more Taubes stuff

On Oct 29, 7:47 am, RRzVRR wrote:
Since this was off the beaten path, I thought some might
find the exchange between Taubes the NYT Book reviewer
Kolata interesting.

My thought was that Kolata won't acknowledge the concept of
human behavior (and/or addiction) effecting dieting... let
alone how that behavior (and/or addiction) would be hard to
overcome if it receives a constant bombardment of messages
from the educational, media & medical communities
encouraging the addiction.


What I thought was most interesting in Kolata being assigned to
review the book is that she is excoriated, personally, throughout
the book. She and the rest of the Times nutrition/health staff are
raked throughout the book, with the lone good thing said about
anyone at the Times said about Kolata. Since the NYTimes book
reivew regularly farms out reviews to qualified outsiders, I think
this is something the Times ombudsman might want to take a
look at, because the old painted lady's credibility as a source for
quality information without biases (much less grudges) is at
stake.

Very curious. If I were Taubes, in my response, I might've brought
this issue up. Raise all the facts, then speculate on Kolata's real
motivations (she has a book out, after all, that probably looks very
stupid with Good Calories, Bad Calories on the market, which both
presents the flaws with her underlying theories, the flaws with her
reporting over a 20 year span, and an alternative hypothesis that
blows her book out of the water). I dunno about you, but with
all that going on, can she really read it with unvarnished eyes?

Hollywood wrote:
On Oct 29, 7:47 am, RRzVRR wrote:

Since this was off the beaten path, I thought some might
find the exchange between Taubes the NYT Book reviewer
Kolata interesting.

My thought was that Kolata won't acknowledge the concept of
human behavior (and/or addiction) effecting dieting... let
alone how that behavior (and/or addiction) would be hard to
overcome if it receives a constant bombardment of messages
from the educational, media & medical communities
encouraging the addiction.



What I thought was most interesting in Kolata being assigned to
review the book is that she is excoriated, personally, throughout
the book. She and the rest of the Times nutrition/health staff are
raked throughout the book, with the lone good thing said about
anyone at the Times said about Kolata. Since the NYTimes book
reivew regularly farms out reviews to qualified outsiders, I think
this is something the Times ombudsman might want to take a
look at, because the old painted lady's credibility as a source for
quality information without biases (much less grudges) is at
stake.

Very curious. If I were Taubes, in my response, I might've brought
this issue up. Raise all the facts, then speculate on Kolata's real
motivations (she has a book out, after all, that probably looks very
stupid with Good Calories, Bad Calories on the market, which both
presents the flaws with her underlying theories, the flaws with her
reporting over a 20 year span, and an alternative hypothesis that
blows her book out of the water). I dunno about you, but with
all that going on, can she really read it with unvarnished eyes?



MEOW ! ~

But the suggestions of misreading the literature are more than a mere
catfight.

Well, there is an essential aspect called "do you know more about the
scientific method than a five year old?"

The book is a massive statement that the medical/nutrition industry is
far from scientific, as have been most of the conventional nutrition
writers.

In her book, she portrayed the massive criticism of Banting as did
Taubes. Yet, she neglected the entire role of poor quality science, I
believe.

Taubes referenced 7 of her works, but not her recent book, which may
have been too recently published to get into the slow book
publishing/printing/distributing cycle.

Taubes lists himself only twice in the bibliography.

An interesting debate. My personal experience is that a calorie is a
calorie, but, but, the type and quantity of calorie influences eating
behavior.

It is odd that the best study they can find where subjects were hospitalized
to prevent cheating had only 16 subjects. Bad science.

I experimented with increasing calories within the very low carb context.
Over a month, there seemed to be a weight gain consistent with the calories.
I had read once, that the body had a maximum capacity for absorbing fat in a
day. If so, I should have been able to have one very high fat day and get
away with it. -not so My Fitday monthly averages stayed consistent in the
relationship of calories and weight.

Perhaps, the factors Taubes taut influence where the fat goes on the body.
That could confuse things.

I expect to get his book for Christmas.


"RRzVRR" wrote in message
...
Since this was off the beaten path, I thought some might find the exchange
between Taubes the NYT Book reviewer Kolata interesting.

My thought was that Kolata won't acknowledge the concept of human behavior
(and/or addiction) effecting dieting... let alone how that behavior
(and/or addiction) would be hard to overcome if it receives a constant
bombardment of messages from the educational, media & medical communities
encouraging the addiction.


