you folks who refuse to acknowledge what sugar does to your body are just whacko in my mind.....

The syndrome I refer to is called Pibloktoq that is thought to be caused by a calcium and vitamin D deficency and hypervitaminosis of vitamin A due to the toxic levels found in the livers, kidney and fat which the Inuit consume in large quantities (Landy 1985)

I like my grains, when I do not eat grains I the plumming does not work properly. I find the mix of soluble and insoluble fibre keeps things in perfect balance for me, whithout them I am on the verge of chronicity. I was raised on Turkish lentils, I am told this is one of the worlds oldest foods, for me nothing makes me feel better than my lentils.

Personally when I eat to much meat I do not feel that good, for me what works is a balance of food from all the groups, when I have a meal that has a small amount of protein lots of veggies and a small amount of unrefined grains I am set for a much longer time, besides fiber slows gastric emtying and all the other goodies in my gut cause all the chemicals of digestion to be realeased signal my brain that my hunger has been satiated. Besides when I eat too much protein I am not able to do any excersise

you might like this site.http://www.theomnivore.com/home.html

Fully referenced, and the guy just got published in JPANDS!!

Thanks for the link! what a fantastic bit of info! I have not had a chance to read it all yet, but my favorite so far is this:

Are Low Carb Diets Bad For Your Heart?

by Anthony Colpo,
November 17, 2005.


My inbox has seen a sudden influx of emails from concerned folks wanting me to comment on the most recent attempt to bash low-carbohydrate nutrition. I am talking about an Oxford University study that allegedly showed low carbohydrate diets can "reduce energy to the heart". The study has not been published, only reported in the popular media, a forum which needs little encouragement to place the most sensationalist possible spin on 'negative' diet findings.

According to a BBC article, titled Low carb diets 'cut heart energy', a team of Oxford researchers monitored 19 people for a grand total of two weeks. They reportedly found that the energy stored in the heart was reduced by an average of 16% among those who followed a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. According to the article, their hearts also became slightly 'stiffer', "not relaxing quite as well as before the diet".

According to the article, "One of the participants even noticed he could not manage his daily run while on the diet".

The changes were reversed within two weeks after returning to a normal diet.

According to Professor Peter Weissberg, "We would certainly not recommend high fat-low carb diets to anyone who wants to lose weight and look after their heart."

The most disheartening thing here is, not the study itself, but the fact that so many people will take seriously the extremely fanciful conclusions being drawn from it by the media.

Anyone who knows anything about basic biochemistry is aware that feeding a high-carbohydrate diet will result in increasing reliance on carbohydrate to supply one's energy needs. Eating a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, on the other hand, will cause a marked increase in the use of fatty acids and ketones for fuel.

Most people nowadays eat a high-carbohydrate diet, a mode of eating that has predominated since the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution. When someone who has been eating a high-carbohydrate diet all their life decides to suddenly embark on a very low-carbohydrate diet, they are often given a striking first-hand lesson in the principle of metabolic economy. This principle refers to the fact that the body will minimize or maximize the production of hormones and enzymes according to its requirements. In other words, if you eat a high-carbohydrate diet, your body will maximize the production of hormones and enzymes involved in metabolizing glucose for fuel--and for converting excess glucose to fat for storage in adipose tissue. Because substrate supply determines substrate use, the body's fat-burning mechanisms will be minimized.

If you consume a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, the exact opposite occurs--the body's fat-burning activities are ramped up, and the use of fatty acids and ketones as a fuel source jumps markedly. Glucose will furnish a much lower portion of cellular energy requirements.

The body cannot be primarily a fat-burner and carb-burner at the same time--it's either one or the other. And if you are a high-carbohydrate eater who has decided to exercise the "other" option, you need to be aware that the body does not make the switch overnight. Someone who has been following a high-carb diet all their life must first go through an adaptation period in which the body is forced to up-regulate its fat-burning pathways.

