Yea, as uncertain as a lot of nutritional science can be, and as ill informed as even otherwise well informed people can be about it: "too much fructose can damage your liver" is not something I thought was remotely controversial or novel.
> Just wanna say that my wife has a PhD in nutrition and this isn't news to us.
Does she recommend low fat food alternatives to her patients? My nutritionist pushed them like the gospel. And she would tell us in the next sentence that most low fat foods had added sugar to increase the flavor.
But if you want to know what we believe to be true about which foods are healthy, there's probably no better starting point than Harvard's Healthy Eating Plate.
What do you mean by "unbound fructose"? I assume fruit juices etc? Harvard's Healthy Eating Plate says "eat plenty of fruits", which says contrary to the advice given by many commenters here.
My bumper-sticker answer is basically that paleo proposes some of the right things but for the wrong reasons.
Avoiding processed foods and refined sugar is good. Avoiding dairy is good. But there's no reason in general to avoid cereal grains, legumes or potatoes unless you're sensitive/allergic.
And higher-quality meat is an improvement over the status quo but a vegetarian diet is likely to be healthier.
But all that is me talking, not my wife. I suspect she would say similar things but honestly we don't spend a lot of time discussing the random fad diet book du-jour.
My guess would be nuts, vegetables, and meats (like fish). Some fruits are okay though, like low sugar ones (avocados). I personally have tested my diet for years and found this diet to be optimal for me, and in line with most current research on what the body needs—and what the body should stay away from.
Many people would consider a diet like this difficult, but if you approach it correctly (I end up cooking a lot of szechuan cuisine), it's quite easy—and delicious!
What isn't hard on your liver these days? Most drugs undergo metabolism and activation through the CYP450 system. Meaning that those drugs which clear hepatically are most likely hard on your liver in the long run.
Just because a CYP is involved, doesn't mean the target substance is hard on your liver in any way. Liver toxicity is highly non-linear with dosage, and damage typically starts abruptly when substrates are depleted. The classic example is paracetamol, which is quite safe at reasonable dosages (and without alcohol) where the liver is well within its limits, but causes damage rapidly at higher dosages when you run out of glutathione.
This nuanced explanation is sadly lacking in many places I encounter the phrase "liver damage". I have frequently read articles which would lead one to believe that things are bad for your liver linearly and are "unsafe at any speed". It's irritating.
Your wife is one of the few pedigreed nutrionists who “knows” that! Sadly most nutritionists are overweight themselves and continue to advocate people consume whole grains, low-fat dairy, and fruit to lose weight/be healthier. Kudos to your wife for ignoring the massive amount of BS most doctors and nutritionists are inculcated with!
Nothing, I think the parent is wrong or misspoke. The advice is usually "substitute bad processed sugar with fruit", which is what Dr Lustig has advocated for the last decade. Of course too much fruit is itself bad, since the fiber can only do so much.
A balanced diet is important. Fruit only covers certain parts. And yes it also has a bit much sugar. Replace 80% of your fruit with veggies and you will be better off.
I agree, but most people should start by replacing most of their food with fruits. All their carbs and sugars should come from fruits first, and once they master that, they can try replacing some of it with veggies.
Sorry, didn't mean mostly fruit. I meant to say that it's best to start by replacing all your sugars and most of your carbs by whole fruits instead of veggies. And I say that only because it'll be easier to achieve, and still better then the alternative processed foods.
You should also have fish/meat, nuts and seeds for proteins and fat. And if you can, do have veggies instead of sugar rich whole fruits. But its hard enough eating healthy, I've found that the first thing to do is focus on eating better and not the healthiest. So fruits are the best deserts, and are better then most snacky thing people eat between meals. Yet they're easier to adopt in your diet because most people find them tastier.
For example, I see some people who when hungry and looking to snack down a whole bag of chips, or a whole box of oreos without thinking. But who'd mentally find it excessive to down a whole container of strawberries. Changing that attitude is a good place to start, and eating a whole strawberry container instead of a box of oreo is a pretty easy and simple change. Easier then just not snacking at all, or then eating coliflower instead.
