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Are some diets “mass murder”?

jaydeehess said:
Mass murder would be hyperbole. However criminal negligence and disregard for safety....
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I've felt that these nonfiction books have an incoherent argument, it's sort of a nonsequitur, missing the forest for the trees.

I'll explain.

There's a 'hidden premise' involved that I think is false, as follows:

  • P1: official dietary advice included 'reduce overall fat intake' 'reduce saturated fats'
  • P2: these recommendations were unfounded, and following them will actually increase obesity and other morbidity and mortality
  • P3: (hidden premise) the population followed these recommendations
  • P4: the population became obese and experienced other increases in morbidity and mortality
  • Conclusion: the official dietary advice caused the population to become obese and experience other increases in morbidity and mortality

There are weaknesses with 2 of the premises.

P1: official dietary advice was to reduce overall calorie intake. the USDA food pyramid included serving and portion guidance as well... this is not actually in dispute

P3: despite the flurry of 'low fat' labelling, there was in fact a dramatic increase in the population's consumption of dietary fat... this is because there was a dramatic increase in all macronutrients across the board... we ate more fat, more carbs, more sodium, drank more alcohol. Obesity is easily explained by an increase in calorie consumption, there is no clear need to dither with fat/carb explanations.


So, what I'm saying is that yes there was a push toward low fat diets and they may or may not have been justified. But it doesn't matter in terms of the current health situation, because the population didn't adhere to that anyway. It's all really a big axe-grinding distraction that has legs because it's a man bites dog story. Like when we see the healthfraud people remind us that Doctors Are The Real Killers and missing the context of medical mortality entirely.
 
blutoski said:
My thought is that it's simultaneously complicated and simple. There is a tendency to drill down into incredible detail, which feels like a distraction from larger scale dietary problems.

There is uncertainty about a lot of things, such as whether saturated, unsaturated fats, dietary cholesterol, w6/w3 ratios, LDL/HDL ratios, inflammatory properties, BMI, blah, blah, blah... but at the end of the day this is micromanagement since 99% of the risk is associated with smoking, drinking, obesity.

I've submitted some examples just for illustration purposes in other posts and here's another: I have a colleague who is rather obsessive about her macro/micro nutrient ratios and bioavailability, and spends considerable time planning for, shopping for, and preparing meals. My personal opinion is that if she just used that hour a day to figure out how to eat less and get some exercise to lose that extra 100lbs, she'd be much healthier, no matter what she was eating. She's not a competitive bodysculptor or professional athlete.

Smoke less, drink less, maintain <25% body fat, get 30mins exercise per day, eat less mostly plants. Everything else is sweating the small stuff; rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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I have a few examples as well.

My first bodybuilding coach told me in her first competition she was given a diet of 1700 kcals/day.
She decided she didn't like it, so she was going to eat most of her calories from sweets.
She lost a lot of weight, including fat, but she also lost a lot of the muscle she had worked so hard to gain.

Before I was told 'you can't diet eating simple carbohydrates', my favourite bedtime snack when I was dieting (1800 kcal/day), would be rice cakes.

According to the low carb crowd, this is bad and wrong because it is a simple carb that spikes insulin, therefore I would store these carbs as fat.

I dropped to 10-12% bodyfat (which is really low for women) with 40% of my diet being carbs, including simple carbs.

Lately, I am using flexible dieting, which is basically sticking to a set number of calories and macronutrient ratio, more or less as I am fairly relaxed. If I fancy having half my calories in chocolate a few days a month, I do.

One of my colleagues was struggling with her weight, she complained she was eating 'healthy' and not losing weight, she complained when she had a bad weekend because she had half a Twix and a sausage roll.

I told her to just count her calories, eat the Twix, eat the sausage roll, just don't exceed 2000 kcal per day.

She has lost 15 lbs in the last two months.

Again, if an individual only has a fairly minimal amount of weight to lose, this will work, but people who are obese, the research does indicate they have altered their metabolism and may need different methods, and they will need to be vigilant for life.
 
Tatyana said:
Again, if an individual only has a fairly minimal amount of weight to lose, this will work, but people who are obese, the research does indicate they have altered their metabolism and may need different methods, and they will need to be vigilant for life.
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Yes, that's true... and I do not begrudge navigating complexity when it comes to building a strategy for achieving goals, as people respond so differently. And to changing the plan when it stops working for some reason.

All I was really advising against was overcomplicating the macro/micro nutrient equations.
 
I like the Marion Nestlé quotation"
If calories are balanced and diets
contain plenty of vegetables, foods richer in saturated fat should
not be a problem. But that's not how most people eat," she says.
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For most of us, IF we don't get too many calories, and eat a reasonably balanced diet we don't have to worry about the exact proportions of macronutrients.

Thanks Tatyana for posting those links. I'd read that stuff before but couldn't remember where.

I don't think most diets are mass murder. But most of them do appear to be cults.
 
My experience of late is that I lost 35 pounds between March and August. I did it with a low carb diet, after being diagnosed with type II diabetes. I doubt that my overall calorie count went down, because I increased cheese and nuts in my diet, and probably meat. I also increased fruit and vegetables. I almost completely eliminated bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and sugared pop. I was guessing I had about 60 grams of carbohydrates a day. For comparison, the food labels have 220 grams as being the recommended intake.

It's possible that before I was diagnosed I was actually chowing down on zillions of calories in the form of French fries and doughnuts, both of which were staples of my diet, and that even with the cheese, nuts, and steak that I consume a lot of today I haven't caught up with the old calorie count, but I know that I've never been hungry, nor shied away from food in order to lose weight during that time. If I feel like eating, I eat. I just don't eat bread or any other form of "white" carbohydrates.
 
blutoski said:
I've felt that these nonfiction books have an incoherent argument, it's sort of a nonsequitur, missing the forest for the trees.

