I wonder if anyone has tried the following rather simple research project. Measure the overnight weight loss of different diets. Thus, one might assemble two groups of subjects, equally male/female. One group starts on a normal high carb diet; the other on a low carb diet. After an appropriate number of weeks the two groups are reversed. Each evening before going to bed each subject is weighed and again after rising in the morning and going to the bathroom. Snacking is allowed. It might be useful to periodically measure lipids to see if and how these are effected.

However, I read something in the news a couple of days ago, that has me confused. I have been on the internet and checked up on the details, and the article was fairly accurate.
The headline was “British scientists discover that high fat foods hit the waistline three hours after being eaten”, and was a summary of the findings of Fredrik Karpe, professor of metabolic medicine at Oxford University. It looks to be based on something much more than an Observational Study.
The article says, for example:
“Volunteers were asked to eat foods that contained fatty acids. The pair (Professor Karpe and colleague Keith Frayn) then traced the fat as it was first broken down in the gut and then absorbed into the gut wall before being turned into globules called chylomicrons.
This process took about an hour. The chylomicrons then went into the lymph system and the blood, which carries them around the body quickly.
The process is very fast,’ Professor Karpe said. ‘The cells in the adipose tissue around the waist catch the fat droplets as the blood carries them by, and then incorporate them into the cells for storage.’
So what to do? The scientists found the fatty tissue was only stored around the waist short-term, so could be used for energy when a person is exercising.
However if the person continued to eat excessively, the fat moved to the hips, bottoms and thighs long-term, scientists found.
In fact, Professors Karpe and Frayn found that exercise prompts fat cells to release fat that muscles can use. They also discovered fit people find it easier to burn fat.”

It flies in the face of everything that you are saying in your book, and it disturbs me that his conclusions can be so different from yours.

I still have confidence in your point of view, and I have started to eat as you have prescribed. Too soon to draw any conclusions on weight loss, but I do feel very energised.

Best Regards
Jim Matthews

And let’s not forget that we’re in trouble BECAUSE of the food science that has brought us an abundance of mass-produced industrial soy and corn that later led to High Fructose Corn Syrup, corn oil, soybean oil, and a cheap base for a myriad of junk foods — which science has used to provide a blank slate on which to add the perfect balance of natural/artificial flavorings (all flavorings are artificial, actually), fat, and sugar to make us crave more. Even though we’re only eating 70% corn in any snack food, they know exactly how to get us to eat more — which in high-sugar, high-fat foods — will make us fatter. They also know exactly what to feed us when we’re trying to lose weight, and they probably know it won’t work. Look at all the “diet” foods on the market!

I guess what I’m seeing here is that while people with an interest in real nutrition and human health are going back and forth arguing over the benefits of meat-eating and the benefits of vegetarianism or veganism, the major companies continuing pushing sugar, fat, soy, corn, and refined carbs on the public . Maybe we’re missing the central point?

As Denise Minger points out, if we look at all diets that have produced long-term health benefits for people (including Campbell’s, regardless of the flaws in his study): they tend to emphasize whole foods, avoid processed grain products, avoid omega-6 oils, and cut out processed sugar entirely.

If we can all agree that processed grain products and processed sugar are harmful, why don’t we band together to spread that message?

Until we see a randomized-controlled trial — which to my knowledge does not exist — there’s not much evidence that I can’t eat my whole grain quinoa with beans and veggies and be happy. There’s also not much evidence you can’t eat grass-fed meat with veggies. Any argument to the contrary is an intuition based on our reading (of other scientists or lay authors with their own biases), our observations of others and ourselves, and at the deepest level, our dogma about eating animals. Not exactly a scientific finding.

(In my experience people tend to have an intuition that falls along the spectrum from “Eating animals is wrong and no one should do it” to “Eating animals is my right and no one’s going to tell me I can’t/everyone should do it.” But certainly there are many people who fit into the grey areas! And I would certainly agree that the medical profession is entrenched in an anti-red-meat dogma that many doctors do not question for themselves.)

“Eat like your ancestors” is not bad advice — and I don’t see how that diverges from either the spirit of Gary’s message nor that of Michael Pollan.

My perspective is, we have to maintain a balance between what we read from science or hear from our doctors, and what makes us feel healthy. Use it, but don’t expect a definitive answer on everything from nutritional science. Part of the problem is our faith that nutrition science can tell us everything. It’s a great tool, but like any, it has its limits. It is a far cry from being able to tell every single person on the planet what is exactly right for their body. There are too many variables involved to isolate them all.

And to advocate for the other side, there is a lot of knowledge within traditional cultures about how to eat (cooking, fermentation, additives). The older the tradition the better, generally, as it is “time-tested”. It wouldn’t survive on without conveying some benefit to the practitioner. Interestingly, science many times – though not always – confirms the basis for this traditional knowledge.

We need to keep in mind that due to the mechanization of agriculture and rise of technology, the amount and variety of food we produce now is unparalleled to previous years of human existence. Right now we’re kind of part of a huge experiment, that has barely even started, if you consider that processed foods have only really been around for maybe 100 years, 60 years if you consider really processed foods. But even good science is not a panacea. We also need our own intuition, our personal experience and observation, and to listen to our bodies telling us what’s working and what’s not.