=================
October 7, 2007

Gina Kolata is a medical reporter for The Times and the author of
''Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss and the Myths and
Realities of Dieting.'

GOOD CALORIES, BAD CALORIES

Gary Taubes is a brave and bold science journalist who does not accept
conventional wisdom. In ''Good Calories, Bad Calories,'' he says what he
wants is a fair hearing and rigorous testing for ideas that might seem
shocking.

His thesis, first introduced in a much-debated article in The New York
Times Magazine in 2002 challenging the low-fat diet orthodoxy, is that
nutrition and public health research and policy have been driven by poor
science and a sort of pigheaded insistence on failed hypotheses. As a
result, people are confused and misinformed about the relationship between
what they eat and their risk of growing fat. He expands that thesis in the
new book, arguing that the same confused reasoning and poor science has
led to misconceptions about the relation between diet and heart disease,
high blood pressure, cancer, dementia, diabetes and, again, obesity. When
it comes to determining the ideal diet, he says, we have to ''confront the
strong possibility that much of what we've come to believe is wrong.'' The
best diet, he argues, is one loaded with protein and fat but very low in
carbohydrates.

Taubes spent five years working on the book, which runs to more than 450
pages. The bibliography alone goes on for more than 60 pages. He also says
he interviewed more than 600 doctors, researchers and administrators,
though he adds that ''the appearance of their names in the text ... does
not imply that they agree with all or even part of the thesis set forth in
this book.'' Taubes does not bow to the current fashion for narrative
nonfiction, instead building his argument case by case, considering the
relationship between dietary fat and heart disease, carbohydrates and
disease, diet and obesity. As a result, the book can be hard to read,
tedious in many places and repetitious.

Yet much of what Taubes relates will be eye-opening to those who have not
closely followed the science, or lack of science, in this area.
(Disclosu At one point he approvingly cites my articles on the lack of
evidence that a high-fiber diet protects against colon cancer.) For
example, he tells the amazing story of how the idea of a connection
between dietary fat, cholesterol and heart disease got going and took on a
life of its own, despite the minimal connection between dietary
cholesterol and blood cholesterol for most people. He does not mince
words. ''From the inception of the diet-heart hypothesis in the early
1950s, those who argued that dietary fat caused heart disease accumulated
the evidential equivalent of a mythology to support their belief. These
myths are still passed on faithfully to the present day.'' The story is
similar for salt and high blood pressure, and for dietary fiber and
cancer.

In fact, Taubes convincingly shows that much of what is believed about
nutrition and health is based on the flimsiest science. To cite one minor
example, there's the notion that a tiny bit of extra food, 50 or 100
calories a day -- a few bites of a hamburger, say -- can gradually make
you fat, and that eating a tiny bit less each day, or doing something as
simple as walking a mile, can make the weight slowly disappear. This idea
is based on a hypothesis put forth in a single scientific paper, published
in 2003. And even then it was qualified, Taubes reports, by the statement
that it was ''theoretical and involves several assumptions'' and that it
''remains to be empirically tested.'' Nonetheless, it has now become the
basis for an official federal recommendation for obesity prevention.

But the problem with a book like this one, which goes on and on in great
detail about experiments new and old in areas ranging from heart disease
to cancer to diabetes, is that it can be hard to know what has been left
out. For example, Taubes argues at length that people get fat because
carbohydrates in their diet drive up the insulin level in the blood, which
in turn encourages the storage of fat. His conclusion: all calories are
not alike. A calorie of fat is much less fattening than a calorie of
sugar.

It's known, though, that the body is not so easily fooled. Taubes ignores
what diabetes researchers say is a body of published papers documenting a
complex system of metabolic controls that, in the end, assure that a
calorie is a calorie is a calorie. He also ignores definitive studies done
in the 1950s and '60s by Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University and
Rudolph Leibel of Columbia, which tested whether calories from different
sources have different effects. The investigators hospitalized their
subjects and gave them controlled diets in which the carbohydrate content
varied from zero to 85 percent, and the fat content varied inversely from
85 percent to zero. Protein was held steady at 15 percent. They asked how
many calories of what kind were needed to maintain the subjects' weight.
As it turned out, the composition of the diet made no difference.

As I read Taubes's book, I kept wondering how he would deal with an
obvious question. If low-carbohydrate diets are so wonderful, why is
anyone fat? Most people who struggle with their weight have tried these
diets and nearly all have regained everything they lost, as they do with
other diets. What is the problem?

On Page 446, he finally tells us. Carbohydrates, he says, are addictive,
and we've all gotten hooked. Those who try to break the habit start to
crave them, just as an alcoholic craves a drink or a smoker craves a
cigarette. But, he adds, if they are addictive, that ''implies that the
addiction can be overcome with sufficient time, effort and motivation.''

I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced.
===============
October 28, 2007

In her review of “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Oct. 7), Gina Kolata
dismisses a central thesis of my book — that weight gain is determined by
the hormonal regulation of fat tissue and not by
calories-in-minus-calories-out — by claiming that I ignore “definitive
studies,” which she then proceeds to seriously misrepresent. Rudolph
Leibel and Jules Hirsch did not, as Kolata says, do the studies in the
“1950s and ’60s,” when Leibel would have still been making his way from
grade school through medical school. Rather, the study — singular —
published in 1992, was a reanalysis of data gathered (on only 16 subjects)
originally by Edward Ahrens of Rockefeller University. Ahrens was not
studying weight regulation, ironically, but the ability of carbohydrates
to elevate triglyceride levels and so increase heart disease risk. The
Leibel-Hirsch paper itself argues against the use of the term “definitive”
to describe it — i.e., it is rife with caveats. Among them, that Ahrens’s
subjects could have gained 15 pounds a year from a unique fattening effect
of carbohydrates — 150 pounds of excess fat in a decade — and Leibel and
Hirsch’s analysis would have been unable to detect it. Moreover, only one
of Ahrens’s subjects was obese, which means, as Leibel and Hirsch explain,
that “similar results might not have been obtained in a group of obese
individuals or lean individuals susceptible to obesity.” Since the
hypothesis I discuss in “Good Calories, Bad Calories” is intended to
explain the cause of obesity in precisely these individuals, it is odd to
undercut my credibility by accusing me of leaving out a study that did not
actually address that issue.

Kolata also evokes the authority of “diabetes researchers” who allegedly
say that all we need to know about fattening is that “a calorie is a
calorie is a calorie.” What makes this particularly curious is that
diabetes researchers, more so than those in any other medical discipline,
are intimately aware of the radically different effect of proteins,
carbohydrates and fats on insulin secretion and so on the progression and
symptoms of diabetes. They’re also all too aware that insulin makes
diabetics fat. As James Rosenzweig, director of the office of disease
management at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, phrased it, using the
technical terminology, weight gain on insulin therapy can “result from the
direct lipogenic effects of insulin on adipose tissue, independent of food
intake.” Put simply, insulin causes us to accumulate fat in our fat tissue
(what Rosenzweig means by “lipogenic”) regardless of whether we consume
more calories. The question Kolata does not address is why this would be
accepted as a cause of fattening in diabetics, but rejected as a potential
cause of fattening in the rest of us. And since insulin is secreted
primarily in response to the carbohydrates in our diet, why would we
dismiss with such alacrity, as Kolata does, the notion that carbohydrates
may be the fundamental cause of weight gain and obesity?

At a time when obesity and diabetes are now considered to be epidemic in
America, it seems peculiar that Kolata would not be willing to examine
more rigorously any reasonable alternative hypotheses for the continuing
epidemics, rather than dismiss them with this kind of faux science that my
book makes clear is too often found in the work of both researchers in the
field and, regrettably, journalists who cover it regularly.

Gary Taubes
=========================================

Gina Kolata replies:

Jules Hirsch, who in fact says he did do the study, said he and Rudolph
Leibel published the data in 1992 precisely to counteract arguments like
those made by Gary Taubes. And while the study was initiated to answer
another question, it also addressed the question of whether calories from
carbohydrates and calories from fats are different in terms of their
calorie-for-calorie contribution to body weight. Taubes says in his book
that calories from carbohydrates are intrinsically more fattening, so this
is a central question. The authors conclude: “Variations in fat intake
from 0 percent to 70 percent of total energy under conditions of equal
energy intake produced no significant changes in body weight over periods
of observations averaging 33 days.” In other words, a calorie was a
calorie was a calorie.

