Kindke has a brilliant post up on the futility of caloric restriction as a weight loss strategy. What I really love about his blog is that he always hammers out the pathophysiological mechanisms of his claims in great detail unlike, say, fat bored housewives who believe in this thing called Common Sense so instead of getting bogged down on the complexity of the human endocrine system, they choose to simplify matters and go around spamming comment sections of various blogs with their palaver about how CICO must surely work as obesity therapy since they managed to rid themselves of their ultra troublesome 20 vanity lbs by undereating and moving their bored fat ass a bit more.
The Woo did a very interesting discussion on the role of immunity in chronic illness, including mental illness. Personally, I am a cautious proponent of Ewald’s hypothesis which basically says that infections cause chronic disease (interesting article here if anyone’s interested) but I probably won’t be blogging about this much if at all in order to avoid sounding like Jane.
Finally, the last paleo blogger still left standing seemingly uncontaminated by extremely foolish ideas sweeping across paleo lands, J. Stanton, presented at the AHS 2012 last summer. His talk has finally been posted online. Reader melancholyaeon alerted us to its existence days ago and we’ve had some scattered discussion of it here and here but I do appreciate that not everyone has the time or the patience to wade through 100-comment threads.
It’s an excellent albeit short presentation which puts the food reward hypothesis into proper perspective. The talk was made all the better by Dr. Guyenet’s nervous flailing and attempted (but deliciously failed) smackdown during the Q&A session.
The way I see it, there are two sides to this debate on the so-called “safe starches”. Just like Kressers and Jaminets of this world find it surreal that we’re having a debate about whether glucose is a toxin, I find it surreal that we’re having a debate about whether obese people should be consuming potatoes. To summarise the two sides of this wretched debate:
1) The Paleotard side says that there are some Pacific Islanders who have been eating carbs with impunity for centuries with no resulting obesity or disease which disproves the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of disease. The Paleotards have also gleefully noticed that many fat people spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about feeding or engaging in feeding, hence they speculate that fatness must be caused by food addiction, specifically tasty food addiction. To alleviate obesity, Paleotards counsel fat people to eat a macronutrient agnostic diet of Food That Came Out of the Earth Unprocessed but for all practical intents and purposes a punishing and self-flagellating anhedonic diet of plain boiled potatoes with a maximum of one allowed herb/spice/seasoning per meal. This, they think, should downwardly readjust fat people’s (non-existent) hypothalamic weight setpoint which was broken by excessive consumption of tasty food in the first place.
2) The LC Hezbollah side says that obesity, once established, necessitates carbohydrate restriction because obesity is an endocrine disease characterised by a defective glucose metabolism and faulty insulin signalling. Most people on the LC Hezbollah side accept that the hedonic value of food plays a role in our food choices, they just reckon that tasty food wasn’t invented in 1980 AD which is when the obesity epidemic started.
To me anyway the key problem with Guyenet’s ideas is this: the hedonic impact of food isn’t some inherent property of the food itself, it’s a function of your endocrine status at the time of thinking about this food. Think about this for one second and you will realise that it’s true. This is ESPECIALLY true if you are metabolically diseased because unlike normal people who experience this thing called fullness and resulting aversion to food, fat people are seemingly never quite full and even when they are, many of them get hungry again 1.5-2 hours later when the dreaded reactive hypoglycaemia strikes. You will also note that obese people generally think about food all the time while lean people generally don’t. Neurobiologists think that this is due to, let’s just call it what it is, folks, mental illness (food addiction), whereas those of us who subscribe to the view that obesity is an endocrine disorder think that it’s more likely that food obsession develops as a result of awful things like BEING CONSTANTLY HUNGRY due to, say, hyperinsulinemia which results in shunting of too many of your eaten calories into storage. In such circumstances, you’re no doubt going to find all sorts of food really rewarding all the time and eat lots of it. I also find it really interesting that modifying the metabolic milieu of a morally defective mentally ill obese person by, for example, placing them on a ketogenic diet can in many cases eliminate these life-long dysfunctional personalty traits and behaviours within hours or days, i.e., turn a morally defective person into a righteous person.
An excellent review paper recently appeared in Nature Reviews Neuroscience critiquing the food addiction model of obesity. Believe it or not, there are Real Scientists in the Research Community who disagree with Guyenet’s ideas, not just “the likes of” J. Stanton. I spoke about this paper on Hyperlipid’s epic 350-comment thread, the thread which somehow failed to appear on Paleo Drama (an honest and unfortunate omission, I am sure) even though it gave Dr. Guyenet the mistaken impression that his life was somehow in danger. Anyhow, I was delighted to see all the people contacting me for the full text of this paper because unfortunately due to the moral bankruptcy of science, most peer-reviewed publications are behind a paywall so laypeople are generally forced to get their information from morally bankrupt people like Guyenet who present a very skewed view of the state of the art in a particular field. It’s very easy to Baffle With Bullshit when you’re the one with privileged access to the literature while most of your readers have no way of judging whether your pronouncements are accurate or representative of the big picture.
I am sure that this landmark publication will not be overlooked by the great impartial bloggers-scientists, enlighteners of the great unwashed, Dr. Stephan Guyenet and Ms. Evelyn Kocur.
as an LC paleoid, i thoroughly resent your remark about Dr. Goofenet! he does NOT belong to the paleoid ranks! he’s a wanker — i mean a WAPFer! (you know how these British slang terms confuse those of us on the other side of the pond….)
I had a doctor tell me that access to information through the Internet would eventually end the monopoly the medical profession has had on health care since the patient will be able to get to the special doctor knowledge with that access. I tend to agree with his opinion, even though your point abt the paywall is true and accurate. For instance, you take the time and trouble to pass on that information and to even make it clear to a non scientist.
Brilliant post.Thank you.
You are so right, I didn’t even enjoy all the food I had to eat for the hunger.
Now I enjoy food and am no longer hungry!
I should of mentioned this in my post, but ill add it here. Although I have no studies to back this up, I think that very short term acute bursts of calorie restriction probably do not produce any significant increase in AgRP.
For example, cutting calories to 600 for 1 day per week or randomly a few times per month is unlikely to produce any increase in AgRP. This strategy may be useful for beating weight loss stalls etc.
Its the chronic calorie restriction that is damaging, for example cutting calories to 1200 per day for weeks/months at a time. THATS the thing that is gonna cause hypo-metabolism.
Stanton’s talk deserves a shout-out. It’s really great, and a good clif-note for the time-challenged. Thanks!
yeah, i believe at the start Stanton said he wanted 40 minutes and they gave him 20 — i hope next year they loosen up!
you can have a thin person who is addicted to grains or to sugar. If that same addiction affected a prone-to-obesity person with a metabolic intolerance to carbohydrate, the addiction would be part of the problem.
Only Americans think that addiction is a moral issue anyway. Which is why they wage their crazy war on drugs as some kind of mediaeval substitute for science.
