The case for eating steak and cream

http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21602984-why-everything-you-heard-about-fat-wrong-case-eating-steak-and-cream

by nopinsight • 12 years ago

81 85 12 years ago

economist.com

Evgeny7• 12 years ago

Wasn't exactly that subject covered at length in numerous books already? Just to pick a few at (almost) random, with very similar names

The Great Cholesterol Con

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Cholesterol-Con-Anthony-Colpo-eb...

The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cholesterol-Myths-Exposing-Saturat...

The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Cholesterol-Con-Really-Disease-e...

(Of these, I personally read only Anthony Colpo's Great Cholesterol Con and consider it to be a very good analysis)

maroonblazer• 12 years ago

Not to mention these two:

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Scienc...

Evgeny7• 12 years ago

Sure, but these two, I believe, include the subject of cholesterol, but also cover much broader area of subjects.

krob• 12 years ago

Yup, eliminate the soda, cake-like-bread, and condiments at the table and watch the body fat evaporate.

sjtrny• 12 years ago

Condiments? I doubt 1/2 a tablespoon of ketchup is causing the obesity crisis. "Soda" is the biggest problem that you mentioned.

kfk• 12 years ago

To me the most amazing thing is that we still have "low fat" food around and that it is still labelled as healthy. Instead, the low carb food is either labelled "low carb" or "paleo", which are both names that remind this gym fixated people everybody laughs at. Then you have all the vegan/vegetarian crowd who laughs at who eats meat and steaks. It's a mess.

NotOscarWilde3• 12 years ago

As a vegetarian, I don't laugh at people eating meat. In fact, when it comes to nutrition, eating (the right) meat is likely the most rational choice based on today's understanding.

As a sidenote, I have looked into low-carb/keto diets and I've found that those are rather hard for vegetarians; reducing carb intake from some sources (rice, pasta) is easy, but even staple vegetarian foods rich in protein (tofu, lentils, beans, quinoa) are 1:1 when it comes to protein:carb content.

Another thing to mention is that being vegetarian in a central European country limits you to a very few number of restaurants you can eat out with friends; I do not know of any place around that would serve vegetarian low-carb food. This would imply that I always bring my own food from home to work, socially exclude myself by not eating anything when we go out eating with friends, and so on.

ido2• 12 years ago

Where in Central Europe are you? I lived in Vienna and now living In Berlin, and while it was a bit of a struggle being vegetarian in the former it think over here there are actually quite a lot of good options (obviously not anywhere near as good as some other places like San Francisco).

ars• 12 years ago

If you want to be on a low carb diet as a vegetarian you have to accept eating processed food, and a lot of it.

Specifically: Soy Protein Isolate, TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein - it does have carb so don't overdo it), and Seitan (Wheat Gluten), if you are not a vegan then add eggs to that - perhaps as egg whites (i.e. more processed food).

Nuts are reasonable too. Then add in a bunch of low carb vegetables (i.e. no root vegetables), and avoid fruits for the most part.

A sample breakfast: TVP soaked in egg white with some nutritional yeast for flavor, fried as an omelet.

Snack: A cup of protein shake with as little sweetener as you can manage to handle. (You would have to buy pure soy protein isolate powder and add the sweetener yourself - most places put in a ton.)

Lunch: Seitan - fried or baked, and salad (watch the dressing - most have sugar, make your own).

Dinner: Vegetable stir fry such as zucchini, mushroom, and onion plus oil for satiation.

It's easier to be a meat eater, but if you are not a picky eater it can be done.

PS. Tofu is not 1:1, it's closer to 4:1 so it can probably be used. TVP is about 2:1.

nashequilibrium2• 12 years ago

Keto is not meant for long-term use. You will have one miserable life if you could pull that off but i doubt you could even if u tried. It works really well for cutting that last bit of stubborn fat when u trying to show your six pack.

zurn2• 12 years ago

A vegetarian calling meat eating "the most rational choice" !

It's destroying our planet and causing untold, horrific amounts suffering to animals just because people get a kick out of chewing on other beings.

