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maglame, i'm not trying to argue for the sake of winning an argument. if you can show me i'm killing myself or that there is another diet that's actually beating LCHF in an honest clinical trial, i'll jump on your side and fight to the finish with you. i'd much rather dump a wrong belief than die early.

Now defend this quote from nawhead. Talk about unfounded claims.

i am only human. sometimes i get too emotional about stuff.


and Acombfosho, i got your point also. guess it's time to actually watch a 9/11 video (all the way through anyway). going down the rabbit hole...

If you only want to claim that low-carb diets show promising results in relatively short term weight loss, then please say only that. If you do then I have other forumthreads to save. Potentially more threads about this 9/11 conspiracy bullshit.

Did that diet really show 4.9kg lost over 2 years?

That seems odd- I lose 3 or 4 pounds over night, if I hit Atkins hard for 2 weeks I will lose 10 pounds easily, (I know mostly water) but I will lose 2 or 3 pounds per week after that, how can you even measure 4.9 kg over 2 years time? If someone was weighted after eating salt and not drinking enough water they could be bloated several pounds.

Either way these studies are all stupid- try eating low carb for awhile and you will feel different- listening to your body is the most important thing. If you feel shitty, something is wrong- our bodies are super complex and tell us when something is wrong pretty much always.

similar to this debate just stick to the science and it speaks for itself

How about http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17136037
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20820038 ?

those are just 2 more observational studies.

you'll notice in both conclusions they keep saying "associated with." correlation is not causation. that's why we perform clinical studies, to see if there is causation. you really should read/watch the links i keep posting on observational studies. knowing the difference is super important.

those are just 2 more observational studies.

Unfortunately this is the only type of studies we have available to us over a longer term.

Edit: I'd like to add that longer term outcomes are ultimately what matters the most. And, as you correctly identified, its very hard to do detailed studies of this kind.

Did that diet really show 4.9kg lost over 2 years?

That seems odd- I lose 3 or 4 pounds over night, if I hit Atkins hard for 2 weeks I will lose 10 pounds easily, (I know mostly water) but I will lose 2 or 3 pounds per week after that, how can you even measure 4.9 kg over 2 years time? If someone was weighted after eating salt and not drinking enough water they could be bloated several pounds.

the study was conducted at a workplace cafeteria in Israel, and only the lunch (which they say is the main meal in Israel) was monitored.

so we can probably assume a lot of these people were self-feeding off their diets away from work. and all those weight loss numbers were just averages. but it's interesting to see how the LCHF group still lost more weight overall, and i think that's a testament to the satiety of all-you-can-eat LCHF for even just one meal.

and i'll just hazard a guess as to why adherence was lowest in the LCHF group, maybe friends and family told them they'd get a heart attack and die eating like that. these were randomly assigned people, so many in the LCHF group probably didn't buy into the diet and got scared. adherence was highest in the low fat group on the other hand. which also seems to make sense from a social pressure view of adherence.

Unfortunately this is the only type of studies we have available to us over a longer term.

Edit: I'd like to add that longer term outcomes are ultimately what matters the most. And, as you correctly identified, its very hard to do detailed studies of this kind.

true. but 2 years is still a long time to start showing any danger signs. but all the metabolic numbers just keep getting better as duration increases according to this study. anyway, i'll keep eating like this, FOR SCIENCE!

This was so perfect it's almost hard to believe the timing. But it perfectly deals with the "Bread is poison is a pretty tough sell since it's basically responsible for civilization, and life expectancy has only increased since man settled down." argument.

Serious? Because I could rip that thing to shreds but I don't want to waste time.

Serious? Because I could rip that thing to shreds but I don't want to waste time.

No, please do.

Serious? Because I could rip that thing to shreds but I don't want to waste time.

I mean my point was you were saying that Bread increases population as it's a cheap/easy source of energy and that increased population/not having to starve, hunt + forage all the time lead to increased life expectancy through various means (that could have nothing directly to do with bread) and state that these points will make it harder for science to convince you with evidence that bread is not good for you when these two facts have absolutely nothing to do with how healthy bread is. I'm not saying that bread is poison or not poison or anything btw, just that it seems some points you're heavily leaning on should hold no influence either way.

i'm reading this book right now, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and there's a section in the book that i think is super relevant to how i (and maybe Steppin Razor) intuitively responded to this whole debate when i first heard it. it's called the affect heuristic. it's a really cool explanation imo.

Unfortunately, professionals’ intuitions do not all arise from true expertise. Many years ago I visited the chief investment officer of a large financial firm, who told me that he had just invested some tens of millions of dollars in the stock of Ford Motor Company. When I asked how he had made that decision, he replied that he had recently attended an automobile show and had been impressed. "Boy, do they know how to make a car!" was his explanation. He made it very clear that he trusted his gut feeling and was satisfied with himself and with his decision. I found it remarkable that he had apparently not considered the one question that an economist would call relevant: Is Ford stock currently underpriced? Instead, he had listened to his intuition; he liked the cars, he liked the company, and he liked the idea of owning its stock. From what we know about the accuracy of stock picking, it is reasonable to believe that he did not know what he was doing.

The specific heuristics that Amos and I studied provided little help in understanding how the executive came to invest in Ford stock, but a broader conception of heuristics now exists, which offers a good account. An important advance is that emotion now looms much larger in our understanding of intuitive judgments and choices than it did in the past. The executive’s decision would today be described as an example of the affect heuristic, where judgments and decisions are guided directly by feelings of liking and disliking, with little deliberation or reasoning.

