"Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus"

[Blotan Hunka]

I found a link to this story at http://www.crossfit.com. Remember this is a high-intensity fitness site. Their philosophy goes along with this snippet.

Mr. Taubes argues that the low-fat recommendations, besides being unjustified, may well have harmed Americans by encouraging them to switch to carbohydrates, which he believes cause obesity and disease. He acknowledges that that hypothesis is unproved, and that the low-carb diet fad could turn out to be another mistaken cascade. The problem, he says, is that the low-carb hypothesis hasn’t been seriously studied because it couldn’t be reconciled with the low-fat dogma.

CrossFit, and various other diet gurus are switching the "food pyramid" to having fats closer to the base and carbs higher up....some even have carbs above meats.

The story of how fats got such a bad label is an interesting one and the full story is an interesting read for those concerned with diet/fitness/weight loss/ etc. This bit was interesting.

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the architects of the federal “food pyramid” telling Americans what to eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.
We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.
If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.
Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.
Cascades are especially common in medicine as doctors take their cues from others, leading them to overdiagnose some faddish ailments (called bandwagon diseases) and overprescribe certain treatments (like the tonsillectomies once popular for children). Unable to keep up with the volume of research, doctors look for guidance from an expert — or at least someone who sounds confident.

One wonders how many other "its true because scientists say so" "TRUTHS" are out there??

 

[Cruentus]

One wonders how many other "its true because scientists say so" "TRUTHS" are out there??

Nice post. One definatily has to look at research as objectively as one can; just because someone says something is true, doesn't make it so.

 

[Sukerkin]

That is an interesting find, Blotan :tup:.

Firstly because the cyclic trend of diet fads is a dangerous one and needs to be addressed and secondly because the 'cascade' effect on consensus is an important factor that also needs to be taken into consoideration on many issues.

The issue with fats vs carbs is one I've been banging on about for years. In times gone by before I settled down and my missus began feeding me like I was some form of Giant, I used to live on a very fat rich diet (cheese, butter, bacon all featuring large) and stayed slim as a rake.

It's not so much what you eat as the balance of what you eat and how much which is ever the problem.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Exactly. As it was stated in that link. When you look at other cultures with high fat diets, or cuisine with lots of fats, you dont see the same resuts a la obesity/heart disease. Most fingers seem to be pointing at the high carb and sugar diet, here in the US at least, as the culprit. Sodas, chips (potato chips that is ), beer, cakes, breads etc. are worse for your waistline than that burger or block of cheese. Some even say that bumping up fat intake can curb the hunger for those carbs. Better to put that mayo on your sandwitch and be full, then skip it...still be hungry...and eat that bag of chips.

 

[Sukerkin]

Such a good last point there :tup:.

My missus has something of a problem with her weight as she's a diabetic and I've seen her do exactly what you talk about there when she's been trying to 'cut back' i.e. have less for the actual meal and then scoff a bag of crisps afterwards.

 

[Kacey]

Also, many societies that have lower obesity rates and higher fat intake have other differences as well: more of the food is freshly prepared than processed, more walking is done, and eating is a leisurely, companionable experience, instead of the rushed activity it is for many people in the US.

When I was a kid, crash diets (very low calorie) were the rage - over the years, fads have come and gone, but the fact remains that weight (and weight control) is a lifestyle choice, unless, of course, there is a medical condition affecting weight as well.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

The CrossFit dietary prescription is as follows:

Protein should be lean and varied and account for about 30% of your total caloric load.
Carbohydrates should be predominantly low-glycemic and account for about 40% of your total caloric load.
Fat should be predominantly monounsaturated and account for about 30% of your total caloric load.
Calories should be set at between .7 and 1.0 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass depending on your activity level. The .7 figure is for moderate daily workout loads and the 1.0 figure is for the hardcore athlete.

What Should I Eat?
In plain language, base your diet on garden vegetables, especially greens, lean meats, nuts and seeds, little starch, and no sugar. That's about as simple as we can get. Many have observed that keeping your grocery cart to the perimeter of the grocery store while avoiding the aisles is a great way to protect your health. Food is perishable. The stuff with long shelf life is all circumspect. If you follow these simple guidelines you will benefit from nearly all that can be achieved through nutrition.

The Caveman or Paleolithic Model for Nutrition
Modern diets are ill suited for our genetic composition. Evolution has not kept pace with advances in agriculture and food processing resulting in a plague of health problems for modern man. Coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, obesity and psychological dysfunction have all been scientifically linked to a diet too high in refined or processed carbohydrate. Search "Google" for Paleolithic nutrition, or diet. The return is extensive, compelling, and fascinating. The Caveman model is perfectly consistent with the CrossFit prescription.

What Foods Should I Avoid?
Excessive consumption of high-glycemic carbohydrates is the primary culprit in nutritionally caused health problems. High glycemic carbohydrates are those that raise blood sugar too rapidly. They include rice, bread, candy, potato, sweets, sodas, and most processed carbohydrates. Processing can include bleaching, baking, grinding, and refining. Processing of carbohydrates greatly increases their glycemic index, a measure of their propensity to elevate blood sugar.

What is the Problem with High-Glycemic Carbohydrates?
The problem with high-glycemic carbohydrates is that they give an inordinate insulin response. Insulin is an essential hormone for life, yet acute, chronic elevation of insulin leads to hyperinsulinism, which has been positively linked to obesity, elevated cholesterol levels, blood pressure, mood dysfunction and a Pandora's box of disease and disability. Research quot;hyperinsulinism" on the Internet. There's a gold mine of information pertinent to your health available there. The CrossFit prescription is a low-glycemic diet and consequently severely blunts the insulin response.

Caloric Restriction and Longevity
Current research strongly supports the link between caloric restriction and an increased life expectancy. The incidence of cancers and heart disease sharply decline with a diet that is carefully limited in controlling caloric intake. “Caloric Restriction” is another fruitful area for Internet search. The CrossFit prescription is consistent with this research.
The CrossFit prescription allows a reduced caloric intake and yet still provides ample nutrition for rigorous activity.

 

[exile]

Part of the problem is, people do not discriminate between complex carbs—which take a long time to digest (and to some extent help pay for themselves by requireing calories to be burned to digest them) and simple carbs, which shoot through through the metabolism like wildfire, can (in a minority of the population, anyway) cause a substantial insulin spike, and then leave the system, leading to a sudden sense of intense hunger once the artificial appetite satisfaction associated with those carbs ceases to operate.

A diet rich in complex carbs, associated with whole grains and fresh vegetables, with enough protein to help damp down that persistent hunger that contributes to people overeating is going to deliver first class nutrients at low calorie costs. The problem is, people get a lot of cues in our culture that it's good to eat more. There's an excellent book called Mindless Eating, by a guy who specializes in the experimental psychology of food consumption, which shows how much people's consumption is determined by presentation. Weird stuff, but rigorously controlled; e.g., in a buffet if the residue of your restaurant meal sits on your plate, you are much less likely to go get seconds or thirds than if the staff of the restaraunt remove your plate every time a certain fraction of its surface is covered with bones, or shells, or whatever.

Let's face it, the odds are stacked against the human species in this respect: we're programmed to gorge when we can, because until a few thousand years ago, before the Neolithic agricultural revolution, we were locked into a feast-or-famine hunting/gathering economy which was probably `famine' a good deal more than it was `feast'. We're wired from the getgo to eat when we can, as much as we can. And everything from food stylists using what are (in the trade) well known appetite stimulators in their advertising to the `supersizing' of restaurant portions plays into that. Caveat comestor!!

 

[Sukerkin]

As always, my friend, an insightful view on the matter.

However, I would strongly suggest that you search out what may (or may not) be available by a certain Englishman called Ray Mears. He has shown that 'modern' diet is considereably worse than that of the mezolithic - altho' some of the things he's covered I really would have to be starving to force down .

As to Ray's 'credentials', all I can say that if you were to ask me what piece of 'kit' I would most desire in any survival situation I would answer "Ray Mears" . I used to be not exactly a neophyte when it came to living off the land as, in my teen years, I was convinced that society was going to either collapse around our ears or we were going to be nuked back to the stone age. Ray's knowledge makes what I learned seem like primary school "ABC".

http://www.raymears.com/

 

[exile]

As always, my friend, an insightful view on the matter.

However, I would strongly suggest that you search out what may (or may not) be available by a certain Englishman called Ray Mears. He has shown that 'modern' diet is considereably worse than that of the mezolithic - altho' some of the things he's covered I really would have to be starving to force down .

As to Ray's 'credentials', all I can say that if you were to ask me what piece of 'kit' I would most desire in any survival situation I would answer "Ray Mears" . I used to be not exactly a neophyte when it came to living off the land as, in my teen years, I was convinced that society was going to either collapse around our ears or we were going to be nuked back to the stone age. Ray's knowledge makes what I learned seem like primary school "ABC".

http://www.raymears.com/

Thanks for the link, S. It's certainly true that we have an over-refined diet by genuinely ancient standards. Our technology has given us the dubious luxury of domesticating a lot of the best features of our original food sources out of existence—the simplification of grain composition, as in e.g. the production of larger, blander fruits and vegetables; and we can `mill off ' the stronger flavors of, e.g., whole grains like brown rice—to our ultimate detriment. One of the things which struck me, in reading Roland Huntford's gread demystification of Robert F. Scott and his fatal second Antarctic expedition, was the difference in the biscuit composition between the English and Norwegian teams. The British biscuits, which Scott thought were the best possible, were largely composed of heavily processed flour and sugar; Amundson chose, for his team, biscuits composed of much coarser grain with wild berries that helped protect the Norwegians against scurvey and supplied them with crucial vitamins and trace minerals that the British wound up running crucially short of. This was just one of the errors that led to the death of the British Polar group from, it turns out, scurvy, while Amundson sauntered to the pole and had been on the boat for home for a month while Scott, Bowers, Oates and Wilson were dying on the Ross Ice Shelf. But dietary planning errors probably cost the British team their lives, in depriving them of critical margins of safety in their reserves when the extreme cold weather they encountered on the way back set in and their daily haulage distanced became pitiful. Most people, even in those circumstances, would, if they followed their preferences, almost certainly go with Scott's hyper-refined, denatured diet rather than Amundson's rougher but far more wholesome regime. And the results speak for themselves...

 

[Sukerkin]

A most apposite example, Ex. In many ways the Victorian era was our heyday but that didn't stop them getting some things catastrophically wrong.

 

[Steel Tiger]

The British biscuits, which Scott thought were the best possible, were largely composed of heavily processed flour and sugar; Amundson chose, for his team, biscuits composed of much coarser grain with wild berries that helped protect the Norwegians against scurvey and supplied them with crucial vitamins and trace minerals that the British wound up running crucially short of.

Most people, even in those circumstances, would, if they followed their preferences, almost certainly go with Scott's hyper-refined, denatured diet rather than Amundson's rougher but far more wholesome regime. And the results speak for themselves...

This not only a very interesting insight into what we are doing to our foods, but also how we perceive them. Scott chose state of the art equipment for his expedition including the biscuits. You can clearly see his mindset: highly civilised and highly processed is better. This attitude is still with us I think. Just think of a choice between an over-processed powerbar and a plain old muesli or granola bar. Most people would choose the powerbar because it is chock full of extra 'stuff'. Its a predjudice we need to get past.

 

[exile]

\Scott chose state of the art equipment for his expedition including the biscuits. You can clearly see his mindset: highly civilised and highly processed is better. This attitude is still with us I think. Just think of a choice between an over-processed powerbar and a plain old muesli or granola bar. Most people would choose the powerbar because it is chock full of extra 'stuff'. Its a predjudice we need to get past.

Very true. The idea is, higher-tech is better. But our metabolism is really not high-tech, state-of-the-art at all, it's based on the survival conditions that were in place several hundred thousand years ago, and our problem is squaring those metabolic facts with the changes we've wrought in our environment, causing our bodies on the one hand and our material and behavioral world on the other to get seriously out of synch, in ways that we pay the price for every day.

Cholesterol is a good example. In our current world and time, it's a killer, often the source of those infamous massive heart attacks where the victim is dead before s/he hits the ground. But in our earlier careers as primate foragers (and potential prey of large, smart predators) it was a lifesaver. Adrenal surge releases cholesterol into the blood system in massive quantities, where intense physical action—fight or flight—will use it as a very efficient energy source, enabling us to either outrun or outclobber our attacker. But what if that adrenal surge isn't triggered by a pack of large feline hunters, but by some consummate moron who cuts us off in traffic and gives us the finger as they go roaring off in their supercharged TransAm? The same adrenaline rush takes place, all that cholesterol is released into our blood vessels, and... stays there. No action burns it up, so it winds up sticking to the inner lining of our arteries, building up dangerous plaques that can detach one evening while we're trying to decide which movie to watch, and kill us.

The problem you mention about Scott's beliefs is at the heart of this scenario, because, like him, we still don't recognize that with all the trappings of our ultra-civilized life, we remain the owners and operators of a pre-Pleistocene biology. We can impose all the fancy controls we like on the external world, but our bodies are still running the way they did in the African veldt and the Paleolithic caves. Conceding that point and adopting just a bit more realistic way of eating would probably add a very gratifying amount of extra lifetime to us, on average. When Scott left the protected enclave of early 20th c. European society, he really wandered back to those very ancient conditions, and without the technological superstructure he was used to to protect him, the inferior diet he had arranged for himself and his men almost certainly—as Huntford documents in his book, Scott and Amundson in some detail—made the fatal difference...