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I have a great opportunity to finally open my mums eyes on what is the healthy way to eat.

She has been working for the NHS for a decades and she has finally said if I can produce some studies to show her what I believe is right then she will listen to me.

The reason I was posting - does anyone have any studies which support what we believe about carbs, fat, obesity or any of the rest (preferably from somewhere like the University of Oxford, or supported by the NHS, Food Standards Agency etc)?

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11 Answers

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Buy her Taubes book.....it chronicles over 125 yrs of solid data. If she does not get it after that forget it......

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Also, starting with Taubes NYT article "What if it's all been a big fat lie?" is a good starting point nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/… If there's no interest, no reason to spend your money on a whole book! – sherpamelissa Mar 20 2011 at 13:24
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Also, buy Why We Get Fat first, not Good Calories Bad Calories. The latter takes true dedication to read. – Ambimorph Mar 20 2011 at 13:58
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In fact, I would say just buy it. Even if she doesn't read it, you should. – Ambimorph Mar 20 2011 at 14:00
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Ambi is quite correct.......you buy Mum GCBC and she is likely to kill you with it. It requires a serious scientific backround knowledge. His new book is written for third graders and it impactful. Nice rec Ambi. I forget context myself at times. Good reminder for me. – The Quilt Mar 20 2011 at 14:26
Although WWGF doesn't have the same extensive chronicling of the history of saturated fat's vilification which I think makes it so valuable. – mari Mar 21 2011 at 0:22
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http://girlgoneprimal.blogspot.com/p/show-me-science.html

When people ask for the science...I send them that link, mind you thats after multiple conversations and explanations. Not sure it will help, but maybe if you compile the articles instead of giving her a blog, she might be more open minded?

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http://www.paleoforlife.org/research

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Ketosis that the bariatric nurse was speaking of is when your lack of insulin causes a person's body to begin to eat its own muscle and fat. Rapid weight loss occurs along with high blood sugar. You will begin Eating as much as you can because you feel you are starving, but this does not remedy the hunger. After a few months of this, if you are very over weight, You will have lost about 80 pounds and you will find it hard to breathe. Upon entering the ER be told that you are minutes away from a massive heart attack. My best friend was there and I met her at the ER. The doctor grabbed me and told me that my friend was in very serious condition. They put her in intensive care. She is now type 1 diabetic. She had no insulin in her body to use what she was eating as fuel. She was peeing pure sugar and her body was cannibalizing itself to stay alive.

I use keto sticks to help me STAY in ketosis on a very controlled carb diet. This is entirely different from what that bariatric nurse was speaking of. This type of ketosis is not harmful. It is the state where I am not allowing my body to release insulin because I am over weight and I want to switch from storing fat to burning fat. My insulin resistance is such that I STORE every carb I eat as fat. My high insulin levels will not allow me to burn carbs as energy. I need to eat under 20 carbs a day to lose weight. I am hoping that some day I can add back some carbs like fruit and not gain weight back.I will do so when I am at the weight I need to be at. I will then experiment with how much I can add back if any. My father had a massive stoke at age 65. He has been on this type of diet for 18 years. His blood work is now perfect. My doctor says that in spite of the fact that half his body is not very mobile, my father is his healthiest patient. The addition of coconut oil has begun, even after 18 years, to help him speak again. He is not on any medication.

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The term for the condition in your first paragraph is ketoacidosis, not ketosis. – Ed Mar 20 2011 at 13:13
thank you...it is...I could not remember what the doctor called it. I believe there are those who do not differentiate between the two. – organic one Mar 20 2011 at 13:53
Organic One, do you do intermittent fasting to keep you in ketosis and is unusually foul breath, a good indicator of helpful ketosis? – DudleyP Mar 20 2011 at 15:39
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Sidebar.....only IF after your leptin sensitive. Could be diasterous if you are resistant. You will drive yoru cortisol through the roof. FYI hackers. – The Quilt Mar 20 2011 at 17:45
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In response to Jay and this not being a religion: speaking in my case and for me, here is why I have counter-consensus views about carbs: I am obese, and have tried many, many diets, and have hurt my heart by exercise, and have had roux-en-y gastric bypass - in other words: even though I have no biochem or med credentials, I nevertheless am responsible for the body I am in, and must do my best to provide proper stewardship for it even though I don't happen to have a PhD in anything. And perhaps Butters is in a similar position: s/he has tried what the CW pontificates, and it didn't work, and at that point Butters began questioning the CW and its basis - EVEN THOUGH BUTTERS MAY NOT (AND I DO NOT) HAVE THE NECESSARY TECHNICAL BACKGROUND TO UNDERSTAND STUDIES THAT PRESUPPOSE CALCULUS AND INORGANIC CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY AND PHARMACOLOGY AND STATISTICS AND PHYSICS AND...ETC. I hope this explanation has clarified for you how people can have counter-consensus views while at the same time they have not seen (or understood) studies themselves. I find that one of the problems with CarbSane's comments, to further illustrate my point, is that she quotes highly technical studies in her posts but offers no "translation" in most of them, so laypeople come away from reading her stuff without a clear and jargon-free summation; and as a result the impression she leaves is of someone with an emotional ax to grind but with little ability to communicate to the great scientific unwashed. It doesn't make me doubt her scientific expertise, but it does make me want to avoid reading her posts. Not everyone in the world with an opinion about diet must base that opinion on highly technical peer-reviewed studies. Right?