When confronted with a problem--choosing a chess move or deciding whether to invest in a stock--the machinery of intuitive thought does the best it can. If the individual has relevant expertise, she will recognize the situation, and the intuitive solution that comes to her mind is likely to be correct. This is what happens when a chess master looks at a complex position: the few moves that immediately occur to him are all strong. When the question is difficult and a skilled solution is not available, intuition still has a shot: an answer may come to mind quickly--but it is not an answer to the original question. The question that the executive faced (should I invest in Ford stock?) was difficult, but the answer to an easier and related question (do I like Ford cars?) came readily to his mind and determined his choice. This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

That's a pretty cool book. For those who just want a taste here is a google talk with the author http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0

No, please do.

I won't get into it much because it's not that relevant, but I'll pull a couple of sentences just to illustrate.
"There is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe."
- I don't know of anyone currently arguing that smoke inhalation is not bad. Not to mention liking the smell. Most people I know hate getting that smell embedded in their hair, clothes, and skin. But, since the inhaling smoke is easily argued against he ignores the other reasons people may light up a fire. He does so because fire is heat, and one can't argue that people don't need heat.

"Human beings have warmed themselves around fires for tens of thousands of years, and this practice was instrumental in our survival as a species. Without fire there would be no material culture. Nothing is more natural to us than burning wood to stay warm. (emphasis mine)

True enough."
- Here we have a list of things he can't argue with, which is why he acknowledges them as true. But then he inserts this sentence about how 'natural' it is for us to be burning wood, which he does because he can then start a hyperbolic mockery on the word 'natural' and slide right by how essential fire (heat) is to our survival.
He just created imaginary foils to argue against, and those foils are absurd.

In a broad view, his blog supports my position. Replace wood burning fire with heat, since that is why we make fire. He acknowledges that though there are alternative sources, we still generate and require heat (mostly from burning coal fires away from our homes). And that when living as paleo man requiring a wood burning fire, we sucked worse than we do now.

Mitch wrote:
I mean my point was you were saying that Bread increases population as it's a cheap/easy source of energy and that increased population/not having to starve, hunt + forage all the time lead to increased life expectancy through various means (that could have nothing directly to do with bread) and state that these points will make it harder for science to convince you with evidence that bread is not good for you when these two facts have absolutely nothing to do with how healthy bread is. I'm not saying that bread is poison or not poison or anything btw, just that it seems some points you're heavily leaning on should hold no influence either way.

If you posted it to show how I am like him, then that was pretty well played. Because my sentence did a similar thing to what his blog post did.

I exaggerated, but the foundation of civilization includes the farming of grain (and domestication of animals). From that foundation sprung an increase in life expectancy, and technological advance. It's not direct causation (eat bread, live longer), but it's pretty hard to ignore all that we have based on a foundation of settling and farming. There are a lot of factors to how we got where we are today as a species so certainly my claim that bread was what did it all is ridiculous, but it (more accurately grains) is in there somewhere.

Complexity is why it's virtually impossible to prove one diet is definitively better than the other. Our lives are based on more than just our diet. Take two guys, identical build, weight, body fat, etc. One eat lots of protein, a reasonable amount of fat, and low carbs and the other ate the same amount of protein, and swapped the carbs and fat. Neither guy exercises. They both buy 50lbs of groceries a week to feed large families. The paleo guy uses the modern technologies available to him. He drives to the grocery store 10miles away. He works at a computer 10hrs a day. The carb guy walks 10 miles to the grocery store and carries home the 50lbs of groceries. He works construction. Which guy is going to be healthier?


Now, you'll probably say 'hold on, that's not fair. The construction guy does end up exercising both in his job and on his grocery trip. You have to eliminate variables and make them both drive cars and work in front of a computer.'


To which I reply: What you mean then is that their health is not entirely dependent on what they eat. Furthermore, in practice, people do have different activity levels in their jobs and their taking advantage of technologies available. Oh and BTW, I meant the carb guy's a coal miner not construction worker so now he's exposed to a more dangerous environment that affects how healthy he he is. Studies are difficult because people are likely to live different lifestyles and have different personalities that lend them to being better or worse for a study. For example, if you had a study with a person who eats fast food and a person who eats paleo, it is not outlandish to surmise the fast food guy is also lazy and the paleo guy is also working out.

All of which points to the fact that one's food choices may be much broader than there being a singular correct way to eat. We are omnivores, and being able to consume a variety of foods would seem to indicate that there are many combinations that can accomplish success in diet. All we need to do is live the optimal way for our chosen diet.

It seems like its morphing into a lifestyle/philosophy thread. I'm all for it. Is this within the scope of this discussion?

If you posted it to show how I am like him, then that was pretty well played. Because my sentence did a similar thing to what his blog post did.

No you're still completely missing the point . I wasn't talking about the merits of burning wood or exaggeration or anything. I was merely remarking that your comment of how "the foundation of civilization includes the farming of grain (and domestication of animals)." is in favour of eating bread, just like a lot of people will defend fires with "but we've always been around fires and they are what's helped us progress."

Do you understand that the main reason bread caused this population explosion is because it's cheap/easy to make? That statement makes no claims on it's nutritional value, but you're somehow drawing conclusions from that which just aren't there. I'm sure society would have done decently well if they used sugar cane instead, but it's obvious that wouldn't mean we should eat sugar if we have access to other food sources.

You have to eliminate variables and make them both drive cars and work in front of a computer.'

These variables can and are controlled and accounted for in many studies. While there will be noise in any study (and perhaps higher noise in nutritional stuff) the signal will eventually become clearer through repeat studies and well controlled experiments.

It seems like you're putting this in the too hard basket and burying your head in the sand when I really think this isn't the case. We have the information and the critical thinking skills to assess it somewhat accurately. For close diets (ie. mediterranean vs paleo, etc) it's perhaps too close too call at this point (or too individually dependent) but we can very clearly see that some diets and foods are better than others.