The quibble could also be with the "low-fat" portion of the advice. Grouping all fats into a single category is about as useful as grouping fruits and vegetables together. There's nuance to which fats to eat, but they're mostly an important part of a healthy diet, despite being demonized for decades now. Low-fat and non-fat dairy products are little better than another source of sugar (lactose) since much of the healthy portion of dairy doesn't get absorbed without the fat.
Avoiding omega-6-rich oils is probably a good thing for most people, since most don't get enough omega-3 to balance out, but beyond that and crap like trans-fats, fats are something to embrace not shy away from. And, what's more, getting off the beaten track of traditional oils can add a lot of interesting flavor to foods. Beyond olive oil, which is pretty common, coconut, avocado, walnut and macadamia nut oil have all become favorites of mine and I find the tastes of the food I cook/prepare so much more interesting than when I used to use corn/soybean/canola oils or tried to avoid fats all together.
Whole grains are one of the biggest sources of dietary inflammation. There isn’t something inherently wrong with grains, it’s that they’re not even close to the grains we evolved to eat anymore (at least, not in the U.S. — grains in mainland Europe are generally fine, unless you have an issue with gluten/grains such as celiacs, Crohns, or IBS).
Source: Tons but the book Wheat Belly is one of the most succinct. Also, every trainer who is even half-way decent at transforming clients tells them to avoid grains, don’t discount what people are ACTUALLY doing to get results, even if a definitive study hasn’t been done on it (although many studies have been done, see Wheat Belly).
Fruit falls under the category of “healthy, if you’re healthy.” If you’re overweight and inactive, and you want to lose weight, then you should not be eating fruit, or any high-sugar, high-carb food for that matter. Once you’re lean and physically active, it’s fine.
> every trainer who is even half-way decent at transforming clients tells them to avoid grains, don’t discount what people are ACTUALLY doing to get results
Isn't it more likely that trainers tell people to avoid wheat and corn because they tend to be high-calorie, low-satiety foods? I've lost 70+ lbs over the past year on IIFYM-style caloric restriction. I still enjoy corn and wheat products, but somewhat sparingly because I'd rather have an extra half pound of chicken than a piece of bread.
Cutting out grains is a quick and easy way to help people hack their caloric intake more than anything else, IMO.
Yes that’s also true. But cutting grains also fixes your sense of satiety. Ever had a piece of bread and then next thing you knew the whole bread basket was gone? Many people feel like they can’t control themselves when eating bread. No one does that with steak. And even other high-carb foods like potatoes present less of a problem for people (in terms of whether they feel full and stop eating vs continuing to eat past the point of satiety).
IIFYM is very effective at fat loss BUT (and I know I’m going to get shit for saying this) it requires a very specific personality type that can be very mechanical about eating. Most people don’t have the time or interest to count their macros, and even if they did they still have difficulty overcoming the urges that come with consuming junk food such as modern grains in the U.S.
I don't think it's grains in particular that mess with satiety - it's carbohydrate-heavy diets (particularly simple carbohydrates) vs protein/fats. Protein in particular is known to be highly satisfying, and it tends to be less calorie-dense than carb-heavy foods. Carb-heavy foods are everywhere, because they prepare easily and keep for a very long time, and provide a lot of calories in a small package. Sugar + fat together make our brains super happy and trigger the "put all of that in my face now" response. In the right form, even starchy carbohydrates can be really easy to put down - consider a big bowl of mashed potatoes or white rice for example!
I actually agree with you about IIFYM needing the right personality type. http://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/ is probably my favorite "how to be not fat" page in existence and it outlines that issue quite well - if you can be disciplined to stop eating, then IIFYM works great. If you can't, then full abstinence is pretty necessary. I find that I'm much more successful on an IIFYM diet than an abstinence diet, because on the latter I find myself craving the "forbidden fruit" and it eats at me until I crack, then I feel guilty, and it spirals from there. On IIFYM, I can let myself have whatever I'm craving, knowing that I just have to make up for it with the rest of my intake that day. The actual mechanical part of counting macros is pretty trivial once you've learned how to do it (MyFitnessPal learns your dietary habits quickly, and trivializes the process).
