lower cholesterol, reduce
inflammation, and improve blood sugar control.

This was a 100 percent GOOD gene effect. (2)

Now that should have been headline news -- but
the rye lobby is just not that powerful!

Here is the abstract: Rye vs Wheat, Oat, Potato

Another article along the same lines: Rye vs. Oats, Potato, and Wheat

Interesting quote from the second link: "Molecular pathways involved in hormone action have been the target of a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical research effort. However, many of these pathways may normally be under dietary regulation. The results of the present study emphasize the age-old wisdom to "use food as medicine"—in this case, for the targeted prevention and treatment of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease."

Just joining in. Bought book this afternoon. Will follow along, and catch up!

Charlie and Mac, thanks for the study of Exercise and Diet. My favorite part of the report is the second paragraph that had references to 17 studies that support the benefits of low carb diets. That page is now in my favorites. I wish I could quite my day job and read all of those studies.

I'm going to safe my comments about the whole exercise question until that part of the book is reviewed. But it is amazing how much has already been said about that conclusion - Jillian Michaels sparing with Gary on CNN, Regina Wilshire's rather sharp response to Adam Campbell's blog about the subject and all of the excercise experts getting rather frosty about it. I must admit that it is all very entertaining to me.


Druluv, Thanks for the study on insulin index. I had no idea that they were doing such studies. It is encouraging that they are doing these.

From my quick read of it, I got two things from it. First, everyone is different. The article states something like there was a great range of responses to the same food from person to person. And these people were selected to be as much alike as possible. Second, there are a lot of unknowns in how we metabolize food, partily do to the fact that metabolism is so complex and has so many steps. Thus, I wonder about the same questions you brought up. As well as, how much glucagon is produced with these various foods? How long does the insulin level last after the various foods?

Another point is that Dr. Bernstein, whose diet I follow, says that insulin dependent diabetes must determine how much insulin to give for a meal or a general type of meal by trial and error. The amount of insulin I might need for eggs and bacon may be quite different than a meal with tuna and mayo, even though the amount of macronutrients are the same. The reason has to do in part with the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. This organ secretes hormones when food passes thru it and stretches it. Thus, solid foods can stretch the duodenum more than liquid foods and cause more hormones to be secreted. The hormones activate the pancreas to produce insulin and glucagon. Because a Type 1 diabetic does not produce insulin, we only get the glucagon that drives up blood sugar. Thus, I need to take more insulin for solid foods than liquids - Strange Biology.

The bottom line of my long winded response is that metabolism is very complicated and can vary significantly from person to person.


The Fat Hypothesis - Well, it is simply ass backwards. The fat hypothesis should be that good fats are good for you and only low amounts to a zero amount of good carbs are good for you. The numbers of studies that proof that are amazing (see above).

That so many professionals can still believe the wrong fat hypothesis is dishearting.

But the wonderful thing about learning to bant is that I found books like Eat Fat to Lose Fat and Nourishing Traditions. These and other books and articles enlightened me to the wonderful benefits of fat or as Regina likes to call them nutrient dense foods. I really enjoyed her challenge to find low fat menus that can meet the daily minium requirements of vitamens and mineral. As most of you, it can't be done.

IV The Diseases of Civilization

This goes well beyond the ideal weight loss diet. Taubes writes that heart disease, diabetes, colorectal and breast cancer, tooth decay, and other chronic diseases are rare to nonexistent among isolated populations that lived traditional lifestyles and ate traditional diets. The diseases ONLY appeared when these cultures were exposed to Western foods, particularly sugar, flour, white rice, and maybe beer.

Of course, these isolated people did not eat the same exact foods, however, the ratio of fat, protein and carbohydrate is very consistent. The foundation of their diet has always been fat and protein. The carbohydrate level varies from zero to some amount, however, the results are wildly consistent.

In the mid-1970's, this alternate hypothesis was a direct competitor to the fat hypothesis. However, it was transformed into a more politically correct and commercially acceptable version. The absence of fiber or roughage from the refining process was the issue. This conclusion has not been supported by any clinical trials. In fact, they show the opposite, that fiber has little or no effect on any chronic disease.

Today many of us still hold this wildly erroneous view, that we need fiber and that fiber is good for us. The book will go on later to describe exactly how this view came into prominence. It's one of the many things that just made me very angry. It's complete and utter b------t.

We'll examine the forces that made us believe that dietary fat, calories, fiber, and physical activity are the critical variables in obesity and leanness and in health and disease.

Throughout all these studies, those who have carefully read the book can attest that it is the effect of blood sugar and insulin on cells, arteries, tissues and other hormones, that run like a crimson thread throughout every clinical study, trial, culture; you name it. This crimson thread explains all of the original observations by William Banting, Dr. Spock, Gary Taubes' own Brooklyn mother, many people on this forum; and, supports the alternative hypothesis.