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Nightfall, the China study doesn't prove anything, we're all agreed on that. That article about wheat was written by the girl that debunked the China Study claims of vegan supremacy. The Wheat issue was something that cam up as a result of that analysis. It doesn't prove any causality but it's a significant enough correlation that it needs study. There is also enough existing research that indicates the potential mechanisms for wheat problems. Together it's clear that wheat may not be the best food for a lot of people. Some people may get along fine.

I'm one of the most vocal proponents of paleo/low carb diets here and I want to clear up a couple of things.

Low carb is not perfect for all people. Some people do better on higher carbs. Some people do better cycling carbs. However, for people having trouble losing weight, low carb is probably the solution. If it's not that, and they still have a problem, it's probably thyroid.

Paleo is not low carb and low carb is not paleo. Paleo is eating natural foods focusing on large varieties of vegetables and fruit, along with abundant animal products but excluding processed foods and modern foods like grains and dairy. In reality it's highly impractical so limited grains and dairy are usually included. I believe this is the healthiest way to eat and I repeatedly run across new ways in which it improves your health. Within Paleo eating, you can emphasis whatever foods you do well on and that may mean high fruit to some, or almost all meat, whatever.

The bottom line is, you can eat whatever you want. However, if someone has a problem, a paleo, low carb diet is often the answer. So whether it's right for you or not, you're going to see it recommended a lot.

pdellorto wrote:

NightFaLL wrote:Also, I've slowly watched this site move from a neutral ground for information to one that's predominantly low-carb/paleo biased. I think a lot of information is starting to get skewed because of it.

Yeah, well, you have to stand on tiptoes if you like gluten and carbs. I don't want Ironman to yell at me if I admit to eating PBJ sandwiches when I'm not cutting weight.

There wouldn't be any yelling, just envy. Actually it's not too bad now. There is low carb bread and sugar free jelly, so I actually eat them too.

Nightfall, I don't think it's the board that's been going that way. I think it's the scientific evidence that's been going that way. At least for certain goals and people. I am talking about the goal of losing weight for the vast majority of people who need to lose weight.

Now granted, low carb is not for everyone or every goal. I don't think anyone here makes that claim. I distinctly remember telling ectomorphs who have trouble gaining weight to eat a fairly high carb diet, for example.

If you think someone is spinning, please call them out on it by all means. We want the information here to be as accurate as possible. I really can't encourage skeptical inquiry enough.

I don't doubt that many of you give advice/information based on scientific research. I just kind of got 'set off' by the post from the person I quoted because it is mostly alarmist hogwash, which is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Oh and I also want to point out - that when I diet, I also do low carb.

I also do low fat, along with it. Pretty much just eat at a 70/15/15 ratio.

NightFaLL wrote:I don't doubt that many of you give advice/information based on scientific research. I just kind of got 'set off' by the post from the person I quoted because it is mostly alarmist hogwash, which is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Oh and I also want to point out - that when I diet, I also do low carb.

I also do low fat, along with it. Pretty much just eat at a 70/15/15 ratio.

I am not sure what was alarmist about my post.
I don't know what you mean by all the energy is not going to get stored. I had explained that some gets stored as glycogen, some get used because of high insulin and the rest has no where to go, except get stored as fat, unless you are peeing it out.

Also I said that fat cells get damaged due to poisons in diet. I am sure you don't expect that your cells will live if you eat mercury or arsenic right. So where is the stretch in saying that there are other slow acting poisons too. They just work very slowly, damaging cell receptors slowly.

I also said that it depends on the particular tissues genetic disposition. Some peoples tissues are very hardy and survive a whole lot of assault.
You might be that person, you may not be. That doesn't mean that everybody abusing their body will get damaged. But many of us do get damaged, as you can see with the current high rate of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease. And the rate is increasing, something is definitely wrong with the current medical advice.

My post was not at all recommending low carb. I specifically said that low carb may cause problems with people with not very healthy adrenals. As a low carb diet causes a lot of stress, and healthy adrenals are required to deal with it. Many people are not able to handle very low carb diets for long very well. I said that it is not entirely healthy to try to lose your fat using low carb diet, because it creates an unstable equilibrium, which you must maintain. It is better to just eat healthy and let the body find its equilibrium naturally.

All the science does point to Paleo diet being good. That includes saturated fat being good, even Cordain agrees now. We just don't know what exactly is the correct paleo diet ;-), because we were not there.

NightFaLL wrote:
I also do low fat, along with it. Pretty much just eat at a 70/15/15 ratio.

