Tag Archive for: American Society of Nutrition

It’s All About the Calories

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The paper advocating the carbohydrate-insulin model (CIM) for explaining the obesity pandemic, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world, was written by the leading experts in endocrinology and nutrition. There were experts who’ve conducted some of the major nutritional studies that you’ve heard about over the years, from the Women’s Health Initiative to studies on the ketogenic diet. This is an expert group.

I agree with their desire for more research in this area. They’re trying to find out what would constitute their definition of cause: what increases appetite? Does palatability drive food choices? What hormones impact how much a person eats? And more. Where I disagree is in their lack of acknowledgement of the energy balance model (EBM) as valid. I outlined a written response to send to the journal that would have been about five pages long. Here are my two primary arguments.

Prior Research on Weight Loss

The authors talk about prior research showing that a low-fat diet doesn’t work long term; one of the authors was heavily involved in the weight loss study on a low-fat diet in the Women’s Health initiative. Their analysis was incorrect. The objective of that study was to compare a group of normally fed women eating the typical American diet of close to 40% fat with a group who was going to lower their fat intake to 20%. In the analysis, there were no differences in weight loss over the course of the study. The results suggested that a low-fat diet doesn’t work.

Here’s the problem: looking at the data from that study, what you see is that the women who were supposed to achieve a 20% fat intake couldn’t get below 28%. That doesn’t meet the goals of the study and thus doesn’t support their conclusion.

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment

My primary argument goes back to the research done on conscientious objectors during World War II. I’ve talked about this fascinating study many times, but here’s the short version: for a period of six months, 36 men who were conscientious objectors had their caloric intake cut by 25%. Their physical activity was also increased; they had to walk up to 22 miles per week.

What was unique was that they were weighed every week and their caloric intake adjusted based on weight loss or weight gain. If they did not lose the required amount, they were given less food. If they lost too much, they were given more food.

What makes that study even more consequential is the types of food that they were given to eat. The menu was very low fat and had virtually no protein; it consisted of breads and starches from root vegetables. In the CIM, that would be just about the worst types of food to eat to lose weight. But remember, the purpose of that study was to feed people foods that would be available after the end of the war. Every subject lost weight and lost it on a linear basis; most emerged looking emaciated. That’s the only study I’ve ever seen where people lost weight in a linear fashion over that period of time, and they did it eating an almost 100% carbohydrate diet.

The Bottom Line

There are many other aspects of the paper that I could comment on, but those are my two strongest points. I do believe that insulin is the most powerful hormone in the body; it does help store food as fat if someone overeats for an extended period of time. That makes it more difficult to sustain weight loss until the body is retrained to lose weight and keep it off.

But let me be clear: it always was, it is, and it always will be about the calories regardless of the source. Eat too many and you gain weight. Eat fewer and you lose weight. For sure, make better choices on the selection of the food that you eat and move more. But it’s all about the calories. Period.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: AJCN. 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab270.

The Weight Loss Battle: Carbs vs Calories

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As a member of the American Society of Nutrition, I get a news feed that lets me know what’s being published in their journals. A recent article talked about the carbohydrate-insulin model (CIM) as a cause of the obesity pandemic. The debate surrounded the question of whether the energy balance model (EBM) that says calories in should equal calories out is adequate to explain the 70% overweight population in the U.S. Instead, a large group of researchers suggested that it’s time to research insulin as it relates to the highly refined carbohydrate intake of the population as the actual cause of obesity.

But that’s not all. The article suggested that insulin causes the body to store excess carbs as fat. More than that, to maintain blood sugars, it forces people to eat more carbs because they’re actually being starved, which drives hunger and is actually responsible for obesity. They went on to explain the fallacy of the EBM model and to deal with the criticism of the CIM model. In actuality, the researchers want to study the CIM approach, and this was a call for research to find out what really causes obesity.

To say it didn’t sit well in the nutrition and medical community is an understatement. Over 100K responses were generated in a couple of weeks, and I guess the nutrition Twitter world went nuts. Why? This is actually a battle over the ketogenic diet and everything else that focuses on counting calories. I’ll give you my opinion and why I believe what I do on Saturday.

The Insider Conference call is tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Eastern. If you have questions about your health or products, become an Insider before 8 p.m. and you can participate. Even if you only want to listen, you’ll learn something new to improve your health and the health of others you know.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: AJCN. 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab270.

Nutrition: Knowing Isn’t Doing

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In Tuesday’s message, I said that both the experts and the public in a New York Times nutrition survey considered the vitamin and mineral content of food important or very important when they consider whether a food is healthy or not. But do people have enough information to make a decision about which foods are healthy? Not surprising that the nutrition experts almost all said they did. What shocked me was that 81% of the public also said they had enough information to make healthy choices.

That’s interesting because it contradicts what the authors of the New York . . .

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Nutrition: Experts and the Public Disagree

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A recent New York Times survey compared the survey results of nutrition experts, including me, with the public’s opinions. Some differences make sense—others, not so much.

When asked whether a food was healthy, experts said foods high in fat and/or sugar were generally not healthy. The greatest differences were in granola, granola bars, and frozen yogurt with over a 30% difference between experts, who thought they were not healthy, and the public who thought they were.

What surprised me was that experts viewed coconut oil as not healthy while the public indicated it was healthy. The only . . .

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Nutrition: Experts and the Public Agree

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A couple of months ago, I was asked to participate in a nutrition survey. I don’t usually answer surveys, but this was a request through the American Society of Nutrition (I’m a member) and we were told we’d get a chance to view the data, so I decided to do it. For comparison they also surveyed 2,000 people who were not in the nutrition field, and we’d get to see that data as well. The New York Times health writers published an article on the results (1). I decided to look at the data and . . .

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