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I assume any diet must be palatable so it can be maintained. But shouldn't overall health, as reflected by weight and disease prevention (and by extension, longevity) be the goal?Tom Skerritt said:
1. It's simplistic, but biochemically correct. Given a balanced meal, the body preferentially metabolizes carbohydrates as the main source of blood glucose. As omnivores, it makes sense we'd evolve to digest/metabolize what's readily available, as efficiently as possible. Limiting an entire class of macronutrient runs contrary to our basic biochemistry. And evolution favors processes which promote propagating one's genes, that's it...but those things don't necessarily correlate to long term health after the childbearing years.ProstheticRGK said:
1. My problem with what I understand you saying, is that there's an implication that the body's efficiency in using carbs as a power source is a de facto evolutionary imprimatur. To me, it's not a "right or wrong" question. It's simply a question of utility: "What method gives what benefits, and at what cost?" Eating keto eliminates insulin spikes, which stops a whole cascade of other hormone activity: specifically, ghrelin and leptin, which directly and indirectly control hunger and satiety. I don't get food cravings anymore, I eat more consciously, and consume way less processed foods. I could happily eat like this for the rest of my life, unless I make a conscious decision not to. Full stop.
Agreed. And let's not forget that the abundance of cheap, abundant readily available carbs is very recent in our evolution as a species. I don't think it is scientifically valid to simply state that we are evolutionarily adapted to carbs when they did not exist in any abundance for about 99% of our evolution.
1. I think it's easy to conflate processed, unhealthy foods with carbohydrates - after all, a lot of them are high in carbs. But there are also plenty of healthy carbohydrate-rich foods, principally fruits, veggies, legumes and some grains. Meanwhile, there are high fat, high protein foods that aren't especially healthy, which Keto gives a pass - red meat being one example. No one knows why carbohydrate metabolism evolved as the primary source of glucose/energy production, but ketosis clearly is not preferred if all macronutrients are available. As far as insulin spikes, they can be avoided if balanced meals of appropriate portion size are consumed.
This is a faulty premise. As I stated above. If all macronutrients are present the body will process alcohol before protein, fat (I believe over complex carbs as well but need to fact check that one). Does that make alcohol our evolutionarily preferred source of calories? Or is our body simply prioritizing removal of toxins?
If you take the principals of a Med diet and make them lower carb you can
R the Med diet is flawed in that if you increase fat without cutting carb you will cause metabolic stress and weight gain if calories are kept even remotely isocaloric. It's completely bull####.
Respectfully, I disagree. And to be clear, glucose is the central fuel in our metabolism, not ketone bodies. While any of the three macronutrients can provide it, carbohydrates do so most readily.
I have no problem with your disagreement and I am not saying that the premise is entirely wrong, I am saying that it is far more complicated than you are stating. Saying that alcohol is not a "macronutrient" is fine but it is a source of calories that we process preferentially to protein and fat so the distinction of "primary" fuel source in-and-of-itself is not proof of evolutionary advantage. This is not to say that alcohol is better just that primacy is not the sole factor.
Increased life expectancy since the early 1900s has more to do with medicine than with macros. This is largely due to significant improvements in healthcare services, investment in medical research, and universal health coverage.
While those pilot studies are interesting, they don't prove anything about long term health benefits/harm of Keto vs. plant-based higher carbohydrate diets like the Med. And participants violating diet protocols is inherent with any nutrition study - its a big part of why its so difficult to determine the best diet. Ultimately I think the proof is in the pudding, as there is no long-lived population that follows a low carb strategy. On the contrary, animal-eating primitive cultures like the Inuits and Masai die off pretty young - granted, that's likely multifactorial, but nobody would classify the diets of Sardinians, Icarians, Okinawans, Adventists, etc. as low carb.If you take the principals of a Med diet and make them lower carb you can
Decrease metabolic symptoms, such as FLD.
Decrease body fatness while maintaining or improving lipid panels in obese people
Has better compliance as a low carb model
It also goes to wonder why perhaps if the Med diet is holding up, why is the biggest longitudinal study retracted? Among criticisms that the research was flawed and downright fraudulent?
Now I'm not a keto follower, I believe in a few principals. That Flour is processed food, and junk food. And sugar is an empty calorie. Cutting those out and keeping carbs at a manageable .5g/lb is the optimal level for humans. I don't think you can hit .5g/lb with any flour or sugar in your diet, and get the rest of your macros correct. If you can. Cheers.
This approach gives you the benefits of lower insulin and other hormone levels that you don't want, and allows you to recover from resistance training sufficiently. Most would call this type of diet "primal". Focus on stuff we ate a long time ago, primarily.
