BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Low Carb Low-Carb Fad

it seems like every other ad on television is some company selling their new low-carb item. there is always something people are trying to sell us. i can recall when the non-fat diet was in fad, and everyone was displaying the grams of fat in the serving. unfortunately, the low-carb fad is no better for you than the low-fat fad. and one is not gonna find nutritious foods in the supermarkets, on the whole - if we define the word "nutritious" as meaning what the body needs in order to perform to its optimum.

sure, people who have abused sugar all their lives, will benefit by at least reducing that substance in their body, to a more normal level. but carbohydrates are not bad or good. fat is not bad or good. the question is what kinds of carbs and what kinds of fat.

if you are wanting to be close to your optimum, then you must be exercising. if so, you need lots of carbs, assuming you do not have a diabetic problem of sorts. but are we eating fruits, veggies, and whole grain natural products, or are we getting our carbs from "non-foods" that mostly fill the shelves of our supermarkets ? the only 2 fats that our bodies require are omega6 and omega3. these fats are almost non-existent in most foods that we buy - at least in the form in which we need them.

we do ourselves a big dis-service when we attempt to categorize our intake by the percentages of the 3 main foodgroups, for this tells us very little about the quality of the food that we are eating.

as is evident, i do not support the low-carb intakes that are prominent in the low-carb diets. but in the same breath, i also do not support probably 90% of the carb foods that americans eat. the main problem is not the amount of carbs, but rather the types of carbs, and also the lack of a proper amount of protein and essential fats.

in a general sense, i recommend an "ample" amount of protein, an "ample" amount of both essential fats, and the remainder natural carbs, if our goal is "optimum performance". while "ample" can be different for various people, there are blood tests that can measure the levels of each amino acid and fatty acid in our blood. so combined with those numbers, and how we perform, one can begin to guage what is "ample" for one's self. while i do not believe in giving any sort of exact numbers, the amount of carbs in most low-carb diets is way too low.

I think what we're seeing is a rubber band effect. The only people really compelled to start a serious low-carb diet are people who are fat or getting fat, and there sure are no shortage of them. In a perfect world, we would all eat only as many carbs as we need, but for every jumbo sized mountain dew we drink, we're probably going to restrict those same carbs out of our diet in a drastic and abrupt way. This, the American instant-gratification mindset, drives these new pre-packaged ultra low carb foods that fit into our busy lives. People seldom diet out of health concerns, anyway, I'd wager... It�s born of vanity and propagated by convenience.

Lisa will come on and agree with you completely on the 'what kind of carbs, and how many at once' thing you were saying. For the long term, all the latest low carb plans are based on just what you're saying. Unfortunately losing 10lbs a year with 'healthy living' carb restriction doesn't sell many books, so for weight loss, you gotta push it... and people with a great deal of weight to lose sometimes over-do it.

I'm clearly biased, but I'm a true believer in low-carb, and I happen to think it�s far better than the low fat diet. There's a right way and a wrong way to approach either, of course, but I've certainly come to know... it's rarely eating fat that makes you fat.

To your comment on fats:
Well yeah that�s a crying shame... if we all ate fish and seed kernels every day we'd all be great. I think it might be unfair to blame the supermarkets (or food producers) for the lack of omegas in foods... they'd surely have to be added in especially, and for a public that's not really demanding them. I think we take the 'hand full of pills' approach to EFAs like we do with vitamins and minerals. Fat is important for the abortion of fat-soluble vitamins, and hey, ya have to get calories some way. You may not get any special heath benefit from regular old fat, but it is one of three sources of energy for our bodies, and if you're not eating it, yer gunna over do carbs and protein. I'd argue that you need ordinary fat in your diet just as you should have carbs.