PS. I've been around other European countries most my vacations and never had the problem. Worst case you get salads and omelettes.

steveklabnik3• 12 years ago

I did vegan paleo for a while. It was tough, but manageable. Travel wrecked me though.

scottjad3• 12 years ago

For a critical response to Gary Taubes and the many other cholesterol confusionists, I highly recommend the videos by the PrimitiveNutrition Youtube user. He has over 30 hours of entertaining video analyzing medical studies and arguments related to this topic including the common attacks on Ancel Keys regurgitated in TFA.

https://www.youtube.com/user/PrimitiveNutrition/featured Transcripts: http://www.plantpositive.com

fredsted• 12 years ago

I'm a fan of Gary taubes (lost 30kg with simple low no-carb diet), those videos aren't really convincing. In the first one he talks about pork rinds being very bad, but really it's a good way to get some crisp in your food when you don't have flour and eggs. I couldn't get through it because of all the breathing.

dbbolton• 12 years ago

A better title: "Why black-and-white thinking is bad for your diet and moderation is good". Actually, that could pretty much replace the whole article.

zt• 12 years ago

I have been participating in a Stanford Medical research study since October. The name of the randomized control study is "One Diet Does Not Fit All" (http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/DietbyGenotype-Study....). The basic premise of the study is that as almost everyone has one of two insulin responses to glucose and that if you have one response, you should be on a low-fat diet, and if you have the other, you should be on low-carb.

My personal results have been quite successful. I was randomly assigned to the low-carb diet. I basically eat vegetables, meats, and cheese. I avoid everything from bread, to rice, to even nuts and fruits. On this diet I have lost nearly fifty pounds since I started. So it's been pretty successful for me. (I will admit that I had no idea whether it's the particular diet I'm on, per se, or the fact that I'm on any diet at all -- that I am paying attention).

I also accept the premise of the study: one diet does not fit everyone. Sometimes I meet people and they say it's as simple as calories in, calories out. Some people say everyone should be on this diet or that diet. I don't know -- I don't presume that my diet would simply work for everyone. The human body is a very complex system both for any one person, and for the population. I tend to believe the central premise of the study (and we'll see if it works out): that different physiologies lead to different beneficial diets (and perhaps much more).

There is a lot of story here: exercise being easier, meetings going more smoothly, my colleagues and family and friends supporting me, YC giving me a new t-shirt, buying a new wardrobe, my changing interactions with women (I'm strait, and who knows if this is due to me looking better or me being more confident)...etc...I'm planning to write up a (as is often the case) too-long blog post on it all when I'm finished with the study on October.

hueving2• 12 years ago

it's as simple as calories in, calories out

This is definitely true, if you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. But this is really hard to enforce for many people. Without blatant calorie labels on everything you eat, it's really easy to go over and then assume that it must not be true.

Borkdude5• 12 years ago

That, and the fact that most natural high carb foods, like fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains have a low calorie density compared to high fat foods. It's much harder to overeat on them, because they have more volume and fiber.

cdcarter• 12 years ago

Yes, but you might not be eating healthily this way. Calories in, calories out is "simple" in that it just ignores nutrients.

gdrulia2• 12 years ago

This is definitely true

It is a strong argument and I know to many examples where this is just simply not the case.

I myself have been eating all my life big portions of food couple times a day, mainly with meat and potatoes, sometimes with some salad though a lot of times without any. I'm not a big fan of sweets, but I do eat bread and some other stuff containing carbs, simply because it is almost impossible to avoid it these days.

At the same time I'm developer spending most of my time in front of computer and I do not go to gym. It has been like this for the last decade, though in the last 5 years I have spent much more time in front of computer and much less doing anything else. Yet my eating habits hasn't changed, neither did my weight. Since I was 16 and my wight was always 90-95 kg, I'm >1.9m height. I believe that this case just proves that calories in vs calories out doesn't always apply. Otherwise by now I should be obese whereas nothing even remotely close has happened.

anon4• 12 years ago

It's actually pretty easy to do without food labels. Apply this simple test: are you feeling dizzy from low blood sugar and is your stomach hurting from hunger?

If yes, then congratulations - you're burning more calories than you're eating. If no, then don't eat for a while. If no and you're actually feeling even a little full, stop eating, right now.

You'll get used to the lower calorie input after a while and the feeling of hunger won't be as sharp.

xherberta3• 12 years ago

Evidence does not support this as "definitely true." One example: http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/5/899S.full

The human body is more complicated than that. Different foods cause different levels of insulin response. Insulin tells the body to "pack it away as fat." As mentioned in the article, it's likely insulin is more relevant to heart disease than saturated fat intake.

