Carbs are Killing You (infographic)

in summary, processed food is bad, whole food from a natural source is good.

 

Mostly, but there are plenty of natural foods like soy, or those which contain gluten, and I would not say those are good.

 

Very interesting, good share! :cheers2:

 

fast food hamburger: potentially high in HCA, PAH, AGE (advanced glycation end products) due to high temperature dry heat frying, flame broiling, or barbecuing.

french fries: deep fried at high temperature; high in AGE; high calorie density; high sodium; high in oxidized vegetable oil and undesirable substances leftover in the oil from repeated fryings.

bun: refined white bread; low in micronutrients and fiber

dark cola: calorie-dense; micronutrient empty; potentially high in AGE due to AGE in dark coloring

In the U.S. market, fast food burgers often have plenty of bacon and cheese. Both are calorie dense and high in AGE, especially bacon. Bacon is usually high in sodium. Bacon is also a potential source of nitrosamines due to the nitrites in the cured meat combining with amines of the meat during high temperature cooking or during digestion. This includes bacon with a label that says 'uncured' ' and 'no added nitrite' in the U.S. market which actually is cured and has nitrites in the same amount as bacon with added nitrites.

The vegetables are one of the few items that could be considered useful on a fast food burger; low calorie density and high in micronutrients and fiber.

A better option is to cook beef at a lower temperature and use moist heat. Use an acidic media such as lemon juice to reduce AGE formation. Use spices and herbs which are high in anti-oxidants which thwart whatever undesirable substances may be in the meat. Eat baked potatoes instead of deep-fried for lower calorie density and AGE. Eating potatoes with the skin significantly increases fiber and micronutrients and decreases glycemic load. Letting potatoes cool after cooking and then gently reheating increases resistant starch which is is known to improve insulin sensitivity. Use a whole-grain, multi-grain bread. Eat more vegetables than what are normally on a fast food burger. Drink water, vegetable juice, or tea instead of sugar-sweetened soda.

 

David Ludwig has adopted the hypothesis of obesity being caused by internal starvation due to carbohydrates elevating insulin levels which he says lock away energy in fat cells. He seems to have become more of a proponent of this or at least more vocal about it since receiving funding from the NuSI group of Gary Taubes.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/rethinking-weight-loss-and-the-reasons-were-always-hungry/?_r=0


Responses by Stephan Guyenet

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2016/01/always-hungry-its-probably-not-your.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2016/01/testing-insulin-model-response-to-dr.html

 

I no longer believe carbs are evil, so I would delete this if I could.

 

Well that makes me feel a hell of a lot better about the big ol' plate of macaroni I plan on eating tomorrow.

 

And I Just Demolished A Pizza, Chicken Wings, And A Slice Of Cheese Cake Over The Last 5 Hours.

Thank's To PR's Post My Guilt Has Dissolved........



Cheers Glen.

 

I think further explanation is needed, since you've been somewhat verbally abusive to people who said similar things in the past.

 

Yeah, you can't just come in here ranting and raving and changing your mind. That's not on. Who does that?

Carbs for me, make me bloaty. Like pasta or pizza etc. I just feel like the next drink I have takes 2 days to clear our. Like a sponge, absorption.

 

It's called water weight. Carbs make you retain water. Nothing will make you fat unless you eat it in a caloric surplus over time.

 

I read this thread for the first time...interesting!

I'm type 1 diabetic, for those of you who don't understand this, its genetic, nothing to do with what I ate as a child or growing up..or being fat! No matter my size, I would be type1 no matter!
I take insulin as I don't produce any naturally, as a few people in my family don't.
Carbs, turn to sugar, sugar is not fattening, if you work it off, which normally the body does naturally, what it doesn't need, your insulin takes from your system, and burns for you!
If I don't take insulin, it stays in my body, will freak havock with my eyes, kidneys, heart and nerves, also my blood, which will not heal my skin properly.
So if you decrease the amount of carbs, your better off for those reasons, you don't need to use so much insulin!
Fat, is fat! There is no good fats...if your inactive, you get fat!
My dietician says, none diabetic, you can eat anything you want, but you have to work it off..

 

I would definitely agree that someone who is diabetic should reduce their carb intake as much as possible.

Also, I would not say "fat is fat." Fat is essential for the body. People need healthy saturated fats and omega-3 EFA's. It's things like trans fats and certain polyunsaturated fats high in omega-6 that people need to be avoiding.