My experience was that ketogenic dieting helped fix my addiction to opioids. Modifying the metabolic milieu fixed the neurons responsible for that character defect, so to speak.
Addiction is a biochemical phenomenon like everything else that isn’t mysticism.
Spectacular summary.
Recommending potatoes and safe-starchy stuff to people who have glucose metabolism issues for weight loss or weight control is unfathomable — no, it’s idiotic — to any person who has experienced living with those issues and experienced the relief, even if not a total cure, of eliminating almost all carbs.
Your post sums up the schism between Paelo and LCHF, and why “Paleo-Tato” might work for younger, 20 pound overweight, mostly younger men doing cross-fit and be poorly suited to obese, formerly obese or people who are pre-diabetic/diabetic who need to try to keep their HbA1C’s in the no-dialysis range (although, to be fair, Paleo-Tato advice is better than that of several national diabetes associations).
And your post sums up something Woo keeps mentioning — it is actually hard to appreciate the meaning of the endocrine issue unless you have experienced it yourself. This doesn’t mean you have to be formerly obese or T2DM to do meaningful obesity research, but the most clueless inevitably seem to be those lacking in actual personal or clinical experience.
I didn’t miss the Kindke post, I still feel frustrated when I recollect how many times I tried to starve myself. Even now I aim for eating less which is more comfortable on VLC. Thank god I am not BMI 30 or more, or I would be fat forever because my body nowadays is capable only of two things – maintaining weight or gaining it whatever I do.
“I also find it really interesting that modifying the metabolic milieu of a morally defective mentally ill obese person by, for example, placing them on a ketogenic diet can in many cases eliminate these life-long dysfunctional personalty traits and behaviours within hours or days, i.e., turn a morally defective person into a righteous person.”
But this is key. The Paleo hi-carb set denies such people exist. They deny that anyone can permanently lose substantial weight eating ad lib LCHF – at best you’ll stall, then regain in a couple of years. You can’t truly change your stained sinful nature – so starve yourself to express your repentance, evil fattie pleasure slut! Here’s a whip, go join Opus Dei.
They point to the many failures on the t00bz who do poor LCHF as examples. Possibly because they believe we are too stupid to know the truly successful like Jackie E, Dr. A’s former nurse, and Colette H., his former dietician.
These and a few other people have been provably & publicly low-carb since at least 1978. A fair number are whacked Rosedale life extensionists. But still! And yet you notice no one mentions them – everyone talks only about the shill JM (who is a fraud, we all agree on that even tho’ Crazy Evie is indeed crazy).
Why does no one actually interview the truly long-time low-carb people about, well, their decades of success on low-carb? Jackie’s a nurse, she must have information, answers, her own test results. . .sheesh.
I saw thin sugar addicts back in Russia. In the country which is yet to develop a real obesity epidemic, it is absolutely clear that weight depends mostly on genetics. However, in countries with wide-spread obesity genes are less helpfull
And the last thing I want to say about this massive stupidity. . . . But why of all the tubers & tuberish starchy things, why just white tatoz?
Why not yucca, battatas, malangas, plantains, breadfruit? Even the Okinawa purple “sweet potato”? (Actually it’s hardly sweet at all.) Why don’t those work for Dr. Cry-Baby?
If I had to, seriously I’d do yucca, plantains & malanga. I do believe that actually a majority of the human race derives its main calories from yucca aka taro aka cassava aka tapioca, right?
But of course as a member of the LoCarbHezFad brigade, I’m never hungry anymore and don’t even recognize such things as food.
At the football party I just attended, the only edible object there was the fresh guacamole. Those platters of starchy objects seemed like styrofoam packing peanuts to my Otherwise Weak Moral Character & Lazy Arse(TM).
But! Guacamole – I eatz it. Now I’m full 4 hours later and don’t want dinner. Think I’ll just have bacon for breakfast. Because I’m Weak and Dr. Stefan’s So Strong.
Taro isn’t the same thing as cassava, yucca, tapioca. Colocasia, different plant.
Just so’s you know.
Potatoes are cheap and everyone in the west can get them cos they’re used for fries and chips so will never become extinct. ergo, the humble Spud will be our saviour.
unless you’re in a decent-sized city, a lot of the more exotic tubers are simply not to be found in this country. you should have seen the pathetic excuse for a grocery in the town where my MIL used to live! even in mainstream groceries in the city, only those nasty garnet-type sweet potatoes are available. to get a Japanese or Okinawan or white sweet potato, you have to know where to find them — stores catering to ethnic populations.
potatoes have been important sustenance crops for centuries in the western world — they’re not just raw materials for fries and chips! you just have to look at historic cookbooks to see how important they’ve been for people….
George, i suspect one of the problems with over-moralization of physiological problems in the US lies in the fact that so many of our original immigrants were protestant christian dissenters in the old world — what i tend to consider wing-nuts! they were stubborn people or they would never have come to the new world and survived, and they raised their families to follow in their footsteps. there are STILL an incredible number if puritan-esque people in this country in the cities, and as for the rural areas…? woof.
Thank you for the post and the link to Kindke’s post. Great work!
Prolonged starvation is dangerous and unhealthy and, as you pointed out, ineffective.
It is known that anorexics, people who chronically starve themselves, have shrunken brains and damaged organs. Starvation diets traditionally used to be very short term and had to be done under close medical supervision, for a reason. And, as you pointed out, they are not effective in the long term.
How can anyone recommend this idiocy to anybody else?
Tess, yes you really need ethnic populations if you want to do “safe starches” well.
I think you’re right about the puritans. But it’s kind of a convergence of puritanism with the lack of education in a frontier land, I mean Switzerland or Scotland have Calvinist traditions but good education and enough science to move past them. Whereas if you read about the likes of Poe or Hawthorne and how isolated they were from the educated cultural tradition in the US of less than 200 years ago, you see how that nation has had to build its educational institutions from scratch, and their influence is still centuries behind that of religion, or even that of ignorance itself…
Trying to find that addiction-denial paper in full-text led me to the version on this site:
http://www.sugarnutrition.org.uk/Obesity-brain-how-convincing-addiction-model.aspx
Which also has statements like this (under “Carb Facts”):
“For many years, people with diabetes were told to avoid sugar. However, modern scientific research has shown that people with diabetes can include moderate amounts of sugar in their diet as part of mixed meals, without compromising blood glucose control. Indeed, including some sugar in the diet may actually be beneficial to people with diabetes as it makes it easier for them to keep their fat intake down.”
So I would check who funded that review and where the authors work before I get too excited about it if I were you.
Man I love this Sugar site! It’s so BAAAD it’s great.
“The optimal diet for weight control is a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, with the health focus being on limiting dietary fat intakes, especially saturated fat. Research has shown us that dietary fat intakes can be reduced simply by increasing the amount of starchy and sugary carbohydrates in the diet. Sugar also plays a useful role in helping to make a low-fat diet more palatable and therefore easier to stick to.”
http://www.sugarnutrition.org.uk/Sugar-and-Health.aspx
Next time Carbsane says that dietary guidelines aren’t blame for the obesity epidemic, I’ll post that link.
