jsteinhardt comments on What is the evidence in favor of paleo? - Less Wrong

13 Post author: jsteinhardt 27 August 2012 07:07AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (96)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: roland 27 August 2012 10:21:50PM *  -1 points [-]

Right of the top of my head. Not all of them are scientific rigorous, just evidence that points against carbs.

  • A high carb diet was only introduced around 10k years ago with the invention of agriculture. As hunter/gatherers the diet was mostly hunted animals(protein/fat) and some occasional carbs from gathered fruits. So the human body is mostly adapted to protein/fat.

  • Methabolic pathways. Carbs once inside the body are broken down into sugar, which hasn't much nutritional value other than providing energy and the excess is converted into fat. Proteins can be used to make energy too, but obviously are much more nutritious. Fat and protein is digested with a different methabolic pathway that will also assist in burning body fat. But all fat burning stops once you ingested carbs and the blood sugar raises which makes it hard to lose body fat. There is evidence that your muscles can also function more efficiently in fat burning mode, but for this transition to occur you have to get rid of all the carbs first(including the glycogen stored in your muscles) and retrain your metabolism(may take weeks).

  • you can survive on a diet without carbs but you can't survive without proteins and fat(there are essential fats that are needed by the body).

  • Certain kinds of problems can be solved by a low carb diet(at least one kind of epilepsy), suggesting that certain adaptations are recent.

  • Lots of people develop health problems(overweight, diabetes) that has to do with an excess of carbs. Also there is a general trend in these problems over the years as people are consuming more and more high carb diet(aka junk food).

  • Carbs are appetite stimulants, causing overeating.

  • It's easy to overeat in carb in general, they literally just melt inside your mouth, whereas with meat you have to do real work(chewing and digesting). Try eating just meat/fat for one week, I found this to be almost impossible.

From my personal experience it is very hard to keep a low carb diet because carbs are just so delicious, try staying off them for just one week and you will understand.

Just one link that I found right now: 60 Minutes explains the latest science behind the conclusion that excess sugar has measurable toxicity, the liver creates fats from excess sugar then linked to blood clots and heart disease, and cancer rates are linked to excess sugar, and reward regions make can sugar addictive

Comment author: jsteinhardt 29 August 2012 07:01:19AM 1 point [-]

The 60 minutes and associated talk ("Sugar: The Bitter Truth") makes many misleading claims, chief among them the one about sugar toxicity. See e.g. http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/.

I'm not a biologist, but my friends who do bio research say that the blog post I linked to reflects their understanding of biology and the 60 minutes does not.