Are Carbohydrates The #1 Health Menace? [Good Calories Bad Calories]

Sparkly vampires that don't die in sunlight and fall in love with inarticulate teenage girls, zombies eating brains with grapefruit spoons and their pinkies out (or off?) with Elizabeth Bennett, hapless-yet-cunning teens battling to the death in a reality show that makes Jersey Shore look like The Christian Ladies Aid Society - these are the types of books that keep most people up at night. Me? I've been up for a week now reading the gripping tales of The Fat-Cholesterol Hypothesis and The Carbohydrate Hypothesis spun by Gary Taubes in his game-changing tome Good Calories Bad Calories. Kinda like the Bible and Moby Dick, lots of people will talk about this book but very few of them have actually read it.

Not that I blame them. It's 576 densely worded pages of research paper hell. And I used to be a Graduate Assistant that was paid to write research papers so I know that of which I speak. I'm going to be honest: I read most of it. Skimmed the rest. Fell asleep and drooled all over the "Conservation of Energy" chapter. Was just like college but without all the PowerPoint atrocities.

Good thing for all of us, Taubes includes a four word summary - a dietary rebus, if you will - on the front cover. Take this handy quiz:

Like the old woman/young woman illusion, what you see is all about your perspective. In this picture, is the piece of bread the "good calories" and the butter the "bad calories" or vice versa? For years, as any of you who lived through the nineties (check yes if you ever included "grrrl" in a description of yourself!) can attest, fat - especially saturated animal fats like butter - was the devil in the Devil's food cake. Even today, the American Heart Association recommends no more than 7% of your daily calories come from saturated fats and no more than 25-35 % from any fat. Most of us are well versed in the "good fats" and "bad fats" doctrine. It is, as Taubes takes the first 4 chapters to point out, the conventional wisdom. (I can't complain too much though because it was during this introduction that I got to meet a delightful 18th century Brit named Banting who lost so much weight on a low-carb diet that he went on a pamphlet-strewn publicity tour that puts Atkins to shame. Banting is like Jared the Subway Guy dressed like Marie Osmond on Nutrisystem and with an evangelical spirit that's half Kirstie Allie and half Richard Simmons. I love him.)

According to Taubes, everything you "know" about diet and nutrition is wrong. He backs up this assertion with very (very very) detailed analyses of all the research ever done on the subject, branching into a conspiracy theory about scientists suppressing evidence and changing study results that I would have found laughably ludicrous had I not worked in academic research for so many years and found out first hand what sharks professors on tenure track can be. But I digress. Here's a summary - you're welcome - of the myths busted by Taubes:

1. Eating fat makes you fat.
2. High cholesterol is bad and the best predictor of heart disease.
3. Cholesterol should be lowered at all costs.
4. The best way to lower triglycerides and cholesterol is through cutting out dietary fats, especially saturated animal fats.
5. That Western illness like cancer, diabetes, dementia and heart disease are inevitable if you live long enough.

Basically, Taubes postulates that the surest and best way to help people not only lose weight but also live the longest, healthiest lives possible is to eat lots of fat (all kinds) and protein but cut out carbohydrates. He especially blames sugar for societal ills - no shocker there - but also includes "good" carbohydrates like fruit and whole grains. Not only do carbohydrates not provide good nutrition in the form of energy, says he, but also have the deleterious effects of leaching vitamins and weakening the body in other ways. For those of you who are familiar with Atkins or with the Paleo/Primal diets, Taubes' book is scripture. For the rest of us, these assertions fly in the face of everything we have been taught about good nutrition.

Honesty, Part Two: He makes a very compelling case. Taubes is a highly acclaimed science writer and this background is evident in his meticulous review of every study out there. He not only tackles famous studies, like the Nurses' Health Study, The Seven Countries Study and Ancel Keys' starvation studies, but he includes every minor paper, even previously unpublished ones. About halfway through the book I wanted to throw my hands up and just accept whatever he said as true because he was clearly willing to do a lot more studying than I am on the subject.

