Just a little something I thought you would find extrememly interesting! My jaw literally dropped as I watched this video.
Warning: this video will be disturbing, offensive and insensitive to many people. For that, I am truly sorry. I did not make this video, but I do choose to show it on HGK because I believe there is value in it. The people represented here are public figures selling diet books and because of that I believe it is fair to examine them critically. You may not agree with that decision, but that is not the issue for debate here on HGK. I simply want to spark debate on the merits of the different ways of eating, not the merits of making a video like this.
I had no idea. I have been wondering for a while now about what seems to be the incredible popularity of the Paleo Diet and others like it. In fact, I was pretty convinced that people lost a lot of weight on those diets and kept it off if they stuck with them. But I was also pretty certain that they couldn’t possibly be healthy. In a world obsessed with thinness, it is important to remember that thin does not equal healthy.
I see the food choices that Atkins, The Paleo Diet and others like them promote as truly disgusting, disease promoting ways of eating. There is no regard for the health of our plantet or the life of the beings that end up on our plates. But many people adopt these types of diets with the ultimate idea that as long as they can be thin, none of that matters. This video calls into question even that–is there long term weight control success on a high animal protein diet? Probably not.
Thoughts? Do you know anyone on a Paleo-type diet? Have you ever tried South Beach or Atkins? What was your experience?
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This is a promotional, not scientific video, the actual results are not what they mean to the doctors or authors, its what they mean to you and your particular health problems. It is known by science since the 1930’s that high levels of insulin lead to weight gain. So reducing insulin is the main feature of reducing weight gain. This is backed up by recent cardiovascular research findings that normalizing blood sugar levels in diabetics by increasing insulin levels by any means leads to an increase of up to 300% in the rate of heart attacks. Adding insulin to reduce blood sugar levels is not a good option, but reducing simple and starchy carbohydrates is a good path to improved health.
In addition, recent studies have found that eating saturated fats does not increase cardiac risks and eating mono unsaturated fats has a protective effect on cardiac risks, so the implication is to reduce low value carbohydrate foods and increase traditional fats. Interestingly, fructose intake is a problem in building insulin resistance and inflammation despite not needing insulin to be processed, table sugar is one half fructose. Fructose also increases the proportion of small, dense LDL cholesterol particles that are known to be dangerous to artery and cardiac health.
I like that paleo is a new theory of health from eating, but I still want its concepts to be proven through good scientific research. I also like the general message of Dr Furman which has a lot of scientific support but has short comings in some areas. Much of the time when you hear arguments against eating a high protein or high meat diet, these turn out to be markers for the Standard American Diet that is associated with many health problems. Dr Heaney in his “Paradox of osteoporosis reversal” blog finds three research sources that qualify adequate protein for bone building as 1.2 grams/kg/day or mare, a level 50% more than the recommended RDA.. Bones are going to be last in line for resources if the body is going to gracefully endure starvation and survive to better times, so low protein promoters have a lot of science to do if they are to explain how bones can do well on their diets.
In addition to this there are numerous studies that compare low fat diets to low carbohydrate diets and in nearly all cases a reasonably done low carb diet wins out in loss of more weight and being an enduring practical diet. Patients literally eat more calories on a high fat diet and lose more weight! One systematic review I saw covered 24 low carb diets as compared to other diets with the large majority of low carb diets beating their comparison diets when all of the accepted medical opinion says that they should lose; this happening even under unfair advantages such as the low carb dieters being told to eat all they wanted while the low fat diets were calorie controlled!