I forgot to join in the previous discussion with mocking of the “1 herb rule” part of $tephan’s diet plan. BTW, good job everyone with your ridiculings!
I think WHS should put a subtitle that says “HERB FREE ZONE”.
HALT! Dangerous herbing ahead!
I suppose this is what popular musicians are talking about when singing about their indulgences, excesses, partying… Combinging multiple herbs in a meal. OMG TEH DOPAMINE JUST BLEW MY FACE OFF.
Stop, herb time!
Toxic by britney spears – is it about excessive herb laden meals?
“Taste of your poison paradiiiise, I’m addicted to you, don’t you know that youre toxiiic! ”
It certainly would explain her manic depressive breakdown + weight gain if so!
As I blogged previously, Cyprus Hill often discuss “herb” in their music, until now I innocently thought they were merely singing about marijuana. Turns out they were talking about Oregano + Basil + Dried red pepper + garlic piled upon each other in a flavor orgy of pizza.
I imagine carbsane thinks my job is like this given what a hedonistic drug addict I am known to be. I HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE WORKING AT ALL I AM OUTTA CONTROOOL.
Ha woo! Ah’m on da herb mon.
I was just getting over my fructophobia when your food addiction denialism led me to that sugar blog.
But tell me, could an evil food inspire architecture this beautiful?
Hi Tess:
“potatoes have been important sustenance crops for centuries in the western world — they’re not just raw materials for fries and chips! you just have to look at historic cookbooks to see how important they’ve been for people….”
Well, this is not exactly true. In South America, even, the Incas preferred corn to potatoes, altho’ they obviously grew and ate potatoes. But actually when the potato was introduced into Europe, it got a bad name almost right away and in Russia the peasants had to be forced to plant it at bayonet point. It spread fitfully and slowly over much resistance.
A Swiss botanist in 1596 already had ID’d as being bad news, calling it “earth’s testicles” and claiming it caused disease. French peasants in Burgundy refused to plant it. In much of Europe it was viewed only as a last-ditch anti-famine plate-filler. It didn’t spread far on the continent until a very harsh winter in 1740 forced people to eat them. The Dutch didn’t accept them in their traditional dish until 1794, or about 220 years after they had been first introduced to Europe.
Frederick the Great saw that potatoes could be a bulwark against famine, and he ordered German peasants to plant them in 1774. During the War of the Bavarian Succession, a French guy was held prisoner where he first ate potatoes and re-introduced them to France. Parmentier was not successful even after much lobbying (this is why the famous dish is called “pommes Parmentier,” btw). Potatoes were not widely adopted in France for another century; French peasants considered them a pig food at best.
Peter the Great attempted to introduce the potato to Russia; the peasants would have none of it. Up to 1840 Russian peasants refused to plant them, calling them “Devil’s apples.” The Czar finally had to force peasants to plant them literally under duress, with troops deployed in the fields. The peasants held a potato riot, and the Czar relented in 1843. Russians didn’t begin to plant and eat potatoes widely until the 1890s.
Even the Irish were not dependent on the potato until landowners changed the agricultural laws to oppress them under the “conacre” system, giving the Irish peasants less and less land with which to feed themselves. They had to resort to using small plots of land and mass planting potatoes. It’s not as if the Irish loved potatoes naturally. And we all know how that came out.
The potato was likewise resisted by Africans and South Asians when their colonial masters brought it to them. African peasants believed the potato to cause disease and be poisonous. (This is a common thread somehow – all populations new to the potato right away recognize its health-robbing potential, apparently.) When finally forced to adopt, the Africans would tend to mix them into porridge to disguise them, altho’ they were sometimes eaten whole roasted.
In North America – here in the good ol’ USA – Americans didn’t make potatoes a common food item until the mid-18th century ourselves. We also held out against them for a time. The Mormons planted them widely in the West and began shipping them to California during the Gold Rush after they found convenient ways to dry them for shipping. When Idaho became a state in 1890, the government subsidized (get ready for a familiar refrain) the first potato prize for highest yield. Fueled by government subsidies, Idaho farmers start planting even more potatoes.
An Idahoan, one Simplot, got around to inventing the frozen French fry in 1953. They were initially rejected by the American people. The French fry as a staple food for Americans didn’t take off until Simplot convinced McDonald’s to use them. The use of frozen over fresh made a huge profit difference to the chain and they promoted them eagerly. The USDA of course has an entire National Potato Promotion Board, charged for decades with promoting and marketing potato consumption so all those subsidized potatoes have a place to go.
For more fun facts on the unloved and unlovable potato, check out the Cambridge history of food. The whole french fry story is happily told on the Idaho potato group’s page. And definitely go to the Goodness Unearthed website, where the Potato Board markets taterz to us as “healthy” and “fun.”
The Paleo Tater Tards are just being brainwashed by government propaganda despite their claims of libertarian independence. Oops!
I’ve been listening to the new Hatebreed album the past 2 days, love it!
I wonder if “own your world” was inspired by herbs? Listen to this delusional dopamine fueled power and aggression:
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/h/hatebreed/own_your_world.html
“Fists up, head high
We own the fucking world tonight!
What flame could light a million?
Own your world
It’s in your hands
Own your world
Slice to find the heart”
Surely these guys must have downed rosemary + sage + thyme before penning this, right? I’m practically insane from a dopamine high after hearing this. I feel manic and psychotic just for listening! I’m invincible! I am god! More lemon pepper!!
Enough diet $cam mocking.
As usual , spot on Sidereal.
“To me anyway the key problem with Guyenet’s ideas is this: the hedonic impact of food isn’t some inherent property of the food itself, it’s a function of your endocrine status at the time of thinking about this food” <– exactly right. J. stanton spanked baby G at AHS with this same duh obvious child reasoning. It's like these people have never eaten before. Who can't relate to fanatic food pleasure when hungry, and who can't relate to repulsive nauseated fullness when not? The fact fat people are always hungry is the reason they never feel adequately turned off from food.
For example, I just stopped eating my otherwise delicious marscapone/fage/cream/raspberry/macadamia / cranberry/coconut dinner. Before eating this I was a bit shaky and weak; I ate chicken wings with bluecheese dressing before (pregaming!) and then when I finally started eating I was sufficiently full that I no longer wanted to finish the meal. It tastes good, but eating further is not that interesting. I'm not hungry anymore.
Prior to eating the chicken? I would have eaten all of it, it would be delicious.
Dr Jim Johnson is vastly more prolific than SG, and he is clearly erring toward the concept that hyperinsulinemia is a prerequisite for obesity to develop (although not sufficient, obviously, a necessary prerequisite). If one took their info from WHS (perish the thought) they would be completely unaware of this. They would believe the entire scientific community was homogenously in favor of his MORON food reward idea.