Another plus about the low carb diet is it typically cuts down on hydrogenated fats (because those are usually coupled with lotsa sugar in baked goods.) Will the higher amount of animal fat and protein kill your liver and your kidneys sooner? Only time will tell.

hi techno,
thanks for the post.

with regards to fat - the body can manufacture all the saturated fat it wants, from any sort of calories, all the way from 2:0 to 18:0, commonly known as stearic acid. there is an enzyme that will convert stearic acid to 18:1omega9, i.e. oleic acid.

the body can turn sugar into fat, but not fat into sugar. once it is a fatty acid, it stays that way. because our bodies have developed this way, it is also true that we burn more fat, most of the time.

but our brains run on sugar, and the brain uses a lot of energy per pound. sugar is our best source of energy, during more intense cardio type of exercise. we store only a limited amount of sugar in our liver and the glycogen in our muscles. so we need a certain amount each day, depending upon our lifestyle.

a certain amount of non-essential fat in our diet is fine, since if we eat less than what we need, our body will make the remainder. but make sure to get enough sugar, so that we are not breaking down protein to make it. about half of the amino acids can be broken down to make sugar, about half can not, leaving an unbalanced remainder of aminos, along with excess ammonia. allow aminos to do their job, along with the essential fats, of most of our anabolic (building) functions, leaving sugar and non-essential fat to do mostly our catabolic (breaking down for energy) functions.

our bodies have developed right along with all the other life forms on this planet. the more we stick to foods in their natural state, the better off we are, as a general rule. these natural foods are just not in supermarkets and restaurants, as a general rule.

good safflower oil is the cheapest way of getting omega6 in our body, and flax meal is the cheapest way of getting omega3 in our body. safflower oil has a very mild taste, so can be mixed in almost anything, and stay unnoticed. flax meal can also be sprinkled on many things, without really altering the taste of the product that is being sprinkled, so there are healthy avenues of getting our essential fats, without making our foods taste badly.

the lack of poor health in our country is monumental. we pay for this with all of our health problems, as well as the last years of our lives. i often tell people to go visit old folk homes. if that does not scare them to better take care of their bodies, nothing will.

it is my belief that our bodies, if given optimal care, are made to live somewhere between 100 and 140, and being able to stay at its peak until 50 or so; unlike what we see today of reaching our peak in say early 20's, and being far downhill at 50, and dying in our 70s, spending the last decade merely existing.

i will be 50 in less than a year, and i am as energetic today as i was when i was 21, so i know this is not the impossibility that most people will believe it to be.

thanks again for your post, and best of health to you.

Regarding dieting I talk to two things: my jeans and my hair.

When I was on a low cal/low fat diet my jeans were telling me that I was doing a great job...but my hair was falling out in clumps.

On low carb I'm dropping about two pant sizes every three weeks right now, and my hair looks great...so it works for me. :-P

Will I be doing this forever? No. I want to get down to about 175-180 and then work on maintaining that weight. I'm fairly young, and all my vitals were fantastic at my last check-up this fall, so I don't see how I'm doing anything wrong. :-/

hi donica,
nowhere am i advocating a low-calorie or a low-fat diet. like i said earlier, i think we make the mistake of labeling our food intakes by the percentages of the 3 major food groups, instead of the types of foods that we are eating.

people on low-carb diets are almost universally knocking out most of the twinkies and such out of their diets, which is great. but i think they have swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, with regards to their carb intake.

essential fats are very important with regards to hair and skin, so you no doubt were deficient in them on your previous diet.

also, jean size is not the only thing to rely on. women, in particular, will lose lots of muscle mass during the process of losing size. body fat percentage is the only guage that strives toward accuracy with regards to the amount of fat that we carry.

but it seems as if you are also feeling better, which is a great indicator of your overall well-being.

You are right! Latelly people has gone a bit nuts when it comes to low carb dieting. You need carbs in your diet anyway. Fruit and vegetables are great sources of carbs and fiber. The problem has been that for the past 3 or 4 decades sugar intake has risen to unseen levels.

Also people have forgotten how important is water consumption. You can ask anyone who is overweight how much water do they consume and they'll tell you "not much". 32 ounces of water (as they used to say) is not enough for most bodies and overweight people need a lot more to eliminate fat with water.

