Good Calories, Bad Calories

I have begun reading Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes.  I've only read about 90 pages or so, but I have to say, it is a must read and my favorite book on the history of the diet-heart hypothesis, animal vs. plant foods, carbohydrates, etc. so far.  I am a little disappointed in the references, however.  Don't misunderstand - there are about a million of them, but they aren't in the text, making it difficult to find the exact reference he is using to back up a sentence or paragraph.  This makes my job a little more time-consuming, but oh well.  The amount of information is overwhelming and addicting!  Such a meaty book.

One of the most interesting things I've read so far is how difficult it is to design a diet clinical trial.  Many studies in the past have tried to prove that diets high in saturated fat increase cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease.  At first glance, it seems pretty easy - feed one group of people some normal diet, and feed another group of people the same diet but with added saturated fat and see what happens.  The problem with this is that we don't know whether any effects we see will be from the extra saturated fat, the extra calories, or some ratio of fat to carbs, omega-3 to omega-6, etc, etc. If instead we choose to keep total calories the same, then the group who is not eating lots of saturated fat has to have something to fill its place - complex carbohydrates, polyunsaturated fats, and so on.  Taubes argues that it is almost impossible to conduct a double-blinded, placebo trial for food.  It's interesting, makes perfect sense, but it's not something I had ever thought about before.

Another big problem with large clinical trials, and really much science for that matter, is that scientists tend to ignore negative results, and run statistical analyses with an intended outcome in mind.  This is how results become skewed, and it goes entirely against the scientific method.  For example, Taubes discusses the Nurses Health Study by Willett, published in 1987 in the New England Journal of Medicine.  This study was trying to prove that increased fat consumption increased breast cancer risk.  However, the study showed no evidence of that.  When the nurses were followed up in 1992, then in 1999, it was shown that those who actually ate MORE saturated fat had a LOWER risk of breast cancer.  "For every 5 percent of saturated fat calories that replaced carbohydrates in the diet, the risk of breast cancer decreased by 9 percent."  However, this study went rather unnoticed, as most studies that reveal results opposite common dogma.  People will keep running studies until they get the results they want, and anything contrary is brushed aside as misleading, or lacking something.  And doctors will still recommend that women eat less saturated fat, even though breast cancer rates are rising ridiculously AND the fact that none of the clinical trials studying the saturated fat-heart disease link had women subjects before this diet started being recommended for women.

Lastly, for my little tidbit.  As everyone knows, not all fat is created equal: there are saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats, which can be broken down into more categories.  The same is true for carbohydrates: a potato, a slice of white bread, and triscuits from a box are not all the same.  I don't understand why the food pyramid and health specialists ever started to look at food in terms of servings, as if eating 3 apples every day would satisfy your "fruit requirement" and that it was the same as eating a variety of fruits all the time.  I get so angry when I hear commercials about fruit juices that have "two servings of fruit and a full serving of vegetables in each glass."  What does that even MEAN??  Food is much more complicated than just calories from fat, cabohydrates, and protein.  Our bodies are so much more complex, requiring hundreds of minerals, vitamins, co-factors...  many of which can disrupted or completely removed during harsh food processing.  I'm convinced that eating a wide variety of foods closets to their natural states is the best way to ensure that you are actually ingesting everything your body needs.  I think people are slowly starting to realize this, as we kind of re-discover the amazing potential and contents of "super foods."