Obesity Paper Has Diet Researchers Riled Up

[Katee]

Sophie Putka
October 12, 2021

Last month, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) published a perspective piece that stirred up tensions in the worlds of epidemiology, physiology, and nutrition....
But there's more to this perspective piece than its reception. While supporters applauded what they say is a long-overdue reset of the narrative on weight and metabolism, the model and its central premises prompted fierce criticism.
The controversy reveals just how much more there is to learn about how the body responds to food, even as all sides ultimately agree on basic nutritional and metabolic interventions.

Keep reading: https://www.medpagetoday.com/special...4H4i8MmXX0AGhQ

[Islander]

Frankly I gave up about halfway through this article because it became so completely tedious. These nutritionists continue to refer to the old conundrum of calories in, calories out, which they represent as relatively insignificant. That's mistake number one. The last time you dined at a sit-down restaurant, did you notice the heaping plate that the server placed in front of the diner? It's a monstrous amount of food, and yet the diner invariably cleans their plate and has no need for a doggy bag. If this is how they eat out, I can only assume that they consume a similar quantity when they dine at home. Want to lose weight? Don't eat so much food!

They continue by carelessly tossing around quantities of carbs without ever distinguishing what kind of carbs we are talking about. And therein lies the heart of the problem. Now, I don't pretend to any expertise, nor have I taken any surveys of others in similar situations. I can only base my claims on what I've read and on my own personal experience once I was diagnosed as diabetic. Most of you know that I avoid pharmaceuticals; that's why I created this site and focused it on alternatives to prescription drugs. As a diabetic, I determined to turn my condition around without medication, by changing my eating habits, and central to that was the intake of the kind of carbohydrates that stimulate an insulin response. These carbohydrates include sugar in all its forms as well as starches like flour... and here we hit a wall. The response is, "I have to give up bagels, bread, pasta, donuts, Sweet Rolls, pie, pizza, pancakes, and anything else that comes to mind that's made with flour? Go pound sand!"

Well, yes. Yes, you do. But please notice that starchy carbs are in actuality a very small percentage of a healthy diet. You can fill your plate with all the salad greens of course, greens and tomatoes and cucumbers and celery and so forth… As well as green beans, peppers, summer squash, mushrooms, asparagus, eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, mushrooms, rhubarb, carrots, spinach, Swiss chard, beet greens, turnips, well you see what I'm doing here, the list is long! Keep in mind, too, that you can slather these vegetables with butter or bacon fat or lard or sour cream or cheese to make them especially palatable… Or work them up in a casserole or stew or soup with your choice of protein: poultry, fish, beef, pork, ham, lamb, eggs, liver, bacon. Can you see that you actually haven't deprived yourself of anything, really? You can enjoy a well-balanced nutritious meal of tasty ingredients, and add a portion of fruit, even strawberries and cream or peaches and cream, for dessert. Not sweet enough? Sprinkle it with a packet of Stevia!

If your plan is simply to reverse your diabetes, the above choices will be effective. If you seriously intend to lose weight, you'll also have to consider portion sizes of your protein (3 oz.) and possibly limit some of those delicious fats that feed your brain and your taste buds. Once you have made some progress on lowering your A1c or losing a few pounds, you can indulge in a modest serving of something like potatoes or rice, or one of the starchy vegetables like corn, peas, beets and winter squash, occasionally, like once a week.

I've said this elsewhere but I'll repeat it. When I retired I quit smoking, ballooned up to 225 pounds and was diagnosed as diabetic. I immediately began the protocol I described above, and over a period of years I went from an A1c of 8.9 down to 4.6, and a weight of 135. After the first couple of weeks of refusing offers of brownies, pies, and other sweets, at no time did I feel deprived. I had no formal exercise plan or gym membership; I walked a fair bit and as a farmer and gardener, I let a fairly active lifestyle spring summer and fall... And let's not forget shoveling snow in the winter months in Maine!

Afterthought: I shouldn't have to say this… Every reader here surely knows that fast foods and processed foods of all kinds are loaded with salt and sugar. That's what makes them so irresistible and addictive. And you know it's not merely burgers and fries. It's bottled salad dressings and canned spaghetti sauce and all the other processed delights on your grocery store shelf. Avoid them! You can make that stuff at home out of healthy ingredients and leave out all the sweeteners!

[Katee]

I posted it mostly because for Med Page to admit " . . . It's not that people are eating too much, calorie for calorie, and thus gaining weight. Rather, the high-glycemic carbs we eat set off a hormonal pathway that causes our bodies to store too much energy, so we are hungrier and eat more.The current leading mechanistic model -- the energy balance theory -- Ludwig said, is 'not addressing the cause, it's addressing a downstream effect . . . '" is a huge change in admission from the medical profession.

Of course, it will be twenty years or more before this trickles down to practitioners. They will continue the non-effective blame the patient, calories in calories out model.

[Islander]

Too true, Katee.