Many people who have drastically cut carbs overnight will be all too aware of the "energy crash" that often occurs in the first few weeks after changing their diet. For some this occurs more severely than others, and for some lucky folks it never seems to occur at all. In a study with cyclists placed on a zero-carb diet, the researchers observed that their bodies were still showing signs of improved adaptation four weeks after switching to their carbohydrate-free regimen.

So, when a team from Oxford come along with the astounding revelation that nineteen volunteers who no doubt had been following the mixed, carbohydrate-dominant western CRAP diet (Cereals, Refined And Processed foods) had a hard time during a mere two weeks on a low-carbohydrate diet, my response is a thoroughly jaded, "so bloody what?"

I have no trouble at all believing the subjects had lower "heart energy" during this brief two-week period. In fact, I bet they also had lower "brain energy", lower "muscle energy" and even lower energy in the anatomical regions responsible for the continuation of the human race. The reason? These folks were in metabolic pergatory! They had been deprived of carbs, but were yet to complete the switch to fat-burning!

They lacked 'energy'? You bet they did!

What we really need to know is what would have happened if these folks had been allowed to continue way beyond the initial adaptation period. If the experiences of folks like myself and countless others are anything to go by, they may just have felt better than ever, experiencing new-found levels of physical and mental energy.

And what would have happened after their hearts had become fully fat-adapted? Would they have all keeled over from heart failure? Well, go read the published studies of the Masai and the Inuit, populations in whom carbohydrate consumption was minimal and cardiovascular disease was almost non-existent, and then decide for yourself. Read the published report of the Bellevue hospital experiment, in which Arctic explorers Steffansson and Anderson lived on an all-meat diet for 12 months, with the supervising doctors reporting that both men emerged from the experiment in better physical condition than at the start.

Perhaps the only useful thing to come from this study, if only it were to be interpreted properly by our (mis)information providers, is that most people switching to a low-carbohydrate diet after years of carbohydrate-dominant eating should do so in a gradual, incremental fashion. Suddenly cutting carbs to very low levels overnight can be a very rude metabolic shock to the body, one that folks already in a sub-optimal state of health may be best served avoiding.

yeah, it's a comprehensive site, and he's meticulous about referencing EVERYTHING.

and to top off he's a cyclist :p
he just bought a Scott CR1 :)

send him an email. I think he appreciates hearing from professionals who are prepared to go against the 'grain'.

here's an article that explains how they get vitamin C (beluga whale skin)... also casts some doubt on the stomach contents story...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010119.html

the plumbing problem is an interesting one. I've heard it argued that we dont actually need fiber, and that eating a lot of carbs is actually damaging to your plumbing... that's why you have problems if you dont eat your grains, your body takes a little time to recuperate and get back to doing what it evolved over time to do, i.e. process meat and fat. I remember being constipated when I started low carbing, and badly constipated at that.. but that went away after a few weeks, never to come back. Not even when I experimented for a little while with just eating eggs and meat, nothing else. Regular as clockwork.

Since I assume that people posting here actually do ride their bike regularly, Mr Freddy, do some _real_ research on how your body gets its fuel for exercise. Look at the various energy systems and how and where that fuel comes from. Look especially at glycogen and its role(s) because I'm fairly certain you have chronically low glycogen stores. Low carbs is terrible for people who exercise say, 5+ hours a week because you do in fact need carbs and glycogen to hep fuel your muscles during that exercise.

Do you know that ammonia is very counter-productive during exercise? Lots of ammonia is produced when the body has to use proteins for fuel. Converting protein to glucose is far from optimally efficient, and you will also be cannibalizing muscle tissue (proteins) in the body's desperate attempt to get some fuel.

So you can ride and ride on your low carb diet, but just know that every time you ride for more than about an hour you are destroying muscle tissue to fuel your exercise, and your inability to provide all the fuel your body COULD be using is lowering your performance during exercise. Your recovery will also be much slower and sub-optimal because you are not sufficiently replenishing your glycogen stores (because you are not giving yourself enough of the carbs you need to do this).