As Taubes amply documents in his book, low-carbohydrate diets have been
popularized periodically since the 19th century. Best-selling book after
best-selling book promoted them. Yet if they work so well, why are so many
people still searching for an effective way to lose weight?

Taubes says the reason people fail on low-carbohydrate diets is that they
have not overcome their addiction to carbohydrates. But that begs the
question, and Taubes provides no scientific evidence to back up that
claim.



--
Rudy - Remove the Z from my address to respond.

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata

Check out the a.s.d.l-c FAQ at: http://www.grossweb.com/asdlc/faq.htm

RRzVRR wrote:
Jackie Patti wrote:

I think this is the best and most thorough low-carb book I've ever
read. Lots of information I've run across in many different places is
all organized here, as well as a few studies I wasn't familair with.
Beats the heck out of Protein Power, which is no longer my favorite
low-carb book now that GCBC is available. In between finishing
reading it and returning it to the library, I ordered a copy from
Amazon as it's a good reference book that should sit on my desk next
to Bernstein and my book of food counts.


Did you ever read Lyle McDonald's book, "The Ketogenic
Diet - A Complete Guide for the Dieter and Practitioner"?

No. I've read a lot of Lyle's stuff, mostly articles, the forums on his
web site and one e-book, but not that book.

In general, my impression is that Lyle is more into recent research and
quite a bit more technical than Taubes is. I've also not seen Lyle
address some of the specific stuff Tubes did - or not from the same
viewpoint anyway.

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

Hollywood wrote:
On Oct 29, 7:47 am, RRzVRR wrote:
Since this was off the beaten path, I thought some might
find the exchange between Taubes the NYT Book reviewer
Kolata interesting.

My thought was that Kolata won't acknowledge the concept of
human behavior (and/or addiction) effecting dieting... let
alone how that behavior (and/or addiction) would be hard to
overcome if it receives a constant bombardment of messages
from the educational, media & medical communities
encouraging the addiction.


What I thought was most interesting in Kolata being assigned to
review the book is that she is excoriated, personally, throughout
the book. She and the rest of the Times nutrition/health staff are
raked throughout the book, with the lone good thing said about
anyone at the Times said about Kolata. Since the NYTimes book
reivew regularly farms out reviews to qualified outsiders, I think
this is something the Times ombudsman might want to take a
look at, because the old painted lady's credibility as a source for
quality information without biases (much less grudges) is at
stake.

I guess they thought Jane Brody would be just too amusing?

Very curious. If I were Taubes, in my response, I might've brought
this issue up. Raise all the facts, then speculate on Kolata's real
motivations (she has a book out, after all, that probably looks very
stupid with Good Calories, Bad Calories on the market, which both
presents the flaws with her underlying theories, the flaws with her
reporting over a 20 year span, and an alternative hypothesis that
blows her book out of the water). I dunno about you, but with
all that going on, can she really read it with unvarnished eyes?



--
Rudy - Remove the Z from my address to respond.

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata

Check out the a.s.d.l-c FAQ at:
http://www.grossweb.com/asdlc/faq.htm

Jackie Patti wrote:
RRzVRR wrote:
Jackie Patti wrote:

I think this is the best and most thorough low-carb book I've ever
read. Lots of information I've run across in many different places is
all organized here, as well as a few studies I wasn't familair
with. Beats the heck out of Protein Power, which is no longer my
favorite low-carb book now that GCBC is available. In between
finishing reading it and returning it to the library, I ordered a
copy from Amazon as it's a good reference book that should sit on my
desk next to Bernstein and my book of food counts.


Did you ever read Lyle McDonald's book, "The Ketogenic
Diet - A Complete Guide for the Dieter and Practitioner"?

No. I've read a lot of Lyle's stuff, mostly articles, the forums on his
web site and one e-book, but not that book.

In general, my impression is that Lyle is more into recent research and
quite a bit more technical than Taubes is. I've also not seen Lyle
address some of the specific stuff Tubes did - or not from the same
viewpoint anyway.

There's a lot in the book that most LC eaters may never need
to know (pre bodybuilding contest plans which come up late
in the book), but it does a very good job at explaining the
basics of fuel systems and LC.


--
Rudy - Remove the Z from my address to respond.

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata

Check out the a.s.d.l-c FAQ at:
http://www.grossweb.com/asdlc/faq.htm

Thanks for a nice review....I need to get back to my copy...I got distracted
recently with a new computer and what is soon to be a new bike!


"Jackie Patti" wrote

I had to powerhouse my way through Taubes today as it's due back at the
library and can't be renewed as there's a waiting list for it cause they
only got 5 copies.

I was very impressed at his ability to cover the Kreb's cycle, lipolysis,
etc and manage to translate it to laymen's language. My college
biochemistry textbook was easily twice as thick as this and didn't have to
"translate" for laymen. Course, it had a lot more details, but... the
thing is no one remembers all that stuff anyways. Most you remember is
stuff like the Kreb's cycle produces ATP in the mitochondria... and Taubes
manages to cover all the bits one actually remembers. It might be
somewhat tough reading for some laymen, but he does manage to make the
basic metabolism of carbohydrate and fat pretty accessible for
non-chemists (he has much less on the metabolism of protein though).

He doesn't just discuss insulin and I'm not sure why people come away from
the book thinking that. He makes a big deal out of the importance of the
hypothalamus-pituitary axis in regulating both appetite and fat storage.
He discusses the importance of the sex hormones with regards to fat
storage also. He provides a summary of the hormones known to regulate fat
storage as of 1965 includes: epinephrine, norepinephrine, ACTH, glucagon,
TSH, melanocyte-stimulating hormone, vasopressin and growth hormone as
well as insulin. That being said, he doesn't address adrenal hormones
beyond epinephrine and norepinephrine hardly at all. He discusses some
experiments with rats with their adrenals surgically removed, but it's
basically about aldosterone (though he doesn't refer to the hormone by
name). Not a word about cortisol anywhere.

I'm not sure why people come away from the book thinking he says not to
exercise. Rather, he points out that fat storage is related to calories
in and calories out pretty directly. He simply points out there's some
confusion about what is the cause and what is the effect - which variables
are independent in that equation. He also points out that exercise is
not the entirety of "calories out" as basal metabolism is also effected.
He seems to believe that excess fat storage causes a reduction in both
basal metabolism and the natural desire to exercise - lean people burn
calories at a higher rate even when sleeping and naturally enjoy moving
more. But nowhere does he say that exercise is not good.

I think this is the best and most thorough low-carb book I've ever read.
Lots of information I've run across in many different places is all
organized here, as well as a few studies I wasn't familair with. Beats
the heck out of Protein Power, which is no longer my favorite low-carb
book now that GCBC is available. In between finishing reading it and
returning it to the library, I ordered a copy from Amazon as it's a good
reference book that should sit on my desk next to Bernstein and my book of
food counts.

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

"RRzVRR" wrote
Jackie Patti wrote:

Did you ever read Lyle McDonald's book, "The Ketogenic
Diet - A Complete Guide for the Dieter and Practitioner"?

No. I've read a lot of Lyle's stuff, mostly articles, the forums on his
web site and one e-book, but not that book.

In general, my impression is that Lyle is more into recent research and
quite a bit more technical than Taubes is. I've also not seen Lyle
address some of the specific stuff Tubes did - or not from the same
viewpoint anyway.

There's a lot in the book that most LC eaters may never need to know (pre
bodybuilding contest plans which come up late in the book), but it does a
very good job at explaining the basics of fuel systems and LC.


It seems a bit old research wise, though. I'd like to see a new edition.

Roger Zoul wrote:
"RRzVRR" wrote
Jackie Patti wrote:
Did you ever read Lyle McDonald's book, "The Ketogenic
Diet - A Complete Guide for the Dieter and Practitioner"?
No. I've read a lot of Lyle's stuff, mostly articles, the forums on his
web site and one e-book, but not that book.

In general, my impression is that Lyle is more into recent research and
quite a bit more technical than Taubes is. I've also not seen Lyle
address some of the specific stuff Tubes did - or not from the same
viewpoint anyway.
There's a lot in the book that most LC eaters may never need to know (pre
bodybuilding contest plans which come up late in the book), but it does a
very good job at explaining the basics of fuel systems and LC.


It seems a bit old research wise, though. I'd like to see a new edition.


I would as well.

--
Rudy - Remove the Z from my address to respond.

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata

Check out the a.s.d.l-c FAQ at:
http://www.grossweb.com/asdlc/faq.htm