You mean that you eat 70% protein. WOW. That is not low carb at all. As most of the protein will convert to glucose. Do you have a lot of fat to lose?

You do know that our body has a very limited capacity to convert protein to glucose. It is about 150gms per day for an average person. The paper was by Cordain, if you want the reference I will search it for you.

Even protein utilization for building purposes is not that much, around 1.5gms/kg/day. There is a paper on that by Dr.Philip Stuart, look up the protein debate, you can find that paper.

Also when converting from protein to glucose around 30% of the energy made available by the conversion is required to do the conversion. Gluconeogenesis is very thermogenic. It is possibly the reason why Carnivores don't have much brains, even though they have simpler guts. Read the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis and Klieber's law.

The rest is going to get thrown out. So you are not eating as much as you think.

Also read about a related phenomenon Rabbit Starvation. If you are doing well on it, you must have a lot of body fat. You must be losing a lot of fat doing this. It is definitely the fasted way to lose fat. But its not entirely healthy and depends on good adrenal and thyroid support.

anandsr21 wrote:

NightFaLL wrote:I don't doubt that many of you give advice/information based on scientific research. I just kind of got 'set off' by the post from the person I quoted because it is mostly alarmist hogwash, which is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Oh and I also want to point out - that when I diet, I also do low carb.

I also do low fat, along with it. Pretty much just eat at a 70/15/15 ratio.

I am not sure what was alarmist about my post.
I don't know what you mean by all the energy is not going to get stored. I had explained that some gets stored as glycogen, some get used because of high insulin and the rest has no where to go, except get stored as fat, unless you are peeing it out.

Also I said that fat cells get damaged due to poisons in diet. I am sure you don't expect that your cells will live if you eat mercury or arsenic right. So where is the stretch in saying that there are other slow acting poisons too. They just work very slowly, damaging cell receptors slowly.

I also said that it depends on the particular tissues genetic disposition. Some peoples tissues are very hardy and survive a whole lot of assault.
You might be that person, you may not be. That doesn't mean that everybody abusing their body will get damaged. But many of us do get damaged, as you can see with the current high rate of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease. And the rate is increasing, something is definitely wrong with the current medical advice.

My post was not at all recommending low carb. I specifically said that low carb may cause problems with people with not very healthy adrenals. As a low carb diet causes a lot of stress, and healthy adrenals are required to deal with it. Many people are not able to handle very low carb diets for long very well. I said that it is not entirely healthy to try to lose your fat using low carb diet, because it creates an unstable equilibrium, which you must maintain. It is better to just eat healthy and let the body find its equilibrium naturally.

All the science does point to Paleo diet being good. That includes saturated fat being good, even Cordain agrees now. We just don't know what exactly is the correct paleo diet ;-), because we were not there.

You're referring to artificial sweeteners as poisons when not a single study has shown that effect in humans in currently used sweeteners, for instance.

Your entire post has no actual scientific backing that I'm aware of and I spend a majority of my time researching nutrition/training. If you could link me to something backing up all the claims you've made (such as a pubmed study, clinical journal, etc.) then I might be more willing to believe it.

Otherwise, it just sounds like you're about to try to sell me a detox kit.

anandsr21 wrote:

NightFaLL wrote:
I also do low fat, along with it. Pretty much just eat at a 70/15/15 ratio.

You mean that you eat 70% protein. WOW. That is not low carb at all. As most of the protein will convert to glucose. Do you have a lot of fat to lose?

You do know that our body has a very limited capacity to convert protein to glucose. It is about 150gms per day for an average person. The paper was by Cordain, if you want the reference I will search it for you.

Even protein utilization for building purposes is not that much, around 1.5gms/kg/day. There is a paper on that by Dr.Philip Stuart, look up the protein debate, you can find that paper.

Also when converting from protein to glucose around 30% of the energy made available by the conversion is required to do the conversion. Gluconeogenesis is very thermogenic. It is possibly the reason why Carnivores don't have much brains, even though they have simpler guts. Read the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis and Klieber's law.

The rest is going to get thrown out. So you are not eating as much as you think.

Also read about a related phenomenon Rabbit Starvation. If you are doing well on it, you must have a lot of body fat. You must be losing a lot of fat doing this. It is definitely the fasted way to lose fat. But its not entirely healthy and depends on good adrenal and thyroid support.

I'm at 10.5% bodyfat and 210lbs at 5'9" when I got it done Monday.

The diet is a cyclical diet, meaning I only eat like this for 3 1/2 days before doing a carb-up.