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NHS and FSA are completely CW. So no help there. Met an (overweight) NHS bariatric nurse last year.

She said going into ketosis (as indicated by ketostiks) was an illness to be avoided at all costs!

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To clear up this ketosis comment; The NHS bariatric nurse came to me as she was overweight and I am a VLC meal replacement consultant. She needed to lose weight but nothing she knew would help her. There was nothing I could do as the ketosis generated by a VLC program was NOT acceptible to her. This was the 'ketosis' she was afraid of! Last I heard she had a gastric band fitted! So much for the NHS bariatric advice! – old croc Mar 20 2011 at 20:00
How sad. Miss-information at its most dangerous.. – Alan Mar 24 2011 at 5:57
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I'm not sure what nutrition profile you go for, but I know that Harvard suggests that 20% of diet to 42% of diet being from fat is acceptable (although this is at 25%mono, 10% poly, 7%sat). That is relatively high fat.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/fats-full-story/index.html

But for the most part CW likes low carb and paleo type for treating (reversing) diabetes in a way that whole grains do not accomplish. Here is a review of the last Taubes book at the Science-Based Medicine site: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=9841#comments

It is fairly critical of low carb, but then there are other doctors arguing about it in the comments. So low carb is somewhat supported, but its just not going to be officially backed by the AHA. One study that turned out fairly pro-low-carb (and was done to prove low carb was bad oddly enough) was the Stanford AtoZ diet experiment (good presentation on Youtube). In it they broke out the advantages of low carb on all health markers, and on how at least half of overweight people benefit more from being low carb due to insulin issues.

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Walter Willet =Harvard.........major beware. They still believe in the lipid hypothesis. Doctors dont understand context........that is the real issue. – The Quilt Mar 20 2011 at 15:02
I know they are way to hard on saturated fat. I think UCSF was a bit more reasonable though (they published a officially "sorry for that whole anti-saturated fat thing" letter pretty much). ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/20/… was probably the first official refined carb=evil one. – Turnkey Mar 20 2011 at 15:06
10% PUFA is too fat for moi. – Ikco Mar 21 2011 at 8:46
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This isn't a religion. If you haven't seen studies yourself or very convincing discussion of them, why do you have any counter-consensus views about carbs?

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Love the comment. – The Quilt Mar 20 2011 at 17:46
Late to the party here, but I'm someone who wasn't convinced by studies or discussions. I had a friend who was more obese than I was, and like me, couldn't lose weight on conventional low-fat low-cal diets. She paid a bariatric clinic a lot of money for a supervised LC diet, and lost for the first time in decades. I just followed her lead and it worked miracles for me. At each stage of my journey I've been convinced by what works and what fails for me. I know Kurt Harris disapproves of the "I feel better" metric, but it's the only one that cuts through all the gobbledygook for me. – Rose Apr 29 2011 at 19:33
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nutrition and metabolism society has lots of published research studies that support our ideas.

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Surprised no one has mentioned the new paleo paper.
It's linked in this post: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-ancestral-diet-review-paper.html

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Fairly heavy-duty. but very legitimate & scientific (peer reviewed) paper on "The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization" http://www.dovepress.com/the-western-diet-and-lifestyle-and-diseases-of-civilization-peer-reviewed-article-RRCC

I've not read the whole paper yet, but it was mentioned on today's Latest In Paleo podcast and seems to concur with many Paleo beliefs.

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