But yeah, anything eaten in a caloric surplus will make you fat over time, regardless of what it is.

Even people who are inactive can maintain a normal weight it their caloric intake matches their total daily energy expenditure. I would never recommend an inactive lifestyle, but for some people who are disabled there is no choice.

Going back to carbs and low-carb diets... I do believe low carb and ketogenic diets have their place, but they are not the be all, end all, and are certainly not necessary for most of the public, even those who are rather significantly overweight. I think low carb diets are especially effective in people who suffer from insulin resistance and metabolic issues, but I see no reason why most people would need to keep their carbs limited for an indefinite period once they have corrected their metabolism and hormones. Long-term low carb diets can also disrupt a person's metabolism, so if they ever decide to come off the diet and eat a fair amount of carbs, their body almost forgets how to process and metabolize them. I think someone who is doing a very low carb or ketogenic should periodically break their ketosis with an every 7 to 10 day refeed.

There is nothing magical about low carb diets for most people, other than the fact that they're going to be eating a lot fewer overall calories by almost eliminating an entire 1/3 of their macro-nutrient intake.

To summarize why low carb diets appear to work so well for most people is that:

1) They are eating fewer calories, and more fat and protein (which suppresses appetite)

2) By lowering insulin levels, they are not holding as much water/glycogen

3) And of course there are the people who suffer from the metabolic issues which really could be helped by reducing or in extreme cases eliminating carbs temporarily (this is not all or even most people who are overweight). I should also note that intermittent fasting works just as well in correcting insulin resistance.

 

Yes, you've taught me about the water weight now and I understand it and can see its impacts etc.

 

Finally, we agree on something.

 

Most weight loss studies don't account for weight changes due to water-glycogen. This has been a source of confusion in trying to interpret weight loss data. In many of the weight loss studies that have compared a low-carbohydrate diet with ones that weren't low in carbohydrate, an initial weight loss is seen in the low-carbohydrate arm that is significantly greater (a couple kg) than the weight loss seen in the other arms of the study. At least some of this is likely due to initial water-glycogen loss on a low-carbohydrate diet. It gives the faulty impression that a low-carb diet has a unique advantage because of what appears to be a greater lowering of solid body mass but which is likely water-glycogen mass. An example of this initial effect is seen in the Shai weight loss study which compared an Atkins type low-carb diet with a Mediterranean and a low-fat diet. The effect is also a source of confusion for dieters who experience a rapid weight gain within a day or two as a result of going from low-carb to high-carb and mistakenly thinking that it is solid mass weight gain.

See Figure 2 of the Shai study and the initial significant but transient weight loss advantage early in the study for the low-carb arm compared with the Mediterranean arm.

Weight Loss with a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet
Iris Shai
n engl j med 359;3 www.nejm.org july 17, 2008

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0708681

This effect is a reason why it is important to randomise the participants of a study and measure water-glycogen stores. Most people in the general public are not eating a diet that is very low in carbohydrate. This means that most of the people in a low-carb weight-loss study will be intially in a state that will result in a significant water-glycogen weight loss as they embark on the low-carb diet if the participants weren't randomised. This can give an unfair advantage to a low-carb diet and the faulty impression that there is something unique about it that makes it better than other types of diets. A more objective approach would be to randomise participants before the weight loss diet begins with respect to macronutrient composition where some are already on a low-carb, weight-stable diet and some aren't. This would tend to randomize the effects of water-glycogen losses across the participant pool. It would likely result in some of the participants initially gaining more weight than others because they were on a low-carb weight-stable diet before the weight-loss portion of the study began and were randomly assigned to a low-fat, high-carb diet which would likely cause them to gain some water-glycogen weight after the diet started.

The initial advantage of weight loss of a low-carb weight loss diet usually lessens or disappears months into the study, as seen in the Shai study. An explanation is that the body adjusts its water-glycogen stores as it becomes adapted to the new low-carb diet composition and that adherence to a low-carb diet often wanes months into a weight-loss study. Gradually going from a low-carb diet to a more moderate-carb diet due to lack of adherence would cause water-glycogen stores to gradually increase and return toward their pre-weight-loss diet levels..This is an explanation for the effect seen in the Shai study of an initial weight-loss advantage in the low-carb arm during the six months and the advantage mostly disappearing at the one-year mark and later where weight loss became close to that of the moderate-carb Mediterrean arm.