I'm currently eating 300g protein + any trace carbs/fats from meats/green veggies.

Either way, the point of increased protein intake is to negate the use of muscle breakdown for amino acids as fuel.

Contrary to what most people believe, if your protein intake is high enough - you don't need carbs or fat to maintain muscle during the short term AND you can go on a rather high caloric deficit (I'm currently at 1500/day with a maintenance of 3500)

And the diet is The Ultimate Diet 2.0 by Lyle McDonald if you'd like to research it.

anandsr21 wrote:

Also, the reason for keeping fat low is to keep you from having excess calories stored as bodyfat.

It's actually fairly difficult for carbs to be stored as body fat, from what I understand, even when you're overeating them.

I think where the fat gain can come from, if I've read correctly, is that basically while having such a large carb intake - your body stops fat oxidation, meaning all dietary fat is then stored as adipose tissue, etc.

All energy must get stored as fat. That applies to carbs too.
For carbs you can use some of it during digestion, because insulin drives the whole body to use up the glucose. The reason why it does so, lies in the fact that it is poisonous for the blood, which can hold only 4-5gms of it. Around 400gm can be stored in the liver and muscles, but most of it did not get depleted except after fast or long heavy exercises.

The rest must get stored as fat. There are no other ways to it.
The problem is not the fat storage.

The only reason people gain weight is because the fat cells are not releasing fatty acids that are stored there. The reason behind this is mostly hormonal. Testosterone and several other hormones drive fat out. Leptin is used to manage the level. But there are some fatty cells that are so damaged that they don't respond to the hormones.

Different fatty cells have different propensity to get damaged. It also depends on people. Most people get fat in the middle some get fat on the lower body others on the upper body. Some cannot get fat at all.

It is not a simple thing. There are several factors that damage the cells. The biggest of them is high omega6 to omega3 ratio. Try to bring it below 4:1 on a daily basis. Anything above is bad. Another big ones are sweeteners, fructose, artificial sweeteners also galactose. These cause glycation, and damage cells receptors. Some others are lectins, but those we don't know much about, except that the WGA (Wheat Germ Agglutinin) is pretty bad.

Whole wheat is quite deadly and is associated with increased BMI and heart disease. See the link
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/09/02/the-ch ... ase-oh-my/

Then there are ways to force the body to lose fat, which is what low carb + weight lifting does. But it may not be entirely healthy, as it causes a lot of stress on your body. If your adrenals are strong enough handle the stress, then you are able to get to a lower point of weight. But unless the leptin accepts the lower mass, you will forever be struggling with it.

The strategies to increase leptin sensitivity will help a lot.

The bolded areas are the specifics I want to see scientific backing on, not a link to a whole foods page trying to market itself.

I'll also point out that de novo lipogenesis rarely occurs in humans unless consuming large amounts of carbohydrates over caloric maintenance. Our body is not efficient at converting protein to glucose and it is not efficient at converting carbohydrates to fat. So, it does neither unless it's forced to.

The reason carbs can potentially make you fat is due to them causing the blocking of fat oxidation. If you consume carbs, you burn carbs - meaning any dietary fat is stored - the carbs itself are rarely stored.

This is a long post. I have tried to clarify my opinions. I have tried to find the papers involved, but my opinions have been formed over the years, and have not been able to find much of the papers involved. I do go more logically than by studies. If it makes sense to me, as in it does not contradict anything that I know then I am more likely to accept it. I am not rigorous about it. But I think I have them essentially right.

In my opinion, you are making the claim here, that somehow the energy that you consume as carbs, disappears. My contention is that it does not disappear it gets stored. Do you mind telling us where that energy goes, if it does not get stored. It cannot simply disappear.

I do understand that you eat very little carbs, 15% has to be little. But if you are eating like 200gms of carbs in one meal most of it will get stored. I don't see the problem here.

Now onto the Low Carb + Weight lifting. I think you do agree with this. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, and would not eat a low carb diet (15% is low carb). I guess your contention is about the entirely healthy bit. So yes it is a contentious issue. Not everybody feels the effect, because most people have a reasonably working Adrenal system. But there are others who do not have Adrenal sufficiency. If you with the clinical definition of Adrenal sufficiency, it is a zero or 1 definition. They believe either your adrenal works at 100% efficiency or it is producing too much possibly because of some cancer, or it is producing nothing, because it is dead. It does not agree to something in between 100% and zero. If you want alternate views on that you can look for the Dr.Rind's Metabolic Temperature Graph. It explained a lot of things to me. I do seem to have an adrenal insufficiency. Don't you think if people can have thyroid working something in the middle, adrenal would also be like that. Even pituitary would also be like that, but that is too horrible, I am not sure what people with those problem do. Anyway doctors don't accept these conditions, as there are no patentable drugs that can relieve symptoms. Wait till they find a patentable drug they will start to talk about them, like they do work on thyroid, with a single T4 drug, when it doesn't work for most people.