The role of insulin also helps to explain obesity observed in malnourished populations, people who simply aren't taking in enough calories to get fat, but are.

I also take issue with your message toward people who are struggling with overweight. It's not just that overweight people are bad at staying within limits; it's that fat cells stimulated by insulin to grow send messages requesting more energy, stimulating appetite.

rdl• 12 years ago

It appears they're recruiting in July for Fall 2014; I'd be interested in participating. Would you suggest it?

Andys• 12 years ago

it's as simple as calories in, calories out

I recently saw a study that was a great example of why it isn't this simple:

Intermittent fasting, with the same average daily calories consumed, resulted in more rapid weight loss than no fasting.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

What were the details? If it's a statistically measurable 0.5% then who cares, if it's 15% then wow...

sp332• 12 years ago

Fasting accounts for the calories in, what about the calories out?

eliben2• 12 years ago

Interesting. This actually seems to be in line with the low carb approach which claims that fats starts getting burned only after all the carbs are gone. It's less extreme though, in the sense that true "keto" approaches say a few days are needed to enter a true ketonic state with very low carb consumption.

mason55• 12 years ago

What gets lost in these discussions is the intricacies of calories in vs. calories out.

Bodyweight should always vary based on calories in vs. calories out. You can't create mass from nothing and if you're burning more calories than you take in then you have to lose mass or else your body is a perpetual motion machine. What people ignore is that:

1. Certain things change calories out. In some women (for example those with PCOS) their calories out drops dramatically and continues to vary based on their calories in. Their bodyweight is still obeying the laws of calories in vs. calories out but the calories out drops and so it feels like there must be something else going on, that cals in vs. cals out doesn't work.

2. What people really care about is not bodyweight but bodyfat. So even though everyone obeys calories in vs. calories out you can still change what your body does with those calories by adjusting your macronutrient ratios (nutrient partitioning). Decreasing carbs can change your insulin response and cause your body to lose more fat vs muscle which is what people really want. Also your body uses carbs to create glycogen which is stored as water weight.

3. Different macronutrients affect satiety differently. If you just binge on carbs you'll generally be hungry again very soon. If you eat high fat then you'll be full longer. There are also microoptimizations that occur like shifting leptin levels.

It's the source of a lot of arguments. One camp says keto is magic, the next says it's just a trick to keep your calories low, and both are right. Diets like keto do help you keep your calories low, you can't binge and eat 5000 calories of meat and lose weight, but there are also other benefits.

TL;DR: Shit's complicated

irremediable• 12 years ago

Do you have any more information about those different insulin responses? Did they use genetic testing to assess your response? It sounds very interesting.

Borkdude5• 12 years ago

Most low fat foods aren't really that low fat, but only contain less fat. If you calculate the percent of energy coming from fat from such foods it's still large. And more importantly, those "low fat" foods are still factory derived high sodium low fiber foods, not natural foods, like fruits, legumes and whole grains which contain almost no fat. What people call low fat is really just not good enough. For a seriously healthy low fat diet, read The Starch Solution by John McDougall. http://www.amazon.com/The-Starch-Solution-Regain-Health/dp/1...

However, low fat or high carb still misses the point of focussing on macronutrients instead of micronutrients. Micronutrients are a good indicator of the quality of foods. Micronutrients: vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, are important factors in satiety and long term weight loss maintenance. Whole foods like nuts, seeds and avocado's aren't low fat, but high fat, but can help in weight loss, because of their health benefits. Read Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, who elaborates on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Live-Amazing-Nutrient-Rich-Sustain...

I have experience in combining Eat to Live + The Starch Solution which got me from a BMI of 27 to 20 for three years already. I eat relatively high carb / low fat, with the moderate addition of some nuts, seeds and avocado's. I find this works best for me. I've excluded almost all saturated fats AND free unsaturated fats like olive oil, which contain almost no valuable micronutrients.

scottjad3• 12 years ago

My favorite resource on micronutrients and diet are the graphs in this article http://www.vegsource.com/harris/ten_categories.htm

Borkdude5• 12 years ago

Google for ANDI score, which is also a measure for the micronutrient content per calorie.

http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/andi-food-scores.aspx

DanBC3• 12 years ago

Whole foods like nuts, seeds and avocado's aren't low fat, but high fat, but can

We know that some people snack on these foods because they think the foods are healthy. Thus they take in several thousand extra calories that they don't need per day, on top of their regular meals.

