Science-Based Medicine » Should you be “Eating Clean”?…

Surely you mean ethanol itself, and not the beverages that contain it, usually wine or beer.

>>I can always claim that I’m not a native speaker of English, so I might not know how to use some of your idioms.

Your usage was perfect in this case!

>>And yes, this strategy works very well for me.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! (another American idiom)

ES

That’s a very good point. Of course “from scratch” is a relative term.

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/if_you_want_to_make_an_apple_pie_from_scratch-you/154062.html

>>>And that’s why my fridge/freezer is half empty, and so is my pantry. I don’t have many ready-to-eat foods at home and no microwave, either. I usually cook from the scratch.

That’s a good strategy. Does it seem to work?

Our fridge is usually filled with easily reheated leftovers. Very little highly processed foods. Very few simple carbs.

ES

>>>So, I had greek yogurt

Greek yogurt is the one yogurt you can have on a low-carb diet…

>>> homemade granola

Complex carbs with lots of fiber. Lower glycemic index…

>>> and peanut butter …

not high in carbs…

>>toast for breakfast

Could have been made with simple carbs whole grain is better…

>>vegetables

Many are low carb and a good source of fiber, which slows the update of glucose.

>>> apple for lunch

Starch and fructose and fiber not too high on the GI scale

>>>hershy kisses

A little sugar, you could do a lot worse…

>>>According to estockly’s theory, I should be Obese, probably morbidly obese because of all the Carbs I am eating!!

Nope. That’s not a diet high in simple carbs. If I were to eat that diet I would gain weight because my metabolism has been deranged by years of consumption of simple carbs. You’re diet is just fine. If you ever want to lose fat, start by dropping the simple carbs. (toast, sweets).

>>>So how is it that I am a healthy weight (always have been), my family is a healthy weight, many of my friends and coworkers are healthy weights yet we all eat carbs? I agree carbs have a role in obesity, but there are many more factors for obesity then just carbs.

Simple carbs, especially sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, are the major culprit. Those are found in most processed foods. Those are at the heart of the obesity epidemic. Your diet doesn’t have a lot of simple carbs.

Also, it’s important to note there is a lot of individual variation in metabolism so you can’t predict that a particular macronutrient proportion will or won’t cause obesity in a particular individual. There are some people who can eat a diet high in carbs and simple carbs and not become obese.

But nearly everyone who is obese has a diet (or had a diet) that is (or was) high in simple carbs.

I believe you can make a prediction based on a population. As in If 1000 people eat a diet high in simple carbs for 10 years, 800 will be obese. (Just made up those numbers as an example, I don’t know what the actual data would be.)

ES

Being born very premature much more than 50 years ago there were a number of things that would have killed her before the lack of the enzyme.

Sometimes they survived, but it was rare. I knew a woman born almost a century ago who was very premature, they actually kept her next to the wood stove. She died in her late 80s.

The problem in the 1960s was that premies were put into isolettes with high levels of oxygen, which would cause blindness. That is what happened to someone who lived in my college dorm (a couple of times I read his textbooks to him). My sister was born in a hospital on an Army base that did not have that kind of equipment. But fortunately the medical personnel was skilled enough to keep her alive, and she came home when she was about three months old.

My sister’s intolerance to lactose was not just “farting.” It was unending diarrhea that could have killed her since she was only about three pounds at birth. (we blame her prematurity on our mother’s chain smoking, which is not exactly natural)

Despite being of Scandinavian descent, there are other members of our extended family who lose their ability to digest lactose. My mother-in-law lost it in her sixties, and my daughter when she hit puberty. Fortunately they can both take a lactase pill prior to consuming milk. Neither has any problems with cheese, because the process of creating it removes most of the lactose.

Natural selection in some parts of Africa, and later in Europe did cause an evolution of lactase persistence (which made lactose tolerance linger way past puberty and beyond). There is nothing “cave-man” about being able to drink milk as an adult.

It is now unnatural selection that allows premies and others to live. Which is a good thing.

Sorry, it wasn’t clear from your post. Had someone snuck him food before feeding time? All you need is one response to the begging and it never ends .

We feed our kitten all the dry food he needs at once, so he grazes all day. He hasn’t gotten fat yet. (We also insist he sits before he gets a treat, so if he begs he still has to work for it.)

This is different. Human babies generally have the enzyme until they’re 4 or 5 years old or older. Without it they would die (unless extraordinary measures were available).

What we’re talking about is adults having the gene to continue producing the enzyme. Older kids and adults can handle lactose intolerance better than babies. That means there is less evolutionary pressure for that gene to become prevalent. Farting doesn’t kill you and may have only a minor effect on chances for successful reproduction.

>>>Like my sister who was born very premature fifty years ago. Without alternatives in the form of special formula, she would have died.

Being born very premature much more than 50 years ago there were a number of things that would have killed her before the lack of the enzyme.

You and your family are lucky your sister was born when modern (1960s) medicine was available!

ES

>>> my very simple point is – it’s very hard to become obese if you have just enough to eat, regardless of the carbohydrate/fat/protein ratio.

Not as hard as you might think. There are numerous documented cases of people storing excess fat while calories are severely restricted. During the depression there were obese poor children in New York City. In UN refugee camps adults eating only the food provided stored excess fat, while children suffered malnutrition.

>>>In general, people over here did not go hungry during the communist period, you can survive very well on a diet of bread, potatoes, rice and noodles. But they seldom had chance to stuff themselves.

You don’t have to stuff yourself to become obese.

My point is that the obesity epidemic can’t be explained by the behavior you’re referring to. I’d dare to say most of the obese in this country have never known the kinds of hunger you’re talking about (unless they’ve gone on a calorie restricted diet to lose weight).

Sure the psychology of food shortages may make things worse, but everywhere the Standard American Diet, or the modern so-called balanced diet, is introduced, obesity follows. Especially for those raised on the diet.

ES

>>>I still maintain that you are wrong that a trait need not be a matter of life and death before it becomes evolutionarily advantageous.

Actually, I think you and I still might agree. In the context of the discussion, I was referring to the kind of rapid evolutionary pressure that occurs over a relatively short period of time.

Natural selection in those terms means death before successful reproduction, even for a simple single gene trait like the ability to digest lactose.

Given a relatively long period of time, that trait could become prevalent, and did in areas where humans began raising cattle. (Northern Europe, as you pointed out).

That said, there is no evidence that the human metabolism has evolved to better handle simple carbs or a high proportion of grains and starches.

The obesity epidemic is the result of feeding a caveman metabolism a high proportion of carbs, especially simple carbs. There is no difference between the caveman metabolism and ours.

ES

Babies born without lactase (a rare condition) will die if not given a lactose-free alternative or had their diets supplemented with lactase.

Like my sister who was born very premature fifty years ago. Without alternatives in the form of special formula, she would have died.

As it was, I grew up in the 1960s with a sibling where “milk does a body good” was not true.

She could eat cheese in very small quantities, but it did give her a bit of an upset stomach. But that was because the cheese process removed most of the lactose.

You missed my point about the use of fermentation to make milk available. The point is, obviously being able to process lactose improves the dietary value of milk. People who are lactose intolerant aren’t just uncomfortable when drinking milk; they are genuinely getting less nutrition out of it. Babies born without lactase (a rare condition) will die if not given a lactose-free alternative or had their diets supplemented with lactase.

Or to put it another way — if lactose tolerance is *not* an evolutionary advantage, why would it spread in such a remarkably rapid time (evolutionarily speaking) throughout European populations?

I still maintain that you are wrong that a trait need not be a matter of life and death before it becomes evolutionarily advantageous.

No, but I do live here! (I’m curious where you are) I’ll just bet we have a bigger problem with obesity here in the US than you do in your country.

>>>You haven’t seen my mother-in-law and her friends on a cooking (and feeding) spree, you haven’t seen our shops around Christmas period (which in the previous era was the time when the food shortages were the most visible). You weren’t around here in the early 1990s, when suddenly everything was available. And you know what – my mother-in-law, father-in-law and their friends were all very lean, almost thin people. Up to until 1990s.

That coincides pretty well with the obesity epidemic in the US. You may be a few years behind us.

>>>BTW, our traditional cooking is high in fat on the one hand (lard as the basic fat, almost everything fried) and carbohydrates on the other (potatoes and bread, and all kinds of starch-based poor men’s dishes).

There are carbs and there are carbs. If your breads were not made from highly processed flour, they wouldn’t have been as obesigenic. If your diet had sufficient fiber, the starches would enter your blood stream at a slower rate, and again, would not be as obesigenic.

>>>The epitome of this are our meat sauces, very heavy, made with a lot of flour and bread. And yet, before 1990s there were much fewer obese people. Simply because there wasn’t enough food to overeat, unless of course you were a communist party bonzo.

What’s I find interesting is that there has been a spike in obesity in the west, where we are not rebounding from chronic food shortages, and, apparently, an increase in obesity in former communist countries.

You may be right, it may be binge eating. I think it’s more about what people are eating.

ES

When conclusion preceeds premise, it doesn’t really matter what the real facts are.