The Med diet is flawed IMO in that it basically says, remove junk food (good) and replace it with whole grains and avocados, and olive oil and some fish. For me the issue here is that the science is pretty aligned on the fact that if you raise fat in a high carb environment you are going to cause weight GAIN in a huge subset of the population. Not all, but some (and the NEJM people basically dropped them from the population saying they "didn't comply") oops. This is the fraud that the Med. Diet guys pushed on us. So now you have people eating fat bombs and a salmon and cream cheese bagel (Whole wheat mind you) for lunch and don't see results. hmmm....wonder why?
TL
You can argue all day that keto is not optimal for many reasons (mainly that it's really too meat centric and SFA centric), but the reasons it is not optimal are not reasons others are a better options and as long as you recognize this and work to change that you will be in good shape.
Ok, so lets just look at a culture with fairly uniform sanitation and access to medical care...the US (debatable for some minorities, I know). Why do Seventh Day Adventists outlive the rest of the country? If you think diet is a part of it, how does their diet compare to the diets advocated in this thread?
Citation needed. SDA having some long lifespan is a myth from the 90s where people simply didn't know just how awful smoking is for you. Find something from this decade to back this up.
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison for similar reasons as you are discounting the Masai or Inuit. SDA have many other lifestyle differences than diet. They don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs, less likely to eat processed foods etc. It is not valid to make an X to X comparison of them to average Americans that eat upwards of 400 grams of processed carbohydrates, with very little fiber content per day and draw the conclusion that "Mediterranean diet >>> Keto".
Summary of the Adventist Studies: https://publichealth.llu.edu/sites/publichealth.llu.edu/files/docs/sph-ahs-overview.pdf Adventist I and II both show mortality benefit with more plant based diets. And while smoking is clearly bad, life expectancy for the rest of us still hasn't caught up with the Adventists, even though we smoke much less than 30 years ago. Plus they controlled for smoking in multivariate analysis.
Those other lifestyle choices are accounted for in multivariate analyses of the Adventists studies. Researchers are well aware of confounders.
I didn't say I don't wish to discuss further, heck I encouraged you to continue. But your points are not new ground for us and have been discussed at length over the years in this and other threads.
Forgive me if I fail to see encouragement in this statement:
I've responded to your and Culdeus' statements, but it seems like you've figured it all out. Hopefully the scientists and centarians get the message, too.
I get that you are pretty dialed into your perspectives but the science behind, for example, Mediterranean diet and SDA has been demonstrated to be, at best, suspect and, at worst, deeply flawed by other scientists. Which is not to say their conclusions are incorrect, rather they are unsettled.Terminalxylem said:
No one is attacking you here, don't take questioning of your positions personally.Chaka said:
No, I’ve acknowledged all nutrition research is problematic. Deeply flawed is an overstatement, unless you think every major medical and nutrition group is behind a conspiracy to promote plant based diets. Meanwhile, you fail to see the same problems in the Keto world. I see no mention of faults with the PURE study, for example, which is one of the few scientific studies linked in this thread (by Culdeus).
No kidding. Can we please get back to talking about success, failures, pitfalls, recipes, etc.?
I think there might not be quite a bit of agreement in this thread between those that positively view Keto and those that are more skeptical.
Not sure how else to react by being characterized as overly simplistic, and being dismissed because everything I might bring to the conversation has been discussed before.
Don’t know what to tell you. Several other posters responded to me without coming across as dismissive or condescending.
My wife officially is out for good now. She just hates it and blames me - I just “push” it because it’s worked for me.
It's got to be easy for her to tag along with you right? When my wife picked up on it I was set....she stopped buying so much junk that I had to try and not eat that her joining made it easier.My wife officially is out for good now. She just hates it and blames me - I just “push” it because it’s worked for me.
I do more IF now than Keto but I still do it - still find it easy although I still end up too high protein.
One of us is high right now - your post makes no sense to me so it may be me.It's got to be easy for her to tag along with you right? When my wife picked up on it I was set....she stopped buying so much junk I had to try and not eat that it made it easier.
You have done like me over the years - yo-yo’d. But you obviously got this and know what to do. I can’t sit here and say it gets easier but the tool in our toolbox that seems different is IF or full bore fasting. I’m finding when I head down a wrong path that IF or a full day fast gets me back. Good luck GB - feel free to PM me.ProstheticRGK said:
I don't. But assuming they didn't gain the weight overnight, why does everyone seem to think rapid weight loss is a realistic goal?