Borkdude5• 12 years ago

Yes, that can be a problem. These high fat foods are best eaten not as a snack, but as part of a meal, like a nut based salad dressing.

mudil• 12 years ago

I eat fat, and look, I am still alive!

csel• 12 years ago

(shaking my head)

logicallee• 12 years ago

Man, you would make the world's fastest doctor. "Hello Mr. Johnson, great to see you again. Let's have a quick look here. And...yep... looks like you're still alive. Now, if you'll just sign here. And, we're all set. Keep up the good work! Next!"

seriously though being alive is an accomplishment for most organisms in the 3.45 billion year history of life on Earth, an accomplishment in the vicious wild, and an accomplishment for civilized humans in the face of tragedy, neglect, disaster, disease, war, or certain human-caused problems (violence etc).

In industrialized nations, today, being alive at all is a goal few people would set for themselves who are lucky enough to enjoy health and basic freedom from war, poverty, famine, natural disaster, violence, etc.

While I don't mean to detract from your life's amibtions, you are entitled to them, I think you can almost certainly have higher ambitions than being alive.

Of course, I don't know you personally, so who am I to say? Congratulations on what you have accomplished.

xwowsersx• 12 years ago

I've been eating a very high fat, very low carb diet now for almost 2 years. In that time I've shed 20 pounds (and I was never fat) and my cholesterol numbers have improved significantly. My experience is by no means scientific evidence, but just thought I'd share. Reading "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living" by Drs Phinney and Volek was life-changing.

jstsch• 12 years ago

People make things more complicated than they are. Just eat more plants. Eat less super-easy-to-digest free-calorie foods, such as refined sugars (sucrose).

This includes simple starches such as you find in white bread, rice and pasta. They get converted into sucrose right away. It starts in your mouth (amylase enzyme in your saliva), just one simple molecular change and it's... glucose! That's why it tastes sweet if you keep on chewing a piece of white bread.

White flour products are tasty though! So consider them as more of a snack, like cake or potato chips, and less as part of your daily meal.

gtuckerkellogg• 12 years ago

From the review, this book seems like a rehash of Taubes' two excellent and well researched books on the same topics. Taubes was the first to make the broad historical connections that also seem central to this book. Even the book title, "The Big Fat Surprise" is a play on Taubes' famous 2002 New York Times article "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?". What, if anything is original to this work? From the Economist review, we have no idea.

Tycho• 12 years ago

The other day at work I caved and went for a pub-lunch, a burger with cheese, served with chips and coleslaw. I enjoyed it but immediately afterwards thought 'damn, that was greasy,' and remembered my marathon running colleague who always refrains from going for a 'crappy burger' with us. But here's the thing: I didn't feel hungry for the rest of the day. In fact I skipped dinner completely, just went for long walk round the city and stopped to have a beer somewhere. If you want to lose weight, surely the trick is to consume less calories per day and avoid the feeling of hunger. Few people are going to have the discipline to refrain from eating when they actually feel hungry, day after day after day.

TTPrograms• 12 years ago

This has been my experience with low carb - I can eat a high protein, high fat meal that will stuff me and be ~1000 calories, but I'll be satisfied for at least the rest of the day if not most of the next. Even if it's just calories in / calories out it's a clear win over my normal diet.

Of course people used to think this long fasting is really bad (my parents, for example), but it seems like new research says it's fine, if not healthy for weight loss.

eliben2• 12 years ago

I can second this. It's actually quite easy to test on yourself. Try two kinds of breakfast for a few days each, and compare how much snacking you want to do before lunch:

1. Bagels + scone 2. Eggs + bacon

For me, the second kind undeniably leads to less hunger later in the morning. After a breakfast of 4 scrambled eggs + 4 strips of bacon (so 550-600 cal) I can easily not feel hungry at all until lunch. Couple of small bagels with some cream cheese + scone (also ~550-600 cal) and I feel much less full after a couple of hours.

icantthinkofone• 12 years ago

About 10 years ago, my two sons and I worked out with George Turner as our coach. George was a gruff, ex-Marine in his 60s known all over the world and had many weight lifting awards to his name and wrote for magazines. His nutritional advice used to scare my wife. Essentially, it was a high-protein, low-carb diet.