I'll explain.

There's a 'hidden premise' involved that I think is false, as follows:

  • P1: official dietary advice included 'reduce overall fat intake' 'reduce saturated fats'
  • P2: these recommendations were unfounded, and following them will actually increase obesity and other morbidity and mortality
  • P3: (hidden premise) the population followed these recommendations
  • P4: the population became obese and experienced other increases in morbidity and mortality
  • Conclusion: the official dietary advice caused the population to become obese and experience other increases in morbidity and mortality

There are weaknesses with 2 of the premises.

P1: official dietary advice was to reduce overall calorie intake. the USDA food pyramid included serving and portion guidance as well... this is not actually in dispute

P3: despite the flurry of 'low fat' labelling, there was in fact a dramatic increase in the population's consumption of dietary fat... this is because there was a dramatic increase in all macronutrients across the board... we ate more fat, more carbs, more sodium, drank more alcohol. Obesity is easily explained by an increase in calorie consumption, there is no clear need to dither with fat/carb explanations.


So, what I'm saying is that yes there was a push toward low fat diets and they may or may not have been justified. But it doesn't matter in terms of the current health situation, because the population didn't adhere to that anyway. It's all really a big axe-grinding distraction that has legs because it's a man bites dog story. Like when we see the healthfraud people remind us that Doctors Are The Real Killers and missing the context of medical mortality entirely.
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There also a confounding factor, IMO, less calorie burning. Hours in traffic in a car rather than walk to and stand at a bus stop. Elevator vs.stairs, golf cart vs. walking etc.. When I was in high school, gym class was mandatory to grade ten ( 16 years of age) now its optional at least in my area.
 
jaydeehess said:
There also a confounding factor, IMO, less calorie burning. Hours in traffic in a car rather than walk to and stand at a bus stop. Elevator vs.stairs, golf cart vs. walking etc.. When I was in high school, gym class was mandatory to grade ten ( 16 years of age) now its optional at least in my area.
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I have two thoughts about that:
  • yes, that's a good point that macronutrient obsessed pundits just skirt around calorie expenditure... this is, however, consistent with their model that calories don't matter much, though
  • there is actually not much evidence that activity levels have decreased significantly, and calculations do show that the increase in obesity is completely explainable by the increase in calorie consumption, so whether they consider expenditure or not, it may not actually be a confounder anyway
 
casebro said:
Moddy, my reading tells me that the best dietary changes can do is lower cholesterol numbers by 5%.
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As a "skeptic," you might consider not spreading the misninformation that you've been feeding your confirmation bias with. Here, for instance, is one well-controlled diet study in which subjects reduced their serum LDL-cholesterol by an average of 16% compared with an AHA Step I diet, which itself substantially lowered serum cholesterol compared with the subjects' baseline diet.
 
Meadmaker said:
My experience of late is that I lost 35 pounds between March and August. I did it with a low carb diet, after being diagnosed with type II diabetes. I doubt that my overall calorie count went down, because I increased cheese and nuts in my diet, and probably meat. I also increased fruit and vegetables. I almost completely eliminated bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and sugared pop. I was guessing I had about 60 grams of carbohydrates a day. For comparison, the food labels have 220 grams as being the recommended intake.
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What is certain is that your energy balance decreased. That is, either your energy intake decreased, your energy expenditures increased, or both. There is no magic. And it is very unlikely that you could practically eliminate a whole category of macronutrient and not reduce your energy intake, no matter how much you think you ate to replace it.
 
jt512 said:
What is certain is that your energy balance decreased. That is, either your energy intake decreased, your energy expenditures increased, or both. There is no magic. And it is very unlikely that you could practically eliminate a whole category of macronutrient and not reduce your energy intake, no matter how much you think you ate to replace it.
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This is one theory about why so many 'category elimination' diets have a temporary success followed by a gradual reversal: dieters eventually discover fulfilling calorie dense foods in the permitted categories; it just takes time.
 
jt512 said:
As a "skeptic," you might consider not spreading the misninformation that you've been feeding your confirmation bias with. Here, for instance, is one well-controlled diet study in which subjects reduced their serum LDL-cholesterol by an average of 16% compared with an AHA Step I diet, which itself substantially lowered serum cholesterol compared with the subjects' baseline diet.
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I need a better link. Can you post a snippet to search out? I see it has a NEJM to it.

BUT, "reduced their serum LDL-cholesterol by an average of 16%" does not necessarily make me wrong, it might be right in there with lowering total cholesterol 5%. For now, I won't change what you called misinformation.
 
Anyone who used to drink lots of commercial flavored water (whatever you want to call it, such as soda) and then stops and drinks tap water instead will lose a lot of weight. They would have been drinking a lot of sugar. Even artificially flavored water in quantity is probably not good for you and so you would lose weight by drinking water instead.
 
casebro said:
I need a better link. Can you post a snippet to search out? I see it has a NEJM to it.
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Sorry. That was an institutional link. Hopefully, this will work instead: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199303043280902

BUT, "reduced their serum LDL-cholesterol by an average of 16%" does not necessarily make me wrong, it might be right in there with lowering total cholesterol 5%. For now, I won't change what you called misinformation.
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You wrote that "the best dietary changes can do is lower cholesterol numbers by 5%," In the study I linked to they lowered serum LDL-cholesterol by 16% by diet alone, which is more than three times what you said was possible—and that was compared with a diet that they showed lowered serum cholesterol compared with the subjects' habitual diet. That makes you wrong by more than a factor of 3.
 
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