The complete absence of a single paleodrama entry about it only highlights the bias and unscientific biased nature of the paleo clique cult. Clowns. Jokers.
George, just a couple of remarks:
Just because you and I and the research community know that addiction like other forms of “mental” illness is the result of biological processes in the brain, this does not make the stigma of your endocrine disease being equated with addiction any less or change the fact that such conditions are still “treated” by psychiatrists and mental hospitals. If you tell Joe Public that obesity is food addiction, the social consequences for obese people are immediately obvious: fucking degenerates lacking in self control like gamblers, alcoholics, junkies, pornography enthusiasts etc.
Secondly, the review paper against the addiction model comes from Cambridge. There is no endorsement of sucrose as a healthful substance in it that I can remember. The sugar website is just seizing on it to further their own agenda. Obviously, most rat research uses sucrose to demonstrate the addiction properties of “hyperpalatable high-fat industrial food”. Fat without sucrose? Not so dopamine receptor frying.
Hehehe.
Soda/sugar addiction in a fat person = addiction, moral defect, character flaw.
Soda/sugar addiction in a thin person = no one notices, or if they do, *shrugs*.
The crucial factor deciding whether you are going to become obese or not as a result of your shitty dietary habits / cafeteria diet (shared by most fellow Westerners, fat or thin) is your genetic capacity for adipose tissue expansion which is very much dependent on your adipocyte number, a mostly genetically determined trait it seems.
The endocrine disease, I’m thinking, is not the addiction. You can have either without the other. But there are addictive foods, of which wheat is exhibit A. And the nature of an addiction to wheat – which may quite possibly be keeping someone underweight – has enough in common with an addiction to a drug of dependence, and I speak from experience, that “food addiction” in this case is not a figure of speech. Except that the addiction is to one or more quite specific foods, and is NOT an addiction to calories, nor to the so-called food reward cues of fat, salt, sugar, starch, unami per se.
I’d worked out that certain foods – wheat, corn, dairy – were addictive long before I read that they all contain exorphins.
The Cambridge paper, we’d have to do a Zoe Harcombe and dig up the authors’ conflicts of interest. Sure the food reward theory is weak, but did they consider how hard it is for a gluten-sensitive person to give up wheat?
Most rat diets, if you look them up, read like the ingredients in an artificially flavoured, mock cream cheesecake mix.
The last one I looked up was Casein, lard, soy oil, maltodextrin, sucrose, cellulose, (with a few vitamins minerals and cystine).
How is that relevant to me if I don’t eat supermarket puddings?
The paper isn’t disputing that food addiction is real. It’s making the same point as you, that it doesn’t explain the obesity epidemic we’re seeing because only SOME fat people are food addicted and indeed some thin people are food addicted. Plus, eating food can’t really be fully equated with addiction given that eating is required to sustain life so you run into conceptual difficulties there.
Crystal meth on the other hand isn’t an essential nutrient.
Wheat is addictive but the classic celiac patient is thin and wasting away whereas the unfortunate average fatass who eats wheat is hooked on it and gains weight from it.
Crucial factor determining fat gain? Not addiction to wheat but your endocrine factors.
Also to add to the Do Not Miss list is the interview with JJ on superhumanradio,
Purposelessness posted a link on my blog but it needs to be here too! It was good to hear JJ in action and get some more of his thoughts.
http://superhumanradio.com/shr-1110-the-blueprint-power-hour-plus-the-role-of-hyperinsulinemia-in-obesity.html
interview with JJ starts at 1hr 5min
Top post. I think you are my new fave blogger
Shouldn’t that last line read ‘Dr Evelyn Kocur’, as according to her she ‘as-good-as’ has a PhD, and what she imagines about her expertise, acumen and qualifications somehow magically comes true. (I think the technical term is to be deluded.)
Thank you all for the kind words.
@DrT
I thought I’d honour her with her full scientific title instead: Ms Evelyn Kocur
But yes, of course all-but-dissertation is the same as having a PhD. When you have a complex delusional system about your own importance, all these claims make perfect sense.
Melancholyaeon, you certainly did your homework — i hope you didn’t short yourself on sleep to do the research!
i probably didn’t express it well, trying to be “authorial” instead of direct, but to me “important subsistence crop” = starvation-avoiding. i WAS actually referring to the past couple of centuries, and mostly in the US because that’s the fragment of history i know best. running through my mind was the thought of hordes of locusts eating every green thing on earth, with the humble potato and turnip hiding underground out of reach….
George, you points on education are well made, too! the current battle about school vouchers to “christian academies” and what goes into science textbooks is quite literally incredible — didn’t we have this argument out over half a century ago??? i have this very clear memory about … a monkey trial….
There is a discussion again on WHS about “real” hunger as opposed to the debased, gluttonous desire for food to which the fat, through their moral weakness, too often succumb (I am paraphrasing).
The point has been well made here and on other blogs many times about the foolishness of the assignment of moral values to the (imagined) appetites of the obese.
The pseudoscience of the claim that the obese succumb to desires that are not “really” hunger is a different point which Wooo addressed a few weeks ago (apologies if I have not remembered correctly).
From memory, Wooo argues that there may well be more than one physiological cue to eat but that all such cues have not yet been described scientifically. There is no scientific reason why any one such cue should be called hunger, to the exclusion of the others; all of them ought to be included within the term “hunger”.
That Kindke post is really interesting. Wonder what sort of applications may come out of that line of research. CICO at your own risk!
Hey, call me Doc too! I almost did a dissertation, or wrote a long blog post once. . that counts right? It may have been in trombone playing – so it’s just as relevant as an exercise major telling a 400 lbd lady how to lose weight.
SO Dr. Cavemam says: I think for the purposes of understanding fat accumulation for the real life application of losing fat and keeping it off, we are looking at a giant tub of dirty bathwater full of shit-stained babies.
1. Idiots who have naturally been at a less than obese weight are poor inspirations to those of us who were obese from childhood. One more gym rat man tells me to just push away from the table is one more kid that’s getting a well deserved stabbing.
2. The reality is you can’t uncouple the original broken metabolism/endocrine/bad voodoo from the additional insult of excess fat cells taking over. Nor can you uncouple the gross bag of behavioral issues from all that. And, is it true that former fat people are sitting here with allllllllll the vast numbers of fat cells sending out SOS?
3. Yes, it’s fat storage issue and fat loss issue – but all that drills down to an energy issue. You know, the drive to stay alive. In fat mc fatties the food isn’t turned to energy so they are driven to eat more to stay alive, and oh yea since most of the food isn’t being used for energy either it’s getting locked up tight.
4. On top of the hunger as a “about to die” signal, you can top that cake with the addiction icing and realize that all of that is also coupled with dopamine/seratonin etc issues so when you STOP eating, you have those deeply embedded pleasure pathways screaming to be filled. I would totally be on board with becoming a crazed sex addict or something fun like that – but the world isn’t ready for saggy skinned evil fattie pleasure sluts and it’s hard to find employment in that industry.