The contention might be that it causes a lot of stress. So well any food causes stress. The body must digest it. It is a lot of chemicals entering the system, some the body can neutralize, others it can utilize and some it can't. Those it can neutralize will eat up some resources while doing so. Those it can't will cause some damage, and then the body must recover from. Low carb, if it has too little carbs and too much protein, will require amino-acid conversion to glucose. This conversion requires cortisol, which is the anti-stress hormone of the body. Please read about cortisol, and its functions and you will understand that. It is also a gluco-cortoid hormone, that is it is required for gluconeogenesis. The production of cortisol stresses the adrenal, as it has to release it. If it is not working well, there will be trouble generating enough, which will mean there will be less cortisol for the anti-stress function.

Resistance training or HIIT, increases glycogen requirement, and will cause more gluconeogenesis if coupled with low carb, increasing the stress on adrenals.

About the whole wheat, I have read enough. I don't know what you are reading, but read about the effects of Gluten. My brother got rid of his eczema after stopping it. It manifests itself into many auto-immune diseases as well. Second part of whole wheat is WGA, wheat germ agglutinin. Although not well known it is probably more dangerous than the Gluten. It causes digestion problems by acting as a growth hormone to the intestinal wall, which causes the cells to be immature, and unable to secrete digestive enzyme. Gluten, Casein, lactose become problematic because of WGA.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4510 ... d_RVDocSum

Read the following
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/ ... ctose.html

In addition Whole Wheat is particularly high in Phytates which causes mineral deficiencies particularly of Zinc and Magnesium.

Wheat also has a lot of insoluble fiber. You might think fiber is good for health, but think about what happens to insoluble fiber. It is not broken down very fine. It does not dissolve in water but absorbs water to become big. It is probably big enough to interact with the celia in small intestines. What does it do as it passes through intestines. It cuts down celia. Hopefully not for too long, and bacteria will get to them before they cause too much damage.

Wheat Germ is also known to destroy Vitamin D in the body, or rather the body uses up Vitamin D while dealing with the Wheat Germ.

You might think that latitude is sufficient to explain the white skin of caucasians. Its not. How do you explain the darker skin of Inuits and eskimos. Or darker skins of American Indians living at the same latitude. The white skin is actually explained by the effects of the WGA on Vitamin D production. It reduces Vitamin D levels in the blood substantially. Consequently you require a very pale skin to make any Vitamin D.
Not able to find this paper. There is another one where they compared Vitamin D levels between Whole and refined wheat. Whole wheat caused a bigger reduction.

I am sorry if you don't find all that convincing. Well, for me it is a poison, period. The China study just confirms all that I have read.

About the Sweeteners. I do agree that it is speculation. But being a proponent of Paleolithic diet. I assume that anything that has not stood the test of time, might be problematic to the body. There is a study showing that Diet coke causes more obesity than plain coke. I don't know whether to believe it, but it does go with my thinking.
The real problem for me with artificial sweeteners is that they don't get absorbed by the body. If they don't get absorbed what happens to them. Where do they go? They might be discarded in the urine. But some might lurk behind. What does it do? The only sweetener I would agree to take is Stevia, because there is a aborginal group that has been taking it for a substantial time.

For me, I only avoid sweeteners in drinks, when not consuming with food. My reasoning goes like this. If you have some solid food, the stomach must process it to make it into chyme. This chyme gets secreted out the stomach slowly. If you drink water this process is not required and the liquid goes directly out of the stomach. The fructose and other natural sweeteners need to be processed by the liver and other cells, to convert into fat or something equally benign. If the liquid comes out fast enough, it can overwhelm the bodies ability to process it. This may cause the fructose to remain in the blood for much longer than acceptable. Fructose/galactose cause glycation at much higher pace than glucose, more than 10 times. Glycation is the thing that causes AGEing (Advanced Glycation Endproducts), things like cataracts, increases Hba1c. That is how high blood sugar levels cause damage to the body.