And the science is catching up to him on some points. Recent papers have come out breaking the supposed link between dietary cholesterol and heart disease (yay, we can eat eggs AND their yolks again!). Saturated fats are getting lots more good press - indeed I have had a very positive experience adding more fats of all kinds to my diet. The problem for me is when he starts dissing my beloved whole grains and fruit. No matter his comprehensive body of research stating otherwise, I do better and feel better when I eat a diet that includes those two things. That's why I flunked out of the Primal Blueprint. Twice. (Of course, new science is also contradicting him.)

It is at this point in the story my brain kicks into full-on Crazy. Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe I'm just in denial. Was my mid-afternoon crash the result of my Tabata workout or the whole grain bread I wrapped around my tuna? Maybe I SHOULD try low-carb again! If I don't, I could die a horrible death of diabetes, heart disease or cancer! Or all three at the same time!

The only thing that stopped me from dumping my oatmeal down the disposal that very second was remembering how well my current Intuitive Eating Experiment is going. I'm happy. I'm healthy. I'm 2 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and 5 from my "happy" weight (not to be confused with my ideal weight, also known as the weight I should never weigh again because even though I thought it was ideal it was really too low and I looked sick and didn't menstruate and was kind of a witch so yeah.) In a fit of reason - I'm not possessed of those nearly as often as I ought to be - I e-mailed my dear friend Dr. Jon who, also being British and therefore super cool, gave me a different perspective on Taubes, writing,

"Based on all my years of experience, I'm a great believer in moderation when it comes to diet . People lose sight of certain primary physiological facts and become obsessed with Super Foods, antioxidants, detox diets and supplements . To take some examples, a low fat diet isn't healthy because the body needs both saturated and unsaturated fats to maintain its health, LDL cholesterol is vital to well being, and reduced salt intake can literally kill anybody who works out heavily . That's the major difficulty with laying down rigid guidelines - they don't work for everybody and can actually do major harm .

A while back we talked about the Okinawan diet and I told you that the preliminary results indicate that that population's longevity and general good health seems to be both genetic and influenced by a more restricted diet and reduced intake . It is a relatively low-fat diet too, but too much must not be read into that . The Chinese diet is less restricted and pretty high in fats of all descriptions, and the typical French diet is enough to make a dietitian's eyes water . Yet all three countries have a far lower incidence of heart disease than the USA, Canada and the UK - just a thought, but maybe speaking English is the causative factor ???? :)

What you are doing these days, returning to intuitive eating and trusting your body to tell you what it needs, is the sanest and healthiest way to live . Logically, the human body has developed over the last couple of hundred thousand years and evolved the ability to signal its requirements . The plethora of mad ideas out there is truly mind-boggling . We have one particular "guru" over here who you should really have a look at . Her name is Gillian McKeith, aka the Poo Lady (if you have a look, you'll understand why - she's obsessed with it) . Amongst her insane ideas is that chlorophyll "helps to oxygenate the blood" by swallowing it !!! If you remember your highschool biology, chlorophyll is what makes plants green and uses light to photosynthesise carbon dioxide into carbon for the plant to grow, releasing the oxygen into the atmosphere as a byproduct . The only way I could imagine obtaining oxygen from chlorophyll in the gut would be by sticking a searchlight up the unfortunate soul's butt - and then what ??? The gut does NOT have gills !"

So, the take-away message from all this, is that diet books give me way more nightmares than vampires, zombies and teen-death-match-reality-shows combined. (You know it's only a matter of time before someone writes that book!) Actually, what I learned is that I still want to turn to other people - experts, by golly! - to tell me what to do with my body rather than just listening to what it says. There's a fine line here between learning enough to interpret your body's signals and going so far as to substitute everyone else's judgment for your own. Please don't misunderstand me - I'm not calling Taubes a quack and there was much of value in the book, especially on fats and their chemical mechanisms in the body, (and his chapter on paradoxes in the literature will blow your mind) but his recommendations on whole carbs and fruits just doesn't sit well with me. Lots of people live long, healthy lives on a variety of diets. You have the Okinawans with their super-low-fat diet. Then you have the Masai whose traditional diet of meat, whole milk and blood (yes, really) is about 70% fat. And these are two of the longest-lived peoples on the planet! But you know what I bet they have in common? They don't spend a lot of time reading diet books.