Low-carb is fine for some people-the ones who do little, to no exercise.

why is it that someone says low carb and people act like it is no carb? low carb means no junk carbs and thats what most americans eat. you can be low carb and eat carbs too.

exactly! There's a massive difference between low carbs and no carbs

I've done a lot of research, and I know how my body gets fuel. It runs on fat, for the most part.

to paraphrase bogey, you've been misinformed. your body is very adept at using fat for fuel (it's does take a few weeks to adjust if you've been eating a lot of carbs). there are several studies out verifying this. this is science, not myth. I'll have to look for it, but there is a study somewhere showing endurance athletes performance actually improved after switching diets (from high carbs to high fat), and training. the training is essential, since it takes some time for your body to switch from burning glucose all the time to burning fat. But once the switchover is complete, you will have turned your fine self into a very efficient fat burning machine.

and think about it, your body can store only a limited amount of glucose (hence the bonking that takes place after two hours), but a fat fueled athlete doesnt have that problem since the amount of fat available for even the scrawniest rider is virtually unlimited, by comparison.

and if what you are saying is true, how in the world did our species manage to get this far, considering that we were exercising a hell of a lot and eating fats and proteins for the first 95% of our existance on this planet.

Well it never worked for me because for the longest time I was a carnivoire, and for more than just a few weeks, my life was miserable because of it. I never had any energy and put on weight like crazy I went from 170 to 250 in less than a year being a carnivoire. Now I am less active than I was before, and because I switched to a high fibre diet that utilises food from all the food groups I am much better off. Now I can eat much more than I ever did before and I am losing weight all because I took the focus off of meat and put it on grains vegtables and fruit. I have more energy, feel better than I did before and even my marks are higher at school. Plus my blood pressure has come down and my blood tests are much better. Low carb high fat may work for some but it has not worked for me.

what do you mean when you say you were a carnivore? eating only meat? how much meat? if that's the case, it didnt work for me either, I do much better on about 30 - 40 grams of carbs per day... often less, rarely more...

of course, if you were eating a lot of carbs along with being a carnivore,that's another story altogether... its no suprise you gained wt...

also, you should be aware that your diet using all food groups includes a lot of foods that were not part of our diet for the first 95% of our existance, so, be careful, you are following a fad diet...

As far as athetes are concerned, you're wrong. Otherwise they would do as you suggest, but they don't because fat is a relatively inefficient fuel and glycogen needs to be readily available for many efforts, and some types of efforts that simply can not, absolutely can not use fat (or protein) for fuel.

You really need to learn more about exercise physiology. Your body simply won't perform as well on fat alone as it will with glycogen, glucose, and fat together. Bonking won't occur even after 8 hours if you supply enough of the fuel it actually needs to perform.

Provide some proof that a "fat-fueled" athlete can do well in events without ingesting carbs before, and during that event and that they will not bonk. Then call up all the coaches of pro cycling teams and tell them they can stop eating carbs before and during races because you think the riders have enough fat to provide all the fuel they need.

Do a google search and try to find any reputable study showing that a person can fuel their anerobic efforts without glycogen or glucose. While you're at it, find us some links that show the results of good athletes using only fat for fuel and/or ones that do not eat plenty of carbs (sugars) before, during, and after long events. Also find us some links for "fat-fueled" athletes who preform well in events lasting under one hour.

Farming, hunting, and working in a steel mill is not athletic performance. The fuel needs are different. If you are concerned about merely "surviving" then you can do whatever you want and die at age 45 like most of your ancestors did.

If you want good athletic performance then _you_ need to learn a lot (!) more about what athletes have learned to allow themselves to perform better than they did 5- 10, or 40 years ago. Do you still drink only water during two hour rides? (I assume you do because that's what our ancestors did.) Would you like to read studies that show the performance differences when athletes exercised with plain water versus sports drinks?

Talk to any _good_ cycling coach and ask them if we have learned valuable things about fueling for athletic events during the last 5-10 years? You on the other hand, can feed yourself just like people did 100 years ago and be happy with performances just like we saw 100 years ago.

I did not count carbs but it was almost all meat, and saturated fats.

