Moderate carbohydrate intake may be best for health, study suggests

(Marcos E Gonzalez) #1

Found the following on today’s Science Daily (suggesting that we’re doing it wrong. Can’t wait for our experts to weigh in):

“A new study has found that diets both low and high in carbohydrates were linked with an increase in mortality, while moderate consumers of carbohydrates had the lowest risk of mortality. The study also found that low-carb diets that replace carbohydrates with proteins and fats from plant sources were associated with lower risk of mortality compared to those that replace carbohydrates with proteins and fat from animal sources.”

(karen) #2

I want to know what this means:

"The researchers assessed the association between overall carbohydrate intake (categorised by quantiles) and all cause-mortality after adjusting for age, sex, race, total energy intake, education, exercise, income level, smoking, and diabetes. During a median follow-up of 25 years, 6283 people died.

Does this mean they eliminated everyone who developed diabetes, or who died of diabetes complications, from the end results??? If so, this is an epic analytical fail. I mean seriously, …

“I’m going to figure out what sort of impact carbohydrates have on life expectancy, but I’ll eliminate the people who get / die of carbohydrate-related disease from my results.” Awesome. And maybe you could also do a study on the impact of smoking on life expectancy, but eliminate data from people who get lung cancer, that would be really helpful too. Noooo, this isn’t tweaked to protect Big Food’s big ol’ carb-loaded diaper at all. :roll_eyes:

(Ellie) #3

There are already at least 3 threads on this subject.

(bulkbiker) #4

And they all should say what an appallingly bad study it is…

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #5

It’s just more propaganda from people who hate meat. One of the authors is Walter Willet who, along with his boss at the Harvard School of Public Health, Frederick Stare, was paid by the sugar industry to write reports saying that fat was bad, in order to take the focus off the problems with sugar. It’s because of them that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers sugar to be “Generally Recognized as Safe.” The sugar industry told them what to write, and they signed their names to it.

(Alec) #6

Spot on. Alas, my keto journey and related investigations has led to my total 100% scepticism towards anything that calls itself a study. Alas, it looks to me that nutrition science has been utterly compromised, bastardised, and is absolutely not to be trusted in any way whatsoever. There are too many vested interests who have too much to lose. And to normal mortals (Zoe Harcombe is not a normal mortal) differentiating between OK studies and pure crap is very hard (although not impossible), but do you have the time?

In my (current) opinion, n=1 is infinitely more relevant than any study created by “scientists”. I wouldn’t trust them to walk my dog.

(karen) #7

I’m in total agreement about n=1. But I have to wonder if “adjusting” for diabetes was part of the researchers’ original intentions or, more likely, a way for Big to take damning data and turn it on its head three decades later. “Smoking must be good for you, because look how few smokers died (once we remove all those pesky lung cancer patients.)” “Carbs must be a good idea, because look how few carb eaters died (once we remove all those pesky diabetes patients.)” I’m surprised they didn’t take the one guy who ate a lot of carbs and lived to be 100 and tell us that clearly the key to good health and long life is Cap’n Crunch.

(Tony Phillips) #8

Repost of my reply to a different thread…

I have not read all of the comments on the OP, so forgive me if a similar reply has already been published. I just finished reading the “study” which by the authors own admissions, “represents observational data and is not a clinical trial”. I have no problem with the study in general. However, it must be noted that what the study reveals is already known among many of us on a ketogenic diet. That is, if you consume a high fat, high protein diet apart of a nutritional state of ketosis you may be doing more harm that good. Even if you are “cutting” carbs you may not be doing yourself any favors. If you are not a fat burner, you are a fat storer. That just is not going to be a good thing.

All of us know people who seem to defy the metabolic “derangement” that most of here suffer from. They seem to eat whatever they choose and live long and healthy lives. Well, this study is really a study of those individuals compared to us, the metabolically deranged. Ugh, yes those genetic freaks will live longer! I could have told you that! You see, they removed the data from this study from anyone who developed metabolic syndrome. So basically you have those who eat low carb and those who eat whatever, oh and a few who basically eat nothing but carbs. Also, you have to wonder if sampling the population of such a study just a couple of times in yes…25 years! is sufficient. But if it is, so what, again we already know there are people who can eat whatever they want, get no diabetes, no hypertension and have good cholesterol levels. For those of us on Keto, most of our concern is metabolic disorder. For me it was pre-diabetes, pre-hypertension and yes pre-high cholesterol. All of which we headed sharply in the wrong direction. Keto has reversed all of that. So yes, my wife who looks half her age, has perfect health markers will live longer than I will (4.1 years according to this study). At least she won’t have to watch me give myself insulin, or watch me eat myself into a early death. Yeah, I’ll drop dead someday. Apparently sooner than she will. But for now, we are living life more abundantly than ever.