Studies about the health impact of red meat and legumes & cereals?

[atomicspacebunny]

This seems to fit the “eat less, move more” paradigm which we know doesn’t work.

Hmmm? Let’s put it this way, how hard is it to pump a barbell and working the glutes? This goes back to the 80”s aerobics paradigm; you can move more but you have to keep doing it with the amount of refined carbohydrates they are pounding down and just wasted all that time “moving” in attempt to deplete glycogen reserves (the core root mechanism that burns actual body fat), why not simply increase skeletal muscle tissue which is even better and it does in fact work?

It’s getting the healthy metabolism that matters

You will always find an endless population of people stating how they went on a ketogenic diet and they can’t lose any weight or actual body fat, they simply do not have the skeletal muscle capacity to do it and make it happen nor are they interested in increasing it; simply because they are lazy and do want to do that, so the solution is right their in front of our face, it is just up to each individual person to take the initiative? Or you can just eat meat and fat and hope something happens?

In “Good Calories, Bad Calories” Gary Taubes mentions that when insulin is high and fat energy cannot be utilized, people naturally become more sedentary. Once that high insulin is reversed, people have the energy to be more active. Obese people don’t become that way because they don’texercise or move enough. Their bodies being in constant storage mode results in less activity. The vicious cycle.

Insulin is one of many hormones involved and is not the primary problem, for example in the case of diabetes or insulin resistance, insulin cannot work correctly if you have recessed GLUT 4 transporters in the muscle itself that are not moving because your not getting enough resistance or exertion of muscle tissue which controls your RMR and BMR.

[PaulL]

We’ve been down this road before. It seems to me that there are several fundamental assumptions being made by the energy-balance model, one of them being that the hormonal response to different types of food is irrelevant and that calories are therefore fungible. Hence the attempt to manipulate the body by controling the quantity of food.

Eating a pound of carbohydrate will cause me to gain weight, no matter how much I exercise—I know this from experience—whereas if I could even eat a pound of pure fat in the first place (I’d stop being hungry long before reaching that goal), I doubt I’d gain any fat, and I might even lose some. (I certainly managed to lose sixty pounds on my high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet, without any exercise whatsoever.)

You may reply that my story is merely an anecdote, and you’d be right. But we also know this from numerous studies; i.e., that the composition of food intake dictates hormonal responses with effects that override the mere quantities of the foods contained. And this is why people can put on fat when they eat the wrong kinds of foods, even when they restrict their caloric intake, and conversely, why people on an ad libitum well-formulated ketogenic diet can shed excess fat.

Mind you, this is extremely complicated science, and if even our nation’s top scientific minds find it impossible to grasp, then we shouldn’t blame anyone else who fails to do so.

[Momof5]

I certainly managed to lose sixty pounds on my high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet, without any exercise whatsoever.)

This is what is working for me as well. Excellent post, Paul.

I was stalled for two months, @David_Stilley figured out that I was not eating enough calories or fats. I was never going above the 20 grams of carbs, and I was not cheating at all, and was trying lots of fasts, etc as well. When he got me to start recording on Cronometer and I was posting what I was eating, he told me that if I increased my fats and calories that it would reset my metabolism, and he was RIGHT! It broke my stall and now I really realize that eating healthy fats is so important for our Keto journey!

[Arbre]

An interesting interview here:

From what I read, there are two pathways leading to aging: a protein one (TOR) and a sugar one (PKA).

Doctor Valter Longo, in his longevity diet, recommends a 60/30/10 (carbs/fat/protein) diet: low protein, and proteins mostly from legumes (to reduce TOR), and basically zero in sugars (to reduce PKA).

In this video, the researcher argues total carbs are responsible from the “insulin pathway” (maybe this is the PKA one? Or is it a different one). It is not clear if only sugars are the culprit, or if all carbs, including vegetables, are “bad”.

So, this leads me to a hypothesis of synthesis, between these scientific ideas and keto:

keto is low in carbs. So it seems clear that this is consistent with these ideas. Keto is usually high or very high in fats. Some keto are high in proteins (carnivores), but some keto could be low in proteins (in case fats come from olive oil, nuts, etc.).

Could it be then that a keto diet, high in olive oil and nuts, but low in animal protein, could be the ideal one for longevity purposes?

[Jennibc]

Yes! It’s like when they decided ‘melted cheese’ was an issue several years ago (I remember something on NPR about it) because people who ate a lot of pizza had issues with heart disease. I seem to remember all sorts of postulating about how when it was melted that made the saturated fat worse and the pepperoni was an issue and on and on and on. Never once did anyone stop and consider there is more crust (dough) than anything else on a pizza.

[Ilana_Rose]

Longo glosses over way too much for my comfort.

His longevity diet is based on poor science. Unless you keep your calories at starvation levels you are not preventing mtor activation as BOTH protein and carbohydrates will stimulate it. In fact insulin stimulates it more than protein and carbohydrates have a way bigger impact on insulin than protein.

Some keto are high in proteins (carnivores)

This is a mistake. Many carnivores practice a ketogenic diet and have no more protein than the average moderate-protein ketoer. They just have more fat.

It’s true that some carnivores are higher protein but that’s also true of a lot of regular, more plant based ketoers.

[PaulL]

As Bikman and others have pointed out, a well-formulated ketogenic diet provides the benefits of fasting, but without the hunger. I believe that what Rosedale, Longo, and others neglect in their analysis is that (a) the dietary context matters where mTOR is concerned, and glucagon needs to be taken into account along with insulin; and (b) mTOR is a necessary process.

We need both anabolism and catabolism to be going on, in due proportion, for optimal health. Nor is longevity at the cost of health and enjoyment any kind of bargain, in my estimation. I want to be able to live a healthy, enjoyable life right up till my death; I am not so concerned with prolonging life at all costs.

There is plenty of evidence to show that those of our ancestors who lived to adulthood and managed to avoid major accidents could live to quite an advanced age. The Plains Indians of North America were noted for the percentage of active centenarians in their population, until they adopted the white man’s diet.