carb loading

A lot of chatter around the 'water cooler' today about this article in the New York Times that talks about a study that shows that a low fat diet does not reduce heart disease and cancer. The chatter largely focuses around the things people have read that show that this research is wrong. I've heard everything from the sample size is too small (it isn't) to the fact that the researchers went in planning to show a link between low fat diets and cancer and not heart disease means the heart disease findings should not be trusted (in my book a researcher not going in with a preconceived notion of what the outcome is, is a bonus not a detriment).

How about this guy's comment:

David A. Freedman, a statistician at the University of California, Berkeley, who is not connected with the study but has written books on the design and analysis of clinical trials, said the results should be taken seriously. [and] "The studies were well designed"

The backlash in the news and the so called experts has been pretty hardcore. It's called 'anchoring'. Becoming stuck in your ways. Believing what you believe in regardless of the data. Entire industries are built off of the idea of low fat improving your health and your weight.

And I should point out the food companies love it. Of all the ingredients they use - protein, fat, and carbohydrates - carbohydrates are the cheapest. And when they make 'low-fat' products, the fat is removed and the cheaper carbohydrates are added. Better margins.

Another study in the New York Times that never got a lot of airplay was much more interesting. I can't find the link to the article but here is the link to the study.

Here's what it says in a nutshell - Total calories consumed has increased over the last 30 years. Protein and fat intake over the last 30 years has not increased nearly as quickly has carbohydrate intake. In other words people are consuming more food but the makeup of that incremental food is largely carbohydrate based. Here's the data

Men (numbers in kilocalories)

	1971	2000	Growth
Energy intake	2,450	2,618	6.9%
Protein	404	406	0.4%
Fat	904	859	-5.0%
- Saturated Fat	331	285	-13.7%
- Non-saturated Fat	573	573	0.0%
Carbohydrates	1,039	1,283	23.5%

Women (numbers in kilocalories)

	1971	2000	Growth
Energy intake	1,542	1,877	21.7%
Protein	261	283	8.8%
Fat	557	616	10.6%
- Saturated Fat	201	207	3.0%
- Non-saturated Fat	356	409	14.9%
Carbohydrates	700	969	38.3%

Check out the growth rates in energy consumption from the different components. For men everything was flat or went down except carbohydrates. For women everything went up but not nearly as much as carbohydrates. And clearly saturated fat isn't the culprit here either because those were the slowest growers in both men and women. We consume a lot less now than we used to percentage-wise.

You also have to caution against what this says, or rather doesn't say, about the type of protein, carbohydrates, and fat we consume. It could be that we consume a very different type of fat now, such as trans-fats, which accounts for the increase in obesity and heart disease and cancer. But that doesn't weaken my main point. A low-fat diet does not improve these things. And if anything the data is suggestive that our intake of carbohydrates, or some type of carbohydrate, is more likely a culprit.