What are your thoughts on carbohydrates - all good, only the whole kind, or as little as possible and no grains? How much fat do you normally eat? Any of you read Good Calories Bad Calories? Do you always look for experts or research to tell you what to do, like I do??

Eating Fat Does Not Make You Fat

Confession #1: Today I stopped and bought my boys t-shirts at a garage sale to wear because I haven't had time to do laundry for two weeks now and everything they own has been worn twice. (Once right side out and once inside out - for the latter, I just tell everyone they dressed themselves. I don't add that I told them to dress themselves that way.)

I hang my motherly head in shame. But that is nowhere near as shocking as my next confession. If Charlotte-from-10-years-ago knew what I was about to confess, she'd have had me committed then and spared me this horror. In fact, the only reason I will even admit to this in black and white is because the other day Gym Buddy Allison 'fessed up to doing it - and liking it - too. So here goes...

Confession #2: I eat beef fat.

Not only do I eat it but I love it. I crave it. You know all that white stuff all around the edges of a steak? The stuff that everyone from Dr. Oz to Dr. Phil (to Dr. Oprah-spawn) tells you to trim off? Well, I eat it.

My road to debauchery started out innocently enough with a simple cow (don't all roads to debauchery start with a cow? No??). Gym Buddy Krista was talking up her favorite local beef farmer and since I started Geneen Roth's guidelines, as I explained before, I've stopped being vegetarian in favor of eating what my body - not my mind - says it wants. So I signed up for one of those grass-fed-and-finished, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, organic, kissed-by-angels bovines.

Upon retrieving the dead carcass from the super friendly farmer (any local peeps who want his info, I'm happy to pass it along! Poor man hasn't discovered the Internet yet and has no website but he raises awesome livestock so we'll forgive him.) I learned two important things. First, cows are insanely huge animals. My Bessie was 920 pounds. The smallest portion he'd sell me was 1/4 - those of you good at math (update: this group will not include me as in the original version of this post my cow and cow quarters didn't even remotely add up. I blame the tireds.) will realize that left me with 230 pounds of animal - so thank heavens Gym Buddy Megan split it with me. Second, Mr. Farmer informed me that while fat from traditionally farmed cows (read: cows fed with grain) is terrible for you, fat from grass-pastured cows is fan-freakin'-tastic with a huge ratio of those Omega-3 fatty acids health nuts are always crowing about.

Me being me, I couldn't just take some farmer's word for it, even if he is the coolest farmer I have ever met (which is only because I've never officially met the Bag Lady) so I checked out the research. And you know what? He's right. Mark Sisson of Mark's Daily Apple gives a better breakdown of all the current research and arguments than I could so check out his article "The Definitive Guide to Saturated Fat" for all the nitty gritty. Say what you will about The Primal Blueprint (and heaven knows I've said plenty!) but that man does his homework. For too long we've been conditioned to believe that adage about Good Fats and Bad Fats. Turns out all naturally sourced fats are good fats. Even saturated ones like coconut oil, heavy cream and, yes, animal fat (as long as it isn't conventionally farmed). The only bad fats are those man-made monstrosities like trans-fats and interesterified fats.

While I've embraced the "good fats" a la avocado, nuts and olive oil for several years now, I'm brand new to the saturated fat love fest. Reader Deb asked me what this looks like in real life for me. For a couple of weeks I tried to eat 50% or more of my calories from fat but after jumping on the Geneen Roth train (and quit counting calories) I still eat a lot of fat but I think probably more like 40%, depending on the day. The upshot of this mini-experiment is that eating lots of fat keeps me satiated longer and helps reduce my cravings for sugar (because while it turns out saturated fats aren't correlated with coronary heart disease like we all thought, sugar sure is!) Consider me a convert! I love my real whipped cream.

I still don't like bacon though.

What are your feelings about saturated fats? Do you ever eat the fat on your steaks or chops? Anyone else just hate bacon? And if you want to tell me about the time you bought new clothes/dishes/underwear rather than clean the ones you have, that might make me feel better;)