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Not very helpful on carbohydrate quality. Are there 'good' and 'bad' carbohydrates?

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TLDR - carbohydrate intake is related to cardiovascular disease etc. Does not differentiate between full grain/integral and not, does not seem to control for sugar intake.

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Is this for all population groups? How about endurance athletes and other high carbohydrate demand groups? Does it vary between types of carbohydrates? So many questions.

The way I look at it is that the human body has had very little time to adapt to a rich carbohydrate intake. Let's not forget that the agricultural revolution happened only 12,000 years ago. Mass carbohydrate intake was adapted even later. Before that, people ate mainly meat, greens, and fruit. Evolution will adapt eventually, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

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From the abstract, they don't seem to differentiate between starchy foods and (refined) sugars. Intuitively and from my limited knowledge, I would assume that sugar is the real culprit of health decline, unless starchy foods are consumed in lieu of a diverse diet (including various protein sources, vegetables and nuts).

Starchy foods are still at the basis of many diets over the world, including in countries with high life expectancy (e.g. Japan and their high white rice consumption).

> human body has had very little time to adapt to a rich carbohydrate intake

people used to eat way more total% of carbs in the past, yet very few had cvd

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Yet this report implies all carbs are bad carbs.

I'm going to hazard a guess that excess consumption of carbs has more to do with it than the carbs themselves.

So....more carbs is the way out?

So, just like almost all public health recommendations of the past, the health service have been unhealthing people systematically

I'm throwing down bagels between meals like it's going out of style, because they are the bricks of coal to my blast furnace, baby.

Also I squared values don't hold. For example, "For each 5 %E increase in dietary carbohydrate intake, the summary RR was 1.02 (1.00–1.04, I2 = 66.8%) for cardiovascular disease, 1.04 (1.01–1.06, I2 = 0) for stroke but not significant for other outcomes." I2 = 0 is equivalent to saying all of this difference is attributable to chance and not differences between data. So while RR for stroke is 1.2 (20% increase), the amount of that increase attributable to real difference is ... zero.

Vegetable oils are the culprit I'm picking out.

They first started as industrial waste from the cotton-picking industry, until companies found ways to detoxify it enough for human consumption.

A big part of it is cumulative insulin response and the glycation of LDL and framing it for heart disease while it's actually repairing the damage from sugar ablating the endothelium.

Fructose has the same impact on the body as alcohol.

It's not simply refined sugars because even ancient Egyptians knