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Today, I was curios about whether the "other side" had a strong blog community like the paleo community does. Are there any nutrition, science based blogs that promote the low-fat diet or is the paleo community unique in this respect?

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THe is a huge vegan movement, which tends toward a lower fat approach as well. Hard to get fat from plants unless you go with tons of coconut and banana all the time, foods that only exist in the tropics. If one is to argue veganism is healthy for all climes of people, then it's hard to also argue for a high fat diet being healthy cuz where are all those subtropical people going to get their fat from? – Eva Nov 23 2010 at 4:49
Oh my gosh speaking of that, one of my friends have a video that included The China Study and Bill Clinton (who went vegan). It's all so confusing who/what to believe! – PrimalStyle Nov 23 2010 at 7:42
Um...no its not. The China Study was a horribly done study and if a video had Bill Clinton on it.....what does that mean? – Aaron Curl Nov 23 2010 at 12:14
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 But to answer the original question. ALL news, t.v. and magazine coverage is the LARGEST community of high/carb, low/fat group on earth and they are all over the world. SCARY! – Aaron Curl Nov 23 2010 at 12:16
Glad woly has asked this, as I was thinking about asking a similar question about any and all anti-paleo blogs i.e. to help me avoid confirmation bias are there any blogs that argue for fundamentally different conclusions to paleo, but which are of the same high quality evidence based nature as blogs like Stephan's WholeHealthSource and the rest? – David Moss Nov 23 2010 at 16:38

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Uhm, yeah. It is called the mainstream.

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http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/ Their leading post at the moment: A Vegetarian Thanksgiving, Even for Carnivores

This carnivore says thanks but no thanks.

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Come to think of it, I'm lucky in that none of my close relatives or good friends are vegetarians (although one beloved aunt and several cousins are vegan) and everyone is very tolerant of my fat-eating flour-eschewing ways. – Alex Nov 22 2010 at 23:14
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The first thing that came to mind was the mcdougall forums. Lot's of glowing success stories, ask an MD sections and a health section that contains a laundry list of health complaints from people following the diet with pretty unhelpful answers in a lot of cases.

There are a zillion vegan blogs out there, but most are scant on science. There is Dr. Jack Norris who attempts to help vegans be as healthy as they possibly can be. I wish he had been dispensing some of these recommendations when I was vegan because it might have kept me from getting as sick as I did.

I think it is harder to have a number of in depth science health blogs for the low fat community since the science is pretty weak. A lot of the personal blogs are just of the recipe or "follow me on my weight loss journey" types, complete with calorie counts and binge confessions. Many of them seem to be short on content since I imagine it is pretty hard to get passionate about something that everyone already knows is "what you are supposed to be doing" or often doesn't have dramatic results. But those are just the ones I've been exposed to--I'd like to see some more interesting ones if anyone is aware of them.

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 Then again, if it took you longer to get sick, you wouldn't have seen the light as soon. – Ambimorph Nov 23 2010 at 0:08
very true. i have said to several people that i am grateful that i had a total health collapse. as much as it sucked at the time, it seems better to feel AWESOME now, rather than meander along feeling mediocre to tolerably subpar (like most people) for years, all the while having subclinical hormonal imbalances and nutritional deficiencies getting worse and then have a much more devastating collapse later down the road. i've gotten a life that i didn't even know was possible and that is thanks to feeling absolutely terrible and discovering the best way out of that i could. – amanda Nov 23 2010 at 0:49
I don't think I ever realized how bad I felt before until I felt much better. I guess I have always thought I must be doing good just because I was able to drag myself around a bit more vociferously than my compatriots. But I never knew my true potential. Who knows, perhaps with even more knowledge and tweaking, I could be even better yet! – Eva Nov 23 2010 at 4:32
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Have a look at this blog http://www.leighpeele.com/the-paleo-diet-fad-religion-or-solution

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I love how they dismiss paleo as not being based on science, while using no science. Hmm. And since grains were eaten 20,000 years ago on his little chart, that means we should eat them too. And he mentions the lifespan thing too... – mari Nov 22 2010 at 23:57
I believe Leigh Peele is a she :) – Matt Nov 23 2010 at 0:14
I suspect that ancient grains, prepared in traditional ways, and eaten in moderation, without many of the additional stressors we have today (like sugar, chemicals, etc) and eaten in the context of very healthful other foods, may have been fine as a source of extra calories. Plus they would not have been consuming grain oils, just the grain. Grains are a big hassle to process, so they would have been a backup food and storage food, not often the food of first choice. – Eva Nov 23 2010 at 4:39
From the comments: "Most people take studies as it is without realizing the fact that causation doesn’t imply causation." I realize it's probably just a matter of someone typing too fast and not proofreading but I was amused. There is a whole lot of non-scientific thinking going on in that post. – Ruby Nov 23 2010 at 17:17
Ok one more for chuckles: "I don’t know why people nowadays need to subscribe to some diet religion. Probably to be more socially accepted?" Nothing more socially accepted than telling people you don't eat grains - am I right? – Ruby Nov 23 2010 at 17:20
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The weight loss community has a ton of decent blogs. There are also a lot of vegetarian/vegan blogs too. When I started my weight loss journey I learned a lot from them that helped me to lose the weight. It may not be where I eventually ended up nutrition/fitness-wise, but taking bits and pieces that made sense is what eventually led me to Paleo/Primal.

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Disease Proof by Dr Fuhrman http://www.diseaseproof.com/

He invented the "nutritarian" diet, which is a flexitarian, mostly plant-based approach.

FoodnSport by Doug Graham http://foodnsport.com/blog.html

He wrote the book The 80-10-10 Diet, which is a fruit-based low-fat raw vegan diet.

SweetJuicyFreelee by Freelee http://sweetjuicyfreelee.com

She follows the 80-10-10 diet.

30 Bananas a Day http://www.30bananasaday.com/

not technically a blog, but a community. They follow the 80-10-10 diet.

Fat Free Vegan http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/

Not an argumentative blog, more of a food blog, but worth posting for its tagline "Sinlessly Delicious".

I can't be bothered to find any more....searching "low-fat blogs" in Google brings up nothing. Which is weird considering how popular that style of dieting is.

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holy crap--i was not prepared for that wound picture on suggestion #3. – amanda Nov 23 2010 at 1:13
also, i totally forgot about the phrase "cooked food binge" for so many years--it is almost like reading a foreign language now. a total wtf squinting at the screen moment. – amanda Nov 23 2010 at 1:35
the raw paleo movement might use that phrase too - but they're still paleo. – patrick3000 Nov 24 2010 at 5:17
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I don't know how "good" they are, but Ornish and Pritikin are still going strong.

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