Not every approach works for everyone, but I have a lot of frustration around a lot of the diet fads that are constantly looking for the "magic bullet" - no fat! no sugar! only specific carbs! lots of carbs! 3 gallons of coconut oil daily! Only eat every 6 days! - when, IMO, the only magic bullet is self-discipline to find out how to keep yourself from overeating, and my experience has been that that can be different for each person based on their psychological tendencies.
Great article, just book marked it. Definitely appeals to people “like me” who align philosophically with HN types.
My biggest issue with it, and all diet advice that wants to “give it to you straight, it’s all about calories” is this — YES in order to lose weight you HAVE to burn more calories than you consume, there is no question about it, it’s tautological. But it’s kind of like saying, “in order to stay sober every night, you have to drink alcohol slower than your liver can process.” It’s true...but it doesn’t really answer the question you should be asking, which is “why are you an alcoholic?” The answer to that question is more complicated, but it’s the only question that matters.
Back to diet, when it comes to being lean — why were the vast majority of Americans lean in the 1950s back when almost no one did any formal exercise, especially women, and hardly anyone was counting macros, calorie counting, etc? They just naturally ate about as many calories as their body burned off. Their bodies had a mechanism to tell them to stop eating when they were full. So what’s the difference between people and food 60 years ago and people and food today? No other mammal on earth has gotten so obese as a percentage of the population as humans have. The answer to that question, I’d argue, is the only one that matters!
I think this is why the Paleo diet has taken off so well, because frankly we shouldn’t have to count calories, macros, etc to stay lean — yes, those methods work, but we should be able to simply rely on the signals our bodies are sending us, every other lesser mammal does this, and humans did it just fine 60 years ago.
TL;DR Yes, it’s all about eating fewer calories, BUT how you eat fewer calories has a big effect on whether you can sustain it long term and feel satiated.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry reading "Wheat Belly". Honestly, how does a person who writes such garbage even call himself a doctor. It should be a case study for a textbook on what bad science is, and how we are very ill-served by celebrity-doctor types who try to make a lot of money off their brand.
I said source: Wheat Belly (book by Dr William Davis), but also my experience working with clients and with trainers who are experts at transforming clients from fat to fit.
Wheat Belly is not a diet book, it’s a summary of the science out there on grains with 100s of scientific citations. Yes it has diet recommendations at the end of it.
The Wikipedia article only cites this article http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/2/84 . Do you have a link to another paper that also supports this conclusion?
But really, your problem is not that the GP did not cite their facts, you just don’t like the sound of their claims, so you’ll respond in a toxic way. I hardly expect the actual scientific literature to change your views.
Did you even read the study? They only say that it might be possible that there could be an effect on inflammation, but also stating that there haven't been good studies done on that subject. The problem is that nutritional studies are often very narrow, only for specific cases and the same applies for the results. However, those studies are often broadly generalized by ill-informed people. I'm no expert either, so I can't say if grains would be good or bad, it's just clear to be that neither can all the other people who claim to know so.
My problem seems to be that there is some significant overlap between the groups, “people who use HN” and “people who are the target audience for self help books.” Worse, are people who can’t cite and instead throw articles into the mix, while being condescending and pseudo-psychic.
Just bury me in good citations and we can both be happy.
On the other hand, it might just be that this particular topic is unusually divisive. The science of gluten sensitivity is young, its study fraught with placebos and confounding variables, and adherents of the anti-gluten movement are often nearly religious in fervor. Asking for citations might just be asking for trouble.
True, but there are few better demonstrations of the weakness of an argument than asking for someone to prove it, instead to be met with anger and verbiage.
We've "known" that unbound fructose is hard on the liver for years.