He told us not to fear fat cause it was good for us. Nor eggs if you worked out cause cholesterol wouldn't stick to anything. If you were hungry, "Eat!!", he would shout at my son who was 100 pounds overweight. "Listen to me cause I'm right!"

This made no sense at all. He told us he used to give talks at the local medical university on nutrition. He complained that doctors were not given enough classes on nutrition and he knew more about it than most of them.

In nine months, all three of us were strong as an ox. My overweight son lost 100 pounds. I lost 40 pounds.

George was always right.

naveen99• 12 years ago

This is common knowledge now it seems on http://reddit.com/r/fitness also look at stronglifts.com Wish I knew this 20 years ago... Basically: squats, barbell exercises is key. Starting strength recommends a gallon of milk a day...

DanBC3• 12 years ago

I am one of the people who thinks that "calories out > calories in" is most important. I've tried (in the spirit of Feynman) to poke holes in this, so here's the stuff that would persuade me I'm wrong.

1) satiety. Some foods make you feel full, so even though they're "fat" you eat less. (This doesn't counter CO>CI but explains why people fail at it).

2) abysmal quality of research on weight loss. Lots of the research is poor quality and we really don't know what works. Better quality research is always a good thing.

3) gut flora and genetics. Genetics plays a role in everything so I'm sure that it is easier for some people to be fat than others because genes. We know that some gut flora helps some people stay slim. Nwe know that some other gut flora helps some people become fat. A double whammy would be unfortunate.

4) evil food industry. Seeing a bag of sugar (in whatever form, but especially candy) sold as "LOW FAT FOOD!!!" is infuriating. I tend to ignore the HFS arguments but I agree that the vast amounts of sugar eaten today is very harmful. Making food "hyper paletable" and making it seem like it is much quicker to get that food than prepare your own healthy food has done a lot of harm. (See popcorn chicken cersus a roast chicken).

5) judgementalism. CO>CI may be true but it is simplistic and it is often given with judgemental messages. As HN middlebrow dismissal shows contrarianism is human nature, thus saying "CO>CI! Develop some willpower, go for a jog!" Will devolve into discussion about a bunch of stuff. People like me need to find a better way to deliver that message.

jsdalton• 12 years ago

6) Insulin response. Carbohydrates trigger insulin production, which causes cells to store more fat. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/always-hung...

DanBC3• 12 years ago

Posting non medical sources, especially from the opinion section, is less likely to convince me.

jqm• 12 years ago

Personally I will be glad when they get what to eat/not eat settled once and for all...

As it is now, there are so many changing/competing theories out, and with such frequency I have been forced to abandon considering any of them at all and just eating what I feel like.

ja30278• 12 years ago

I've been eating a low-carb diet for the past 2 years. In that time, I've lost roughly 20lbs, while my blood work has gotten dramatically better. (Cholesterol: 160 (92 HDL, 64 LDL), Triglycerides: 46, Blood glucose: 92). More importantly, my energy level has 'evened out', such that I no longer get sleepy in the afternoons or feel sluggish after dinner in the evenings. I don't take special care to count calories, or avoid fatty foods. I eat lots of salads and vegetables, but also eat steak dipped in melted butter, and eggs-and-bacon for breakfast.

After I stopped eating carbs, I couldn't help but notice how much sugar is in _everything_ that most people eat. Most brands of peanut butter, for example, have sugar as the second ingredient. Ditto for 'whole wheat' bread, which frequently has sugar added.

Before beginning this diet, I was a believer in the calories-in/calories-out model, because of it's appealing simplicity. The truth is, your body isn't a calorimeter, and metabolizes different calorie sources in different ways..simple carbs break down easily, early in your digestive process, while proteins are broken down more slowly. Some foods can't be broken down at all without the help of intestinal flora, or are excreted without being digested at all. Thus, it's much more useful to say that, in order to lose weight, you have to _metabolize_ fewer calories than you burn, regardless of how many calories you consume.

The case for eating steak and cream

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