Sunday, June 15, 2014

name that "researcher"!

I'm dipping into old Hyperlipid posts again....  I have a love-hate relationship with the comments sections of my favorite blogs!  Sometimes the stoopid is overwhelming, but then again the best commenters give a bonus bolus of wonderful information.  ;-)  Check out some of these:

"I have a possibility. I've always suspected that the reason vegetables are healthy is because when you eat a salad or a saute, you're essentially replacing carbohydrate in your meal with fat. This is because most vegetables are pretty low in carb, and are doused in fat before serving (salad dressing, butter, olive oil etc.).

"The calories from a salad or a vegetable saute (excluding starchy tubers/roots) are almost exclusively from fat."
And:
"And by the way, as someone who studies the mechanisms of aging, my view is that the oxidative damage theory is far from proven. Just because the antioxidant capacity of your blood is going this way or that, it really doesn't allow us to predict anything about health outcomes at this point.

"For all the talk you see in the media about how great antioxidants are, I'm not aware of a single convincing study showing that antioxidants improve a health outcome in humans (without vitamin deficiencies)."
And:
"I think you, Gary Taubes and I would agree about diet composition and hunger. One of the things Taubes talks about in his book is that hunger, in the most common sense of the word, is the result of carbohydrate consumption elevating insulin.

"When people are on very low-carb diets or when they have been fasting (both of which have similar metabolic effects), they experience hunger differently. I've found this to be true of myself. 24-hr fasts are fairly easy for me now. I even do strenuous workouts at the end of my fasts sometimes and have plenty of energy.

"Interestingly, you can fast for days without being very hungry, but if you're eating a calorie restricted high-carb diet, you'll be ravenous. I guess it's the difference between burning fat, which your body has plenty of even if you're not eating, and burning carb, which you can't store much of. Maybe that's an oversimplification.

"So yes, I agree with you that the diet would probably have been more tolerable in that study if the subjects had been eating fewer carbs."
OOOH!  We're getting more hints!  ;-)  Continuing:
"I see what you mean about the WHEL study. I have to say, my diet would be pretty boring without vegetables. I wonder if leafy greens are any good? High nutrient density, low carb. Plus our closest relatives eat them like they're going out of style.

"I'm interested in the alpha-lipoic acid thing. My suspicion with 'antioxidants' that are associated with improvement of some measure in a biological system, is that the effect isn't due to the antioxidant activity of the molecule. For example, curcumin was first thought to help in Alzheimer's models because it's a powerful antioxidant, but now they're finding it has specific effects on inflammation and cell death pathways that seem to be independent of this activity.

"As far as the insulin/aging connection, I don't know the answer for sure, but there are some tantalizing clues. First of all, I don't want to present myself as an expert. I'm a grad student whose work intersects with aging mechanisms, and I also have a personal interest in it."
(My emphasis.)

Wow, when did "the good doctor" stop "studying aging" and start being an obesity expert?  More interesting to me, when did he lose his humility?

SO many amusing little gems in this series of comments -- his diet would be boring without fruits and vegetables....  He, Peter and Taubes agree on something (anything)....  The virtue of salads is actually the fatty dressing you put on them....

It was always a grief to me that from a reasonably intelligent commenter on Hyperlipid, he descended into a gluttony-and-sloth inquisitor.  I used to read his blog with enthusiasm, but with the coming of the PhD, he started chasing funding instead of useful information ... long before he started posting pictures of junk food and saying this is what made America fat.

13 comments:

  1. Tess and Lori, thank you so much for turning me on to the fat bomb!!! I have lost one inch in the waist and four pounds in the last three days!!!! This is incredible. The first day almost killed me. I passed out (had to take a nap) the first afternoon, but after that I was back to my old self and back on track to getting the next fifty pounds off!!! I can't thank you enough. At first I thought you were crazy, but took your advice anyway. My favorite thing is coffee with heavy cream as my lunch, skipping breakfast. And cream cheese with pork rinds for supper. It is awesome to feel thinner again after being stuck for so long. I'm using the recipes from Fat Fast and I'm loving it.

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    1. glad it's working for you!

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    2. Wonderful! I felt so bad for suggesting this when you felt awful the first day. I'll drink a diet soda to your good health!

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  2. Sad isn't it? I was an avid follower of said blog until the insanity started. I haven't visited the site since I removed him from my blog list. Same with all the others (FTA, Jaminet and Carbsane). Why waste my precious time? I just don't go to those places anymore. It doesn't make sense when there are enough conventional wisdom and vegan people out there who are constantly putting low carb down. They are all now relegated to the trash heap!

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    1. NO KIDDING!!! I was never a CS reader (one paragraph convinced me she'd every be of help), and I only used to dip a toe into the FTA pool before his followers proved themselves to be a herd of swine, though RN occasionally had valuable things to say. ;-) ...but WHS was GOOD once upon a time! what a sad loss!

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    2. WHS used to be a good blog. In fact, it has (or had) great info on reversing tooth decay based on Price's work.

      I knew Carbsane didn't know what she was talking about when she said she believed in CICO. This, despite common experience and the explanation in endocrinology textbooks on fat accumulation. I love Dave Dixon's description of CICO: as useless as saying that the problem with a backed up toilet is that more water is going in than coming out. I wish his blog (Spark of Reason) were still active.

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    3. ambition has been the downfall of many a good "man" :-(

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  3. The funny thing is that he now claims he'd lost his mind when he went along with the LC fad. Why doesn't he consider the possibility that he may be wrong this time, too?

    Anyway, my favourite comment of his on Peter's blog is where he says that he can 'feel' his proteins being glycated when he eats too many carbs. Haha.

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    1. ye gods -- i feel sorry for whoever his partner is! obviously, one can't depend on him for consistency!

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  4. I wonder how he didn't delete the comments?

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    1. entertainingly, he calls himself Sasquatch at this point. but click on the blogger-ID link, and there's his picture, large as life!

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  5. Dr.Oz is grilled for a good reason.

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  6. Jane found somewhere my old comment about SG in a strange hope I would be ashamed of criticizing that particular scientist for his metamorphose. Ha! I am still ready to repeat the same again.
    What a shame it is that a prominent young student who we thought would be a part of an obesity solution turned into a part of an obesity problem!

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