NightFaLL wrote:
Whole wheat is quite deadly and is associated with increased BMI and heart disease. See the link
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/09/02/the-ch ... ase-oh-my/

The bolded areas are the specifics I want to see scientific backing on, not a link to a whole foods page trying to market itself.

Just for your information the Site is not a whole foods page.
It is the website of Denise Minger, who is a very bright statistician.
She has applied her skills to the data from China Study.
She does not sell anything.
She does not even have a donations page, and has constantly refused requests by people in awe of her skills, who want to donate some money to her.
I hope you read the website once before making any pre-conception.
She is very neutral. She herself eats a nearly vegan diet, and what she is proving from the data is that animal fats and meat are healthy. Quite contrary to her own ideals. That is in my opinion the mark of a true scientist.

NightFaLL wrote: I'm at 10.5% bodyfat and 210lbs at 5'9" when I got it done Monday.

The diet is a cyclical diet, meaning I only eat like this for 3 1/2 days before doing a carb-up.

I'm currently eating 300g protein + any trace carbs/fats from meats/green veggies.

Either way, the point of increased protein intake is to negate the use of muscle breakdown for amino acids as fuel.

Contrary to what most people believe, if your protein intake is high enough - you don't need carbs or fat to maintain muscle during the short term AND you can go on a rather high caloric deficit (I'm currently at 1500/day with a maintenance of 3500)

And the diet is The Ultimate Diet 2.0 by Lyle McDonald if you'd like to research it.

I am 5'9", with 170pounds, nearly 25%body fat.
I am not a body builder. Am a software engineer, sit on my ass most of the time.
I do gym 2 times a week, less than an hour each. Mostly compound lifts.
I should play more, but I don't get the urge to that (possibly due to the adrenal sufficiency issue).
I am mostly but not quite entirely paleo. I do eat a lot of rice and legumes. It is just wheat, refined oils and sugary drinks that I avoid generally.

I do understand how the low carb low fat diet works. How protein makes it easier to handle. I can see how your diet helps you. No issues there.
I do think the diet is good for your goals. Whether it is healthy is entirely different question.

I am trying to increase fruits and raw vegetables in my diet, to reduce oxidative stress, and giving rest to my adrenals, but I don't feel like eating them much, so I don't know if that is really healthy.

@NightFall.

You might want to read the following article which explains the mechanism of WGA attack on our body.

I am still searching for those papers :-(.

http://www.tradeopolis.com/othersites/moskwa/?cat=138

anandsr21 wrote:I am 5'9", with 170pounds, nearly 25%body fat.

Are you a man or woman? Are you satisfied with that weight body fat percentage? I think that body fat is rather high for a man not quite so high for a woman. I'm a 50 year old woman and I'd like to get my body fat down to 24%, which, from what I understand, would be near the high side of the healthy range for women (and would be considered quite chubby for a guy.)

anandsr21 wrote:I do eat a lot of rice and legumes. It is just wheat, refined oils and sugary drinks that I avoid generally.

Paleo is a diet that I haven't read much about. Are rice and beans 'paleo'? Strikes me odd that a diet based on rice and beans would call itself paleo! I just don't imagine our paleolythic ancestors spending a lot of time in the rice paddies, or growing beans.

I am trying to increase fruits and raw vegetables in my diet, to reduce oxidative stress, and giving rest to my adrenals, but I don't feel like eating them much, so I don't know if that is really healthy.

The lady at our local health food store was trying to push some sort of coffee substitute and kept saying "adrenals". It sounded like some sort of incantation. Why do you think something is wrong with your adrenals? Do you think that's what's causing you to carry 25% body fat?

On the web page you link: Yes. Some people are gluten intolerant. My grandfather, a physician, diagnosed my sisters celiac as a baby. Back then you needed to do a biopsy of some sort. Now there is a blood test.

Celiac is a type of auto-immune disorder (i.e. allergy). If you have celiac, eating gluten is a problem. Otherwise, it's not. My sister becomes very ill if she eats gluten; I don't get ill.

Are you suggesting the fact that some people are allergic to gluten means other people shouldn't eat it? That's nonsense. Some people are allergic to peanuts: I'm not. I eat them. Some people are allergic to cats: I'm not. I live with 2. Some people are allergic to pollen: I'm not. The fact that some people are allergic to something doesn't make it poison.

anandsr21 wrote:I specifically said that low carb may cause problems with people with not very healthy adrenals. As a low carb diet causes a lot of stress, and healthy adrenals are required to deal with it.

How do you judge whether your adrenals are healthy? What defines adrenal "health"?