The water-glycogen issue is part of the reason why a low-carb Atkins diet is known to be popular with dieters early in the weight loss program and why enthusiasm often wanes months later.

 

The Mediterranean arm of the Shai study posted earlier shows a significantly higher improvement in blood markers for insulin-resistant participants compared with the low-carb and low-fat arms for participants even though the weight loss was similar between the Mediterranean and low-carb arms. It's a feature that is deserving of more research. Potential explanations include the Mediterranean diet being higher in fiber, higher in omega-3 and monounsaturated fats, and lower in glycemic load compared with the other two arms of the study. It's a worthwhile outcome considering that a Mediterranean diet is one of the lesser restrictive diets in terms of macronutrient and dietary composition.

Low-carb proponents often cite the Shai study as a victory for an Atkins diet while not acknowledging the water-glycogen issue that gave the Atkins branch a perceived weight-loss advantage and not mentioning the superior improvement in blood markers for insulin-resistant participants in the Mediterranean arm. Promoters of the Atkins diet are known to target insulin-resistant people because of the low-carb nature of Atkins, yet the Shai study showed significantly superior blood marker results in the Mediterranean arm for insulin-resistant people and it didn't require being low-carb.

The Mediterranean diet was developed and recommended by Ancel Keys which may be part of the reason why some in the low-carb Atkins community are reluctant to acknowledge the positive results seen in some Mediterranean diet studies.

 

Article about low-carbohydrate diets of populations and some of the lesser known carbohydrates that they consumed,. Such foods have been overlooked by those in industrialized cultures who are not familiar with the composition of foods found in the wild that are not normally found in modern food stores. Various populations are not as low-carbohydrate as some people of industrialized cultures might assume.

https://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/disrupting-carbs-prebiotics.html

https://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/disrupting-masai-carbs-prebiotics.html

 

An excerpt from the article in the previous post.

"Today, in Part 1 of this two-part post, we begin to dismantle the myth of the Inuit and the Masai who supposedly ate no starch, no fibers and no prebiotics.
In fact, those cultures did eat animal starches and animal fibers. Unfortunately, unless one does their own hunting and eats part of their kills raw, those animal starches and fibers are all but missing from a modern low carb diet.


From: Principles and issues in nutrition: Yiu H. Hui, Ph. D., p.91 (1985)
Eskimos actually consume more carbohydrates than most nutritionists have assumed. Because Eskimos frequently eat their meat raw and frozen, they take in more glycogen than a person purchasing meat with a lower glycogen content in a grocery store. The Eskimo practice of preserving a whole seal or bird carcass under an intact whole skin with a thick layer of blubber also permits some proteins to ferment into carbohydrates.


Dr. Hui is being kind when he uses the term “fermented” to describe the ancestral preservation techniques for Igunaq and Kiviaq, which are typically enjoyed during the Winter months when food is scarce. A more accurate description would probably be “rotting” by anaerobic digestion in an environment too cold to facilitate full decomposition. We’ll come back to that. But first, let’s examine the role of glycogen."

 

There is an ignorance on the part of some people in the low-carb and paleo groups in thinking that outlier groups such as Inuit and Masai had little or no carbohydrate in their diets. Eades is still saying that Inuit are in ketosis, claiming that their ketosis is so perfect that it can't be measured. The ignorance stems in part from being immersed in a Western culture that is heavily reliant on processed foods such as muscle meats of farmed land animals and not realizing the difference in dietary composition of these foods compared with that of wild game such as marine mammals. This includes muscle meats that are obtained from butcher shops which are stored and processed and have a composition different than what Inuit were eating in their traditional diet such as whale blubber which isn't all fat which many mistakenly assume. The Inuit were not eating foods such as bacon, steak, sausage, dairy butter, and chocolate that are so often the favorites of paleo and low-carb interest groups.

It's unfortunate that popular groups on the web are promoting a high-fat American-style diet high in muscle meats and dairy of farmed land animals by claiming (wrongly) that the Inuit have been eating this way and making claims that they are in ketosis and have perfect health because of it. The Inuit aren't in ketosis and they didn't have perfect health even on their native diet. It is even more unfair to claim that the native Inuit diet is the same as the modern Western diet which is relies heavily on processed muscle meats of farmed land animals. It's an example of a group being immersed in its own culture with its own acquired tastes and trying to project this personal preference onto others based on a faulty perception of groups such as the Inuit and Masai.