My N-1, even with ketogenic, is that with all of the above referenced coupling – it hasn’t changed the hunger equation and the constant mental games needed to keep on keeping on without failure. Then the failure leads to all the behavioral/dopamine problems and soon it all seems so epic and pointless how can anybody get anywhere. I’ve been solving for X for a long time and so far the more I know the less I can do about it. Cavemam.com
Melancholyeaon, I recently read a scholarly work on the Irish Famine. Word was the Irish were pitied for the greatest poverty in Europe, but admired for the best physiques and healthiest birthrate. They made the best soldiers and out-performed English farm labourers on a grain staple.
Potatoes in the Irish diet were mainly supplemented with buttermilk, black pudding (to avoid killing the cow), and salted herring, so far as I can tell from a little research.
Now granted my son and I are not genetically altered mice so our n=2 probably counts for nothing but we are the perfect example of the absurdity of food reward causes obesity hypothesis madness.
Son is 16. From a young age he has only been interested in hyper palatable food. Could never get him to eat bland food. Now at 16 he only eats only junk food (buys it himself) he works at and feeds himself mostly at McDonalds but occasionally strays with Kuntucky Fried or Subway. Hydration comes from many litres of Soda per day. Recipe for obesity Mr SG ? Um no. He is 6 foot tall and weighs 114 lbs. Must be very active ? Um No. Couch x box potato. Not sure of his body fat % but can see every muscle bone and sinew.
Contrast with me. Skinny child raised on bland food in the Dark Ages when junk food did not exist and was unaffordable and not purchased by parents. Never thought about or was interested in food. Metabolism broke at puberty (PCOS) = insulin resistance. Never felt full or satisfied after that and despite a lifetime of attempted dieting still got fat of course. Following any weight loss always felt hungry till I rgained (starvation response) and developed NIDD post Menopause (while eating low carb).
Fortunately for my son we are not genetically related (adopted). It infuriates me to think that any so called research(er) could seriously think that fat people are hedonistic gluttons who have full control and choice about their fat accumulation. The Emporer has no clothes on people’s. People ARE broken. Ok. End of rant, don’t know what got into me, back to lurking…
In Russia potatoes has been always the #1 survival food after the initial period when people were forced to plant and eat it by Peter the Great. Cabbage was always chip. Even on my memory during hard times people just planted potatoes everywhere, sometimes even in public places.Wild mushrooms are just free, and most of population are experts in mushroom collection. So, potatoes were eaten with sauerkraut, salted herring, salted pork fat, pickles, salted and often fermented wild mushrooms, also sour-cream and buttermilk.
Did you see, guys, new comments by JJ on Evelyn’s LIRKO post or do you want me to copy it here?
@ Galina
Thank you for spotting this. If I understand correctly, he says that hyperinsulinemia is a necessary but not sufficient condition of obesity.
Incidentally I saw while I was there that through her blog, Carbsane has persuaded a diabetic lady to change from LC to counting calories:
“Karen February 2, 2013 at 7:41 PM
Humm I do believe there is a cure! I am/was Insulin Resistant in two ways of speaking. I am T2 diabetic and just left LC. My change from LC came from reading and reading and reading this blog. I resisted it for quite a while but have changed to counting calories with an eye on carbs. I even have a tiny piece of cake today! And it made me quake. LOL Thank you Evelyn.”
@Manythings, may be I will go out of tangent, but I want to say that:
I have been participating in Evelyn’s blog for couple years at least, but now I feel like it is a time to part ways. Is it something in the air, or Sun is too active? People are running out of their usual patience. Peter has been taking humorous digs at Stephan for some time, then recently he just smack him with a full force, I attacked that newbie vegetarian GunterGatherer during the discussion despite treating him like a white noise before, Everybody got impatient with Jane, first Wooo and Sid, then Sandjev. I am sure Evelyn run out of patience with me too, even though she said nothing. I believe that cheering D2 for eating cake is wrong, but it is their set of mind and mentality. I very much disagree. I think Evelyn is an intelligent person, but her attitude toward diabetics results from alien than mine take on things and values. I just look at things differently.
I think that the making drama out of parting with sugar, cakes and mashed potatoes forever for diabetics is the American thing. They here feel so deprived from the necessaty to go on a diet, that it is almost the case to give them a Xanax. In Russia people were sent on a diets right and left, allergics restricted food choices a lot, people with GI issues ate plain bland food, people with sick kidneys were told to eat unsalted food and cut on protein. Here in US people put a very high value on not changing their life no matter what. If they have diarrhea, they swallow Imodium,even minor pain is treated with painkillers instead of having rest.
I run out of patience, I don’t have it it me anymore to try to understand every possible point of view
Galina, I agree: there is something in the air. Oh and +1 on what you wrote about the cultural differences between east and west.
Hey Galina, thanks for pointing out JJ’s new comments on the big C’s new lirko post. His writing is a pleasure to read, and I would not have otherwise found it
Oh and I have to say I really love these generic wordpress avatars! But not as much as Cow’s avatars, he/she/it (?) changes them frequently it seems
WordPress assigns the same avatar to your name/email address every time, I think. I love the little faces.
I love Cow’s avatars! What a character.
Galina, I have been participating on Ms Kocur’s blog too, because I tought (and still think to some degree) that she was rightly paying attention to the role of elevated NEFA in metabolic pathology. I also liked her. I think she is the kind of person you could drink a beer with and have fun (as long you don’t talk medicine and nutrition). After I while I discovered that she only allows explanations which involve the meme ‘insulin is good – hyperinsulinemia is irrelevant – low insulin is bad – restricting carbs is faddish’. Still, I had some interesting conversations about insulin siganalling and ‘insulin resistance’ (which is a very broad term). I tried to ignore the constant, tiresome Taubes Bashing, in the hope to learn something (always try to look at both sides, bla, bla). Then slowly but surely her ‘asylum’ became an echo chamber for people who think conventional wisdom is always right and dissent is always wrong. Discussions about the hopless tautology CICO/ELMM went absolutely nowhere. The mere suggestion that wheat may not be an ideal food for humans, was met with rage. Above all, it became a hang out place for people who’s main goal in life seems to be whining, being bitter and tearing down others. Being ‘paleo’ myself and seeing fabulous, highly dezombifying results with low carb in many, many people, I couldn’t stand it anymore and left.
I do read there from time to time. There is some amusement value in being annoyed. Dr JJ’s appearance was fantastic
. Her latest post though, about cancer, is a little worse than annoying. She clearly shows she has not read the seminal book ‘Cancer as a Metabolic Disease’, has not listened to Dr Thomas Seyfried’s lectures and has not read Dr Georgia Ede’s (Diagnosis: Diet) excellent 4 part summary about this terrible sugar disease. She (Ms Kocur) warns against shysters giving dangerous medical advise (low carb) on the internet, but at the same time passively/subtly disencourages sick people to try a safe, sensible and according to Dr Seyfried et al poteentially life saving complementary intervention.
