Sunday, October 5, 2008

Food fight. Round two.

In Food fight. Round One, we discovered what, contrary to some people's beliefs, does not make most people fat. See here.
Here's the second surprise from the food fight front:
What food DOES make a person fat?
One journalist spent five years looking into this full time. He reviewed tens of thousands of pages of research findings, and interviewed numerous doctors and nutrition folks. Here's his second (of nine) conclusions about what DOES make a person fat.
"2. The problem is carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis - the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body.

"9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be." Taubes, p. 454
Before you gasp in disbelief, here's what Andrew Weil, the well known MD said about Taubes' stunning and revolutionary book on Larry King Live:
“I think this is a very important book. I’ve been recommending it to my medical colleagues and students. There are some very big ideas in this book…[Gary Taubes] has done a meticulous job of showing that many of the assumptions that are held by the conventional medical community simply rest on nothing

"It’s very important to get these out to the medical community because a lot of the ways we try and prevent and treat obesity are based on assumptions that have no scientific evidence.”
-Dr. Weil, speaking on Larry King Live, 2008
Gary Taubes was as surprised by this conclusion as you might be right now.

[Carbs: bread, pasta, legumes, grains, cereal, chips, rice, sugar & sweets, donuts, muffins...]
"Hey," you say, "doesn't that sound like Atkins? But he's been been vilified in the professional community, hasn't he?"
Yep. Millions of people have lost weight using his approach. But Atkins today has many detractors. Here's a surprise reason...

Food fight. Round Three, next.

2 comments:

Paul Eilers said...

But there are good carbs and bad carbs, right?

Kim Klaver said...

Some carbs are bad for everyone. Others may be good or bad depending on the person's biochemical condition.

And they're good or bad depending on whether a person wants to lose weight or not. Taubes' point was that most carbs people eat make them fat.