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http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/9/13/archevore-diet-revised.html

In his first post in some time, KGH seems to be persuaded by Stephan's food reward series.

"I've not had a chance to do big blog posts about food reward yet. Those who might have seen some comments of mine elsewhere will see I find merit in the idea, but I don't know its ontological status yet.

Whether reducing food reward is restoring the EM2 or whether it is just a useful fat loss maneuver I am not sure. Either way, I think that is part of how diets like mine and maybe all diets may work, so I have emphasized that a bit more in the rank ordering.

There is also a notable but not strictly scientific bias I have used for this re-write.

It could fairly be called data mining or reverse engineering, but I've tried to write the steps such that most of the weight optimization failures that I know of would have not been following the new steps.

For example, I know of people who failed despite eating very low carb, but I cannot think of many that actually ate only twice a day with no snacks, never ate from a box, avoided restaurants and never ate ANY liquid calories, including milk and cream. So this has resulted in modifications that make my own current diet noncompliant in a few ways (I still add cream to my coffee), but I think these changes make it more universal.

This does seem to work well for many people, but nothing works for everyone. If it optimizes your weight and health and you are satisfied, you can always break a few rules and see what you can still get away with.

I'll try to do a re-write of "how to lose weight" sometime soon and add more therapeutic tricks for when the whole foods low-NAD idea is not enough."

As he goes to looks for the mechanisms behind food reward, where will the smoking gun be found?

In other news, Peter in his most recent post thanked Stephan for "getting him off [his] arse" and in comments seems to be implying that he's looking into some of the issues brought in up their heated back and forth(read his posts in comments section also). I think this dialogue between these guys who i think are all intellectually honest is a win for all involved.

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2011/09/defect-of-fat-metabolism-and-few-thanks.html

Special shout out to J. Stanton at gnolls.org for his recent series on satiety.

http://www.gnolls.org/2304/why-are-we-hungry-part-1-what-is-hunger-liking-vs-wanting-satiation-vs-satiety/

Where do you guys see the conversation on obesity causes and treatments going? It seems to be starting to coalesce around food reward and low carb and how it relates to satiety in healthy vs damaged individuals.

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2 
 Jeez that was fast. I'm still doing my stretches - not ready to take the field just yet. You are the MASTER blog play by play commentator. – none Sep 13 2011 at 14:30
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 @mer Robb Wolf and KGH talk about the honey badger nickname that Aravind gave him on this board on Robb's most recent podcast. robbwolf.com/2011/09/13/… – luckybastard♦ Sep 13 2011 at 14:35
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 KGH also had some insightful comments concerning Food Reward and the brain/body connection (and Pringles) at this link (and comments further down) - praguestepchild.blogspot.com/2011/08/… I think some of the ideas of Food Reward do resonate with people. I can look at past aspects of my eating behavior and see something going on. – Paleo2.0 Sep 13 2011 at 14:44
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 Wow ... I'm listening to the podcast now, and the point he's making (about 20 minutes in) about ketosis & hormesis is blowing my mind. It makes total sense based on my experience with LCing ... doing it for a short while is good, but doing it forever? Not so much. – Beth-WeightMaven Sep 13 2011 at 16:50
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 I'm going to type up a transcript of that section of the podcast on my blog. I think it's really an important point I haven't seen elsewhere. – Beth-WeightMaven Sep 13 2011 at 17:51
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7 Answers

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I wouldn't characterise this as 'now including food reward.' His 12 steps (which is now really more '12 bullet points, plus a lot more bullet points'), doesn't really mention food reward, although he does say that he'll talk about it soon. I'm looking forward to this since he said in the comments that you link to that Food Reward isn't palatability and isn't a tautology. That's great, because those are the only two substantive senses I've seen given to food reward so far and both are obviously non-starters, so I'm looking forward to whether KH can help Stephan out and make sense of what food reward means.*

*My guess is that the end result is that 'highly rewarding food' is going to be defined as 'food that activates a certain set of processes (mostly) in the brain to a great extent.' So it's probably going to be true, but I'm not sure it's going to be a useful concept in itself.

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or foods that counteract what is supposed to be happening....especially in relation to the blood brain barrier – Mallory Sep 13 2011 at 16:37
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 I would also like some further definition of this "food reward" thing we're all talking about. No one seems to be able to define it which would seem to be at least somewhat problematic I would think. – Shari Bambino Sep 14 2011 at 3:49
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You luckybastard, you made me do some reading and now I am going to show my ignorance on thie subject by simply pulling some quotes from the two blogs and one from today's Paleosolution.

Harris: Blog:

"> For weight loss "Skipping breakfast or

at least no carbs for breakfast can be very helpful." "50-70 grams of starch recommended for weigh loss". "Note that the 19th century categories called "Fat" and "Carbohydrate" are each broad macronutrient categories that contain both good and bad." " I'm not trying to save the world, as I find it generally does not want saving."

PaleoSolution _ NADS PUFA #1, Sugar #2 (but ppl can eat lots of fruit but not watermelon) AND Wheat may not be the villian we make it out to be but it is #3 thing to avoid. Legumes - meh, cooked properly and they are fine.

Gnolls:

"We know that liking something and wanting something are not the same thing. I like prime rib, but I don’t want any right now, because I just ate....This would indeed seem to be the common-sense result, but it’s important to understand that liking vs. wanting are not just theoretical constructs: they are distinct biochemical processes." "Likes = anticipations of future reward. Wants = desires at a specific moment. A measure of our motivation to attain a reward. Our “appetite”. Satiation = absence of motivation to eat more. The absence of attainable wants. Satiety = a signal from your body that it is replete with nutrients."replete with nutrients."

