cryptic said:
Can someone explain to me just so I can fully understand why there are two camps with one side stressing the near elimination of meats and fish and the consumption of more vegetables,fruits, and whole grains while the other stresses little to no carbs and an indulgence in meats? I somewhat understand the theories and basic reasoning behind each philosophy but I can't understand why meats and carbs are both villified and loved.
I apologize if I'm hard o understand as I'm tired but if you can catch my drift please help clarify things for me.
Camp I: Meat and vegetables are healthy. Reasons:
-Evolution by natural selection as a theory is in direct conflict with the idea that the foods that people ate for 99.999% of human history increase mortality. They just don't fit.
-Analysis of paleolithic skeletons shows good physique, perfect teeth, average height of about 5"10.
-Analysis of neolithic man shows a dramatic drop of in human health. Skeletons are short, teeth are decayed.
-Reverse migration studies over the 1800s-early 1900s showed that just about every tribe in the world was healthy on their original diet (meat and vegetables), but rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay started as soon as western diet was introduced. In the reverse migration cases, health returned.
-The obesity epidemic started in the 1970s, when the USDA food pyramid came out shunning meat, fat, and promoting 12 servings of grains.
Camp II: Grains are good, meat is bad
-Ancel Keys in the 1950s released a 7 countries study showing that dietary fat correlated with heart disease. Problem is there were actually 21 countries, but 14 of them just didn't fit the linear curve. Keys is basically the reason why saturated fat, cholesterol are still believed to be toxins today, despite there never being a shred of evidence proving it, and
mountains of evidence disproving it.
-Vegetarians influenced a guy named Senator McGovern that fat is bad (thanks to keys) and basically set a stack of cards for the food pyramid in the 1970s being created
-Government doesn't like admitting that it's wrong
-dieticians, doctors read the rewritten text books of the 1970s with Key's hypothesis
-Government tells people they're getting fat because they're not following their recommendations
Then again I'm hella biased.
Nothing wrong with fruit and vegetables. Grains are a big problem because of lectins, gluten, and phytic acid. But without meat, you have to eat tons of grains and legumes, and sugar to make things palatable.
So really it's about the conventional wisdom. If you think that meat and saturated fats are bad, then you're going to be in camp II.
As for why people are indulging in meat, some people here are ketogenic.... < 20 grams of carbs. That limits you to meat and green vegetables. Some people do better with satiety on ketogenic, and are focused on keeping insulin low.
I'm more moderate carbohydrate, but only vegetables, fruit, and occasional potatoes. The Kitavans show that potatoes are fine. While I think keeping insulin low is important, I think body fat is primarily regulated by a satiety feedback system. Leptin is the primary hormone involved here, and fat loss should be focused on fixing leptin sensitivity. I don't see potatoes, fruit hurting leptin sensitivty, but lectins from grains are known to cause leptin resistance.