@ Galina
I have left the following reply to Karen:
“Karen
I am wondering how counting calories will help your T2 diabetes. It is not a technique I have seen recommended for diabetes by anyone. Counting calories is not a substitute for limiting carbohydrates when you have diabetes.
Do you check your blood glucose levels with a personal meter? It is the only accurate way to find out if you can tolerate a particular food, such as a piece of cake. There is no blog that can tell you whether it is (or is not) safe for a diabetic person to eat cake.
I have a brilliant recipe for cake made with almond flour and xylitol that tastes fabulous and is very low carb. It is possible to stay low carb and eat cake!
Best wishes,”
She clearly shows she has not read the seminal book ‘Cancer as a Metabolic Disease’
I must say neither have I. I don’t have 100 bucks to spend on a book. I’m waiting for the dude to come to his senses and release a paperback for mass consumption. There IS a market for this book; plenty of us LC hezbollah tards eat like this partly to avoid cancer.
As for Evelyn’s diabetes advice, let’s not forget that in the Fine/Feinman ketogenic diet trial for cancer people actually refused to take part in what could be life-saving therapy because they didn’t wanna give up their sodas. People would actually rather die of cancer or be obese like Evelyn than give up the carbs.
And people laugh when you say carbs are addictive.
Okay, I should have said: she clearly has not read the free seminal article:
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/7/1/7
Oooh, thanks for the linky!
I bought the Seyfried book. I think the general public would have difficulty with it, it’s more for other researchers and medics, so Georgia Ede’s summaries are really useful. She is an excellent communicator and her site is a breath of fresh air after all the squabbles and name-calling of other sites.
A breath of fresh air, indeed.
Since many people don’t actively search, here’s the link. She just posted a kind of epilogue to the cancer series.
http://diagnosisdiet.com/
Oh she’s a psychiatrist. This is the first time I’m hearing about this person. A new keto quack on the block, always an exciting development.
WOW…. i’ve only read the abstract and intro on that paper so far, and i’m in AWE. dare i post to my FB friends that the “non-technical interpretation” of it is, if your body has been trained to run on glucose (rather than FAs), you give cancer cells (which are in ALL of us) encouragement to grow? and also produce epigenetic changes facilitating cancer?
Of course you’ve heard of Ede, Sidereal! She speaks at AHS, she spoke after Stanton, her video’s right up there:
Thank you, guys,a lot for interesting links. Dr. Feinman blogs about diet/cancer connection as well.http://rdfeinman.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/targeting-insulin-inhibition-as-a-metabolic-therapy-in-advanced-cancer-part-2-the-hypothesis/
@Manythings, I saw your comment and I noticed that Evelyn was genuinely offended. She is running out of her patience as many of us. I am sure she appreciates that I am out and she is glad I spared her the stress of showing me the door.She is not a bad or evil person. I like her myself, she is smart and energetic, I remember the array of her pictures on one of posts, she looked so full of life on every on every one regardless of size, I feel sorry for her troubles to loose more weight. We became internet friends during the discussion on GT blog about did calories matter, at the time of discussion I thought the answer was “not” due to my then experience. I was wrong, but the more accurate answer would be “yes, but it is complicated”. After such answer it would be appropriate to link to the KETOSIS & THERMOGENESIS “Ad Libitum” blog .
melancholyaeon, I only saw Taubes’ and Stanton’s presentations but thanks for posting the video, her website looks really interesting.
Sometimes it is a pleasure to behave as an beach towards deserving person. I enjoyed immensely my head-in-head with Diana on WHS blog post “Comment Published in Nature”. She was busy telling people what to discuss and worried that thread was getting too long. Such an asshole, but assholes could be the source of entertainment sometimes..
Hi Tess,
” if your body has been trained to run on glucose (rather than FAs), you give cancer cells (which are in ALL of us) encouragement to grow”
No.
The association that the glycolysis is in turn related to the diet is absolutely unproven and in fact there are studies to show zero significant association with blood glucose levels or insulin resistance. See below.
Internet comment boxes are a very brusque interface and often text left in them appear harsh or insulting when mere frankness is intended. Please understand I am simply attempting to be very direct here because this is a serious subject where confusing people can cause mortal harm. We are already hearing anecdotes on the t00bz about women who are adopting diets “to stop cancer” in lieu of conventional treatments.
Please note that the “metabolic theory” of cancer is decades old, and mainstream oncology left it aaaaggges ago for the “genetic theory.”
Let me say this clearly – the Warburg hypothesis has been disproved:
“Otto Warburg initially hypothesized that cancer cells were more dependent on glycolysis to generate ATP because of defective mitochondrial function, but this Warburg hypothesis was later disproved (Vander Heiden et al., 2009: Gatenby and Gillies, 2004).”
The Mitochondrial Warburg Effect: A Cancer Enigma (Kim, Joo et al. 2009)
You may like fringe stuff – particularly on handbags and jackets – but please be aware that on cancer that’s where you are – out out of the ballpark, far beyond left field. Please do not give people the impression that a keto diet “cures” or “prevents” or “stops” or “inhibits” cancer because we can’t say that now. We don’t want to accidentally encourage a desperate cancer patient to stop conventional treatments or anything and just go keto. . . . or vegan. . . or whatever.
The problem is that several important cancers appear not affected by glucose/IR level at all. For example, breast cancer. The association may actually stronger with height! Sorry. And I say this, you know, as an NK goddess who lives at about 2.4 on the blood meter. The benefits of keto are elsewhere.
For example:
“Insulin resistance may be a risk factor for breast cancer, possibly through increased levels of oestrogens or insulin-like growth factor I. Insulin resistance has been associated with obesity, hypertension, dyslipidaemia and impaired glucose tolerance. We studied the relation of these factors to breast cancer risk in a prospective cohort study of 9738 women. Menopausal status was defined a priori, and 112 cases of invasive breast carcinoma occurred in women who were premenopausal at baseline and 157 cases in subjects who were peri/postmenopausal. Relative risks (RR) for breast cancer were calculated by Cox’s proportional hazards analysis for different quartiles of height, weight, body mass index, blood pressure, pulse rate and serum levels of total cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting blood glucose and glucose at 120 min after an oral dose of glucose. Peri/postmenopausal women had a significantly increased age-adjusted relative risk of breast cancer associated with height (RR = 1.78 for the highest versus lowest quartile), and the RR was increased over quartiles of cholesterol levels (P-value for trend: 0.05). No other significant associations were found. Adjustments for potential confounding factors or restriction of the analysis to cases and person-years before 55 years of age (premenopausal women), or after 55 years (peri/postmenopausal women), did not change.”
Risk of breast cancer in relation to anthropometry, blood pressure, blood lipids and glucose metabolism: a prospective study within the Malmö Preventive Project. Eur J Cancer Prev 2001 Feb; 10(1) :33-42.