I think the smoking gun won't be found in the antiquated concepts of macronutrients - it will be found in taking in very high levels of nutrients and meal timing - low flavor, tasteless, HIGHLY nutrient dense foods eaten as infrequently as one can manage. (FML, I don't want to eat this way so please tell me how idiotic I am).

OT: I would like to point out Harris's statement about avoiding carbs in the AM. This goes against the popular notion that carbs early in the day are better because that is when we are most insulin sensitive. Carbohydrate backloading is a concept used for cutting that involves eating a vlc diet all day saving carbs for night time. They key is using resistance exercise to make muscles more insulin sensitive, but because carbs are taken in at the end of the day, fat cells would be less insulin sensitive - which is the optimal condition you would want if you wanted your carbs to feed muscle and not fat.

I find KGH's attitude about saving the world less than attractive. I prefer this guy's take "We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should." - But I'll still give Harris props for having a killer first name.

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 mer, i think that there are other chemical things going on in the AM that makes it better not to eat carbs first thing in the morning- particularly for the leptin resistant. things that i'm not smart enough to speak on :) – luckybastard♦ Sep 13 2011 at 17:29
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 That's interesting - I didn't know there was a connection there. I think Quilt was recommending some carbs in the AM, I could be wrong. Anyway I really need to look into that. Thanks! – none Sep 13 2011 at 17:32
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 he recommends high protein and fat in the morning. no carbs. – luckybastard♦ Sep 13 2011 at 18:42
More reading - here I gp... – none Sep 13 2011 at 19:03
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 DrK now says eat the carbs at the time of day when cortisol is the highest. Not sure if he intended that prescription to apply to people who have a non-standard cortisol profile. Usually cortisol is high in the morning. – The Loon Sep 18 2011 at 15:08
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I don't see it coalescing at all, but I do see many of the thin men talking to and agreeing with each other about how it is for fat people. Good to see the change in beans. I have not found beans beside soy and peanuts to be a problem for me, either, and was going to re-pose that question to see if there is any real data on how bad legumes really are. Harris says he doesn't know any people who are eating clean basic food and not keeping weight off, which shows how out of touch he really is on obesity. Except the twice a day rule. Fat low-carbers aren't fat because they eat multiple times a day. They eat more than 2 meals a day because they are hungry. It would help him to read Kruse's reasons why this may not be a good recommendation for all. And Peter is off his arse now. Much of what he has had to say is not in defense of the FR theory. He has been spurred into looking into all the reasons why he disagrees. I believe that both the forest and the trees will go by the wayside in favor of the gnoll.

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 Kruse is not the end all be all to health... he is one opinion among many.... – Mallory Sep 13 2011 at 16:34
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 I never said Kruse was. Its just that he is entertaining a few more explanations about what else could be going on. – The Loon Sep 13 2011 at 21:04
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 Shari & Loon – by same token though, we don’t expect cancer researchers or cancer doctors to first have had cancer first. It could be even argued that the fact that these people never were fat removes all the n=1 bias BS. They just look at the data and the science and are not biased by whether Diet X personally worked for them while Diet Y was a complete failure. People like KGH has put many patients on his diet and has evaluated how they responded. – Paleo2.0 Sep 14 2011 at 12:53
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 Agreed Paleo2.0. You don't have to have the disease to figure out how to cure it. It does seem odd to me though that all the former fatties I know are not buying into this food reward thing like all the skinnies are. My big issue would be that if they have this new chemotherapy treatment that will cure you but it's intolerable because of the side effects how many people will be able to survive treatment? There is more than one way to fail in this game. – Shari Bambino Sep 14 2011 at 15:15
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 I'm not entirely convinced that "Dr. K" is trustworthy. I'm skeptical by nature and remember many of his posts here. – Horse John Sep 20 2011 at 2:17
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i would like to know more about the starch vs sugar debate... i am seeing a lot more sugar proponents like Peat coming out the wood work.

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 There are actually sucrose/fructose proponents? – Travis Culp♦ Sep 13 2011 at 18:47
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 Travis - I only know of Ray Peat (as far as heavy hitters). Ray does recommend sugar and fruit specifically. – Jack Kronk Sep 13 2011 at 21:33
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I wouldn't say it's coalescing so much as having the most attention in the blogosphere. Obesity is a wicked problem, there's not just one cause, and while I tend to agree with Stephan that the place to look is the brain, the semantics/science of the fat setpoint still leave me puzzled.

Other comments: I also think Kurt's changes to his approach are, as he said, as much in line with folks like Chris Kresser, Paul Jaminet, and Chris Masterjohn (especially wrt safer starches) as Stephan. And re Peter ... I don't know that he was thanking Stephan so much as thanking the "rather unpleasant episode with Stephan" for J Stanton's weighing in on Hyperlipid.

Anyways, I for one am certainly appreciative of all the dialog!

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I'm doing a modified Archevore with a Kruse bias, bolstered by a small bit of Wolfian influence. Was considering a Sisson/Masterjohn intro phase to get things started, but Taubes and Guyenet make this a bit more difficult than would otherwise be.

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 You may benefit from the principles of Jaminet, but on the other hand DeVany-ism has its merits which mesh quite well with Cordainian theory. – Austin Sep 20 2011 at 2:45
Haha: Sissonism, Masterjohnian, Taubesian, Guyentism, Kruseity... – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Sep 20 2011 at 3:24
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"whole meal corn products" such as ?

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I wondered about this, too. He says in the interview he eats corn several times a week, but would the "whole meal corn products" include corn tortillas? He gave no specifics here. – nancy64 Sep 14 2011 at 11:49

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