Comments on: “Personally I find it highly unlikely that the USDA dietary guidelines contributed to the obesity epidemic” – Stephan Guyenet
Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/57440891958/permalink/10152951317861959/
Context: It came up in my feed with 150 comments on it already, the last couple arguing about the Inuit/Stefansson thing.
Well, anthropology is fun, but I prefer biochemistry: http://highsteaks.com/carbohydrates/
Then it went on about Jaminet’s 150g of carbs are necessary banana stuff.
I did a big break-down of what Jaminet thinks “zero carb” is, and why Tom thinks I think he’s “just doing it wrong”:
(TL;DR – 75g of low-carb veggie carbs IS NOT zero carb, that is a fckload of fiber – guess what fiber does… it uses up a ton of mucous, that’s just ONE possibility, it’s certainly not a “glucose deficiency”)
I love Jaminet’s stuff, but his glucose and mucus deficiency etc assertions are just silly.
– http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/11/dangers-of-zero-carb-diets-ii-mucus-deficiency-and-gastrointestinal-cancers/
I ate a high-vegetable but extremely low-carb diet from December 2005 to January 2008. At the time I thought I was getting about 300 carb calories a day, but I now consider this to have been a zero-carb diet, since I don’t believe carb calories are available from most vegetables
300 carb calories a day is about 75g of carbs (on his “zero carb” diet), that’s A LOT of non-starchy veggies – 1 pound of broccoli has about ~15g/60cal of net carbs, so we’re talking about eating 3-5lbs or more of the damn things. It’s like me saying I’m a tee-totaller because I only drink beer – not vodka.
Now, forget calories and carbs, just think about all the stuff that can go down eating that much sheer food and indeed it being from veggies. Understand the anti-nutrients/biochemical toxins/etc in plant foods (which in small amounts are ok, but in those vast quantities…?) and it’s not a big stretch to find some compounds that can lead to various issues with stuff that hinders the uptake of various micronutrients and leads to deficiencies in mucus stuff and other such.
However, according to Jaminet:
Throughout my 2 years on this zero-carb diet, I had dry eyes and dry mouth.
Eats a metric fckton of plants, but blames the lack of carbohydrates? Glucose deficiency? C’mon…
Anyhoo, I’m more on Lucas Tafur’s side – protein issues:
– http://www.lucastafur.com/2011/03/ketomyths_08.html
Consider for a second – Jaminet’s diet was a “high-vegetable” diet, it’s likely he was getting some pretty poor amounts of essential amino acids (threonine is likely in this case) if it wasn’t a high meat or legume diet.
So in the end he’s eating POUNDS of veggies a day with all the metabolic clusterfckry such a practice entails, gets dry mouth and sore eyes, but blames it unequivocally on his psuedo “zero carb” diet, then comes up with The Perfect Health diet where you require “safe starches” to offset a “glucose deficiency”…?
Yeahhhhh, I’m not sold.
Look, I admire the guy for the work he’s done and the amazing results people are getting, his diet is better than 99% of the guru prescriptions out there, and is a model of a good high fat low carb regime in the world and society we currently reside, and I have no other real issues with it.
TL;DR – Jaminet was NOT on a zero carb diet when he developed his problems, there are tons of confounders, it’s most likely a protein uptake problem, however some people could be sensitive to VLC in this way somehow. Ketosis isn’t necessary for health, but I’m still not buying the glucose deficiency angle.
As I said in the post I really dig Jaminet’s work, but it really bugs me when baseless assertions are made. Yes, SOME people function better on moderate carb intake in the current society we have where they are almost inescapable – but it’s not essential. I would consider that moderate intake is better than “low”, what is known as “low carb limbo”.
Then more questions about the fiber thing:
Fiber scratches up the inner lining of that tube running from your mouth to your butt, that produces a bunch of mucous to help push it through. As I said it’s just a guess – but if your body is busy churning out mucous to deal with the cellulose assault which it might consider essential, maybe just maybe the stuff you need to make it for the ear/nose/throat system might suffer. Total speculation, maybe logical fallacy – point being, maybe it wasn’t adding carbs that fixed Jaminet, maybe it was dropping the fiber intake…? Too many questions, which I why I deplore the assertion of a “glucose deficiency”.