My grandfather had a high carb diet (high to Atkins standard) and he was never overweight. He walked every morning to the market and his mind was in perfect state. He lived to the tender age of 94 being one of the youngest to die within his brothers. The youngest was 88 and the oldes 104.
Their diet was high in protein, fat, and needless to say carbs. Those carbs where from vegetables and fruits. But I believe that most important of all, they weren't addicted to food. They ate when they where hungry and never overate which we do so often.
I always tell people that diets may be a way to control your mental addiction to food, but some people become addicted to dieting.
When that happens, they take the diets into dangerous directions and that is when we see ridiculous advertising and experts of nothing in the media.
They say that low-carb diet is not for everyone that it is a fad, but the truth is that low-carb diets are ways of returning to the normal patterns of eating we used to had and seemed to have lost.

Hi TSG,
people from your grandparent's time were lucky that they did not have all of these fast-food choices, and processed food choices.

i actually have a fair amount in common with many low-carbers, on lots of issues. i certainly agree with them on all of these processed sugar foods. they have been killing us right and left.
and our overall sugar consumption is highest in the world. but that is not from eating apples and bananas - LOL.

but at least many of the low-carbers have gone way too low on carbs. i know one book was telling its readers to watch out how many carrots they ate in the day, but was giving carte-blanche on bacon and tons of animal fats.

i do believe that at least some of the low-carbers are going about things on a dangerous level. and i can not turn on the television any more without seeing some low-carb product advertisement every half-hour. so i hope people are fully aware that there is a huge financial implication in low-carb foods at this time. which is another way of saying "do not believe everything you hear".

best of health to you.

Hi All,

The low carb fad isn't just a fad. The diet was developed in the l800s by a funeral director. It was resurrected several times by Atkins who made millions on the idea. He recently died, but someone is now making products and convincing people that Atkins' processed foods (from low carb ice cream to low carb candy bars) are good for them, even though there's no research to support this idea.

The problem with the Atkins and South Beach diets is the problem with all diets. They are restrictive and no one can stay on them very long. You get light-headed, weak, irritable, constipated and more. Everyone eventually goes back to their old eating patterns and gains even more weight than they've lost. This yo-yo effect if very hard on the body. Dieting also contributes to bingeing. Both are correlated with gaining weight, gallstones, etc. etc. That's why diets don't work. I wrote a book on it with an MD entitled, DESTRESS, WEIGH LESS the NO DIET PLAN TO PERMANENT WEIGHT LOSS and it goes into detail about these topics and shows the research to support it.

The problem with restricting carbohydrates is that some carbohydrates, the complex ones, are needed for health whereas saturated animal fats are correlated with gallstones, kidney and liver conditions, heart disease, breast cancer, colon cancer and more...

Fruits and vegetables are good carbohydrates and are needed to stay healthy. You can find tons of good research on how they help do that. Try to find any good research on how saturated fat does.

Please, if you do decide to diet, at least eat tofu, tempeh, Boca burgers, soy cheese and other sources of protein that contain nonsaturated fats. Sooner or later your body will react to the saturated fats (see the correlation with cancer, liver and kidney disease), and quick weight loss is hard on you anyway. Better to lose a pound or two every few weeks so your body doesn't think you've gone into starvation mode.

Best,

Carolyn

Host, http://holistichealth.bellaonline.com

You knew I had to respond to this one <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> First, Atkins and South Beach are NOT restrictive when you finish losing your weight! I have been on a 'normal lifestyle' since Dec or so and have been completely happy. I don't eat pasta. I don't eat potatoes. Big deal! I eat whole grain bread, lots of veggies, lots of fish, chicken, steak, pretty much whatever I want. Am I restricted because I *choose* not to eat pasta? Heck I could eat whole grain or low carb pasta if I wanted to, but we literally have a different dish every night, all of them yummy. Anyone who feels restricted on low carb doesn't know how to cook <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Next, light headed and weak?? I think you have that backwards. People who are carb addicted get light headed and weak all the time because of the blood sugar highs and lows. I know I used to, and so did many of my friends! The whole point of low carb is that it EQUALIZES your blood sugar levels and stops those things from happening. I feel SO energetic now, and clear-headed, compared to before.

I also know hundreds of poeple who have been on low carb diets for many years, it is just the way they eat. They don't "fall off". They have no need to gorge on Twinkies. To say that people have no choice but to eat the nasty sugar-filled processed foods that the market pushes on them is giving people little credit. I can't think of many people in my mother's generation, for example, who even eat those things at all. They naturally eat low carb and are happy.