As for not eating from the other food groups civilised people have been eating from all the food groups for hundreds of years, the whole reason we moved out of the country into the cities was because of farming. Some civilaisations lived mailnly on corn, where my ancestors came from they eat lots of beans tomatoes and grains and have been for hundreds of years before the discovery of america. So I dont see how following a diet that my ancestors have been eating for hundreds of years, and almost living to the century mark is a fad diet.

gotta run to see a rolling stones concert, so I'll get back to you in more detail... but, for now... the current state of the science indicates that it is a good idea to train on a high fat diet, but consume lots of carbs on race day. you're right, you need carbs for the absolute max. performance.. but by eating fat the rest of the time, you actually train your body to burn glucose slower, meaning it will last longer and be more effective on that precious race day...

as for the ancestor thing, I am talking about our pre-farming history, pre agriculture, when all humans existed in hunter gatherer mode for a long long long looooong time... eating protein and carbs... and if you think adding carbs to the diet led to our current modern longevity, well, I dont know what to say.... I'm thinking its more along the lines of modern plumbing, access to food, lack of nasty beasts trying to kill us, doctors, modern medicine, etc. etc....

well, think of all human existence as a 24 hour period. organized agricuture has existed only for the past 10,000 years, making up only the last five mintues of the entire day. our bodies evolved over the full prior 23 plus hours. we have not had time, evolutionarily speaking, to adapt to a diet as high in sugar/starch that you guys recommend. your body only needs a teaspoon of sugar, you guys are dumping buckets into your systems.

Well I have tried your way and it does not work, I eat the way my ancestors do and they have been living a life free of heart disease and cancer, whereas the European side of my family does not live nearly as health a life and they live on a low carb diet. And we have evolved since the time of the caveman.

VitC is deffinitely available in raw animal foods and I wasn't saying that they need carbohydrates for vitC. I cant find the article I'm looking for but it had something to do with mineral balance I think. Consuming the contents of the stomach/intestines was pretty normal across the America's. See, http://www.westonaprice.org/traditio...americans.html

Also I'm a long term advocate of a high fat/protein diet but I DO acknowledge that it's not for everyone. Some of us are geneticaly suited to a high fat/protein diet and some of us are geneticaly suited to a high carbohydrate diet. Just as it's plainly rediculious to put the whole population on a high carb diet the oposite is also true. There's a concept called Metabolic type diet that Dr Mercola promotes that is very enlightening. http://www.mercola.com

Within the concept of metabolic type its still preferable for carbohydrate types to get some fat and protein from healthy, traditional sources. Not this modern man made crap.

Regards, Anthony

When you say things like:

"If you are concerned about merely "surviving" then you can do whatever you want and die at age 45 like most of your ancestors did."

It really makes you appear not to have a clue. You must be one of the misinformed that honestly believes todays diet is better then it was long ago! If that is what you really think, you are absolutely out of your mind!

Have a nice day,

Mike

I think you could lose weight on the Chocolate Cream Pie Diet if you stuck to it. Nothing but Chocolate Cream Pie and water. You'd get so sick of CCP that you'd start eating less and less of it, and you'd end up losing weight. You wouldn't be healthy, but you'd weigh less.

Well if you're going tell us to eat like our ancestors to be healthy like them then you have to acknowledge the simple fact that they died at a relatively young age while eating the diet you espouse. Personally, I think the idea of trying to eat like our ancestors is a silly distraction. We have access to lots of good food that our ancestors never had or couldn't get frequently. Do you eat bananas? Did they? How about fresh orange juice no matter what part of the country you live in? 5 different kinds of fresh seafood at the market every day of the year...

You can in fact eat better than your ancestors, if you choose to do that.

Besides, my comments were mostly directed towards a good diet for athletes. That is the focus of this forum, right?

So... you are suggesting that the main reason our ancestors did not live as long as we live today was because of their diet? are you serious?

While you're there, check out what the High Heroin, High Alcohol High Nicotine diet has done for Keith Richards. Man looks like a stick of beef jerky playing a guitar. :D