@ Galina
Your explanation to Dinana of why you enjoy her so much was delicious. I am reminded of the fishing town in the North of England where I grew up. I used to see the fishwives, who worked in the fish processing factory, on the bus: they wore great big rubber Wellington boots and each carried her own knife for gutting the fish. No-one else was ever allowed to touch a fishwife’s knife! The older ones were quite fat (they ate more bread then fish) and they were all a bit smelly. But they had immense character and one had to admire their forthrightness and strong opinions. Danana makes me nostalgic for those days!
@Mel, i asked because i want clarification. i know that terseness looks like brusqueness in text of all kinds, which is why i use emoticons lavishly.
i also belong to the “never say never” club. in living-history you no sooner say “they never wore that” before you find photographic evidence that SOMEONE did, at least.
@Manythings,
Yes, there is something refreshing in being exposed to other people strong opinions. The closest thing to a critic I can here in a dip South is something like “O, you have a beautiful acsent”.
@ Galina
It is surely ironic that Evelyn’s post was about paleos who think they know better than doctors, and hypocritical of her to react badly on being caught giving unqualified medical advice to a diabetic. Evelyn suggests that as far as she is aware, Karen’s blood glucose control is good. The truth is that she does not know.
I don’t know what Karen’s own doctor has to say about Evelyn’s encouragement to relax her blood glucose control in this way. I believe my advice was factual and correct: that a blood glucose meter is the safest way for a diabetic to determine the effect a particular food has on them. It is also undeniably the case that counting calories in itself is not a substitute for proper blood glucose control.
I maintain that a blogger is not in a position to advise a reader, whom they have never met nor examined, that they may safely eat cake or any other food.
Evelyn seems to believe that going on a crash diet and following this with eating carbohydrates will cure Type 2 diabetes. I can assure her that it will not. Her belief is at best foolish but potentially quite dangerous when she comes across diabetic people who imagine her to be a medical authority.
Evelyn may well be a nice person in real life. I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but it seems to me that she, who does not have the disease, is treating diabetes in other people as a bit of a game. For people who do have the disease diabetes is, of course, not a game.
Following Melchior’s link to Dr Ede’s blog and reading the epilogue to her cancer series, I clicked on the link to an old Hyperlipid post in a comment by Evinx. There I found a particularly lol-worthy comment by one Sasquatch, who turns out to be Stephany. Double lol… very humorous.
@ Galina,
Some of those people have opinions so strong that they won’t even let you agree with them!
Manythings,
I agree with you , it was ironic, however , if Karen takes care to control her sugar well while maintaining weight loss, probably she knows how not to go too far with experimental straying from diet. With all that recent noise about stupid people getting advise from quacks on the internet, it is what it is. People are responsible nowadays more for making right or wrong medical decisions, it has a downside, some will suffer, but a lot more will learn how to manage own health without expecting your doctor what to do. It is not the perfect situation, but without internet quackery it was not better. If Evelyn wants to advice diabetics what to do, it is up to them how to decide what to do at the end of the day. I would hate it if I asked somebody like Wooo something about my diet, and she would answer “Sorry, Galina, but I feel it is unethical to answer you question, please, go to you GP and ask him.” So, ethical or not, it is how the life is now. I agree with you that using a glucosemeter is the most reasonable thing to do, and you phrased your advise very gently and politely, but still -some people got offended.
I disagree with Evelyn’s wholehearted support of Hope Warshaw http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/print/0,,20192088_4,00.html who obviously represents ADA and recommends that 45 – 65% calories in a diet for diabetic should come from carbs ” if you are able, to adjust your blood-glucose-lowering medication to compensate for sweets. ” I remember how Evelyn was glad that she served a mashed potatoes to one of her guests who was diabetic , but advised him not to forget to cover it with insulin. Her reason -
” There are also a number of low carbers who see worsening glycemic control over the years (Carpender and apparently Naughton come to mind). Healthy is not low insulin and low glucose. Healthy is good insulin signaling! ” I would also serve a diabetic guests whatever without preaching or making sour face if it is what he wants to eat, but I wouldn’t be feeling he did the right thing and be happy for my guest.
@George,
You are doing a great public service bringing dose of sanity everywhere.
Before internet quackery, there was book-based quackery. You might buy one book, get impressed by its pitch, and try to live by it. If you were lucky you got Protein Power or Atkins, if not, Gillian Keith on raw food enzymes or something, but chances are you if you picked wrong you wouldn’t quickly come across a dissenting opinion to make you reconsider – books weren’t designed that way. The internet is, thank God.
Hi Melancholyaeon,
You write in response to Tess:
“Please note that the “metabolic theory” of cancer is decades old, and mainstream oncology left it aaaaggges ago for the “genetic theory.”
Let me say this clearly – the Warburg hypothesis has been disproved”
Dr Thomas Seyfried on the other hand seems to be convinced that the chaotic genetic mutations seen in cancer are an epiphenomenon of impaired mitochondrial respiration and the shift to fermentation. He says it has been shown that genetic changes are secundary to the metabolic changes. I hope Sidereal allows me to copy/paste a passage from his book. I’m interested in your view!
“How was it possible for the gene theory to gain precedence over Warburg’s metabolic theory for the origin of cancer? As with most man-made fiascos, there is usually a convergence of several mishaps. The same can be said for why the gene theory displaced the Warburg metabolic theory for the origin of cancer.
First, the appearance of normal respiratory function in cancer cells leads many to question Warburg’s central hypothesis that injury to OxPhos was the origin of cancer. As discussed in Chapter 4, the attacks of Weinhouse and other investigators were especially effective in discouraging investigation into the respiratory origin of cancer. Moreover, how could cancer cells arise from injured respiration if so many investigators working in the cancer metabolism field have reported that OxPhos is normal in many tumor cell types? I have addressed the shortcomings of these arguments in Chapters 4, 5, and 8. The experimental evidence linking the origin of cancer to defective energy metabolism appeared to be confused to many investigators working both within and outside the metabolism field. It was also difficult to see how defective respiration could cause gene mutations or metastasis. The failure to craft a cohesive cancer theory based on defective energy metabolism raised the possibility that other explanations of cancer might be more credible than any metabolic hypothesis. The gene theory gained momentum over the viral theory of cancer once the perceived molecular mechanisms of viral action were revealed. A mechanistic linkage between gene defects and viruses was convenient, as viruses had long been recognized as the origin of cancer. It gradually became recognized that viruses might cause cancer by turning on certain cancer-causing genes called oncogenes, or by turning off other genes that prevented cancer, that is, tumor suppressor genes. Oncogenes are those that are assumed to cause cancer. This accounts for the attention given to these kinds of genes in the cancer field. According to James German, a pioneer in cytogenetics, 1981 was the turning point when scientific evidence overwhelmingly supported the mutational origin of human cancer. Stratton and colleagues have considered 1982 as this turning point with the seminal discovery that the human HRAS oncogene could transform normal mouse NIH3T3 cells into cancer cells . In 1994, Harold Varmus was quoted as saying “there’s incontrovertible evidence that cancer is a genetic disease” . Dr. Varmus now heads the NCI (National Cancer Institute).
……………………………………
Although there is incontrovertible evidence that genomic instability is found in most cancers, this does not mean that cancer is primarily a genetic disease. According to Gibbs, “No one questions that cancer is ultimately a disease of the DNA” . I must apologize to Dr. Gibbs, but I seriously question this notion. I consider the majority of gene defects described in tumor cells as downstream epiphenomena of insufficient or damaged respiration. This includes the majority of recognized oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Alterations in these genes are required in order to enhance nonoxidative energy metabolism. In other words, the genetic damage seen in cancer arises as an effect of damaged respiration with compensatory fermentation rather than as the direct cause of cancer. If oncogene upregulation does not follow respiratory injury, the cell will die. Oncogenes are needed to maintain cellular viability following protracted respiratory insufficiency. There is growing evidence supporting this concept.
How would the genomic instability theory of cancer be viewed if there were evidence showing that nuclear genomic stability is dependent on normal respiratory function? How would the genomic instability theory of cancer be viewed if there were evidence showing that oncogene upregulation and suppressor gene downregulation are required for maintaining cell viability following respiratory damage? How would the genomic instability theory of cancer be viewed if there were evidence showing that tumor suppressor gene mutations and viruses damage respiration? I will review evidence showing that genomic instability, DNA damage, and abnormal expression of many oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes arise as secondary downstream effects of abnormal respiration rather than as primary causes of most cancers. I will review evidence showing that inherited cancer genes damage respiration, which then produces cancer. Once genomic defects become established in the tumor cell, they can contribute to the irreversibility of the disease. The persistent view of cancer as a DNA disease is largely responsible for the failure to develop effective cancer therapies. It is difficult to develop an effective therapy for a disease when the origin of the disease is misunderstood.
Somehow the straggle to find a cancer cure reminds me attempts to solve the obesity problem. People get exited from time to time when some break-through occurs, then usually everybody realizes that picture is more complicated, because once some condition gets established in our body, it gets means to defend itself.
I call it pathostasis, or more accurately pathohomeostatis; the equilibrium of disease states. Why drugs or supplements can stop working unless some underlying causes of illness (especially immunological ones, it seems) are fixed. The system will always settle back into the closest comfortable groove, which may be the same one you’re trying to leave.
Hi Melchior:
What’s to say? It’s sad that Dr. S can’t let his pet zombie die.
It’s been dead for years already, there’s “incontrovertible evidence,” as he himself admits – and yet his “undead” must walk on. Part of the science gig is that you offer ideas or support and extend them; most often they are wrong, are disproven experimentally, and we all gotta move on.
I hope Dr. S finds a new and more fruitful area of research. But even if Dr. S’s Warburg thing had panned out, it wouldn’t be of interest to us anyway, since there’s no proven connection to diet; in fact, there’s been strong negative associations found in studies, one example of which I posted yesterday. I don’t even understand why we’re talking about here in the Hez HQ.
The usage of light bulbs in my house has nothing to do with my diet either. It’s completely irrelevant to the low-carb discussion. I remain confused as to why anyone wants to talk about the Warburg thing to begin with. There’s no there there.
There’s no low-carb there there. 
Sorry. Re-cloaking. Bye.
Guys, there is more than one “cancer”. “Cancer” is like Stephen Jay Gould’s “fish” – there ain’t no such thing, just various lifeforms sharing a similar lifestyle. Warburg or reverse Warburg is true enough for some, but not for all.
we gotta think in terms of diversity. Same with obesity.
There are lots of black swans in Australia, but they’re not falsifying the statement that white swans have white cygnets.
Hi Melancholyaeon,
Thanks for your kind and comprehensive analysis of Dr Seyfried’s observations.
Breaking News: Researchers Admit Mice Results Are Misleading for Humans
“For decades, mice have been the species of choice in the study of human diseases. But now, researchers report stunning evidence that the mouse model has been totally misleading for at least three major killers — sepsis, burns and trauma. As a result, years and billions of dollars have been wasted following false leads, they say.
The study does not mean that mice are useless models for all human diseases. But, its authors said, it does raise troubling questions about diseases like the ones in the study that involve the immune system, including cancer and heart disease.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/science/testing-of-some-deadly-diseases-on-mice-mislead-report-says.html?pagewanted=all&emc=rss
Oh lol!
But looking on the bright side, we do now know how to treat sepsis, burns and trauma in mice.
Let’s review: NYT today concludes – mice model flaws “raise troubling questions about diseases. . .involving the immune system.”
Of course obesity involves the immune system in several ways, most recently:
“A kind of anti-tumor immune cell that can help fight obesity and the metabolic syndrome that causes diabetes has been discovered by researchers at Trinity College in Dublin….
The authors have determined that treatments to jumpstart iNKT cells can help to keep weight off and control diabetes and metabolic diseases. Previously, iNKT were thought to be found infrequently in humans, however, the recent study has discovered that there are a great number of them found in omental fat in humans. ” (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/250930.php)
In short, mice models may tell us nothing about how human fat works. Has anyone warned Hyperlipid? Oh noes. . . .
Thank you for the mention and support!
The key concept I hoped to convey, and which both you and Wooo clearly grasp, is that hedonic impact is a subjective judgment based on our state of satiety (our nutritional and metabolic state), not a property of food. (An aside: repeatedly using the terms “palatability” and “reward” indicate that one isn’t familiar with the current literature on the subject.)
JS
Despite what I read as his efforts to the contrary, SG seems to be confirming the same thing with his latest FRF offering; about which he says “didn’t make me hungry…”
Can a food be hyper-palatable, or rewarding if you have no desire to eat it and express disgust at the look of it?
Great presentation, JS. Thanks for stopping by.
ooh ooh – another reason calorie counting doesn’t work – most labels are frigging lies. And there’s zero enforcement or penalty!
Watch & weep: http://nyti.ms/Y7QiqH
Just wondering how you guys/gals reconcile the anecdotal increase in satiety when going from a low carb to low reward spud diet. I’ve personally gone about eating a diet that limits insulin secretions and managed to chow down(not forcefully, just normal eat to satiety) on way more calories (resulting in weight gain) than I can eating a high spud diet.
p.s. Is there something wrong with the kindke link, cause I get to a page that seemingly has no posts =(
Steve, you would generally need to be at ketogenic levels of carb to notice the appetite blunting effects. Not everyone does, not sure why.
As for low reward tato diet, Hyperlipid has offered some thoughts on that here:
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/potatoes-and-weight-loss-1.html
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.ie/2012/10/protons-zero-fat_3.html
You’re right the Kindke link doesn’t work anymore. This post is two months old so…
The entire contents of Kindke’s blog seem to have been deleted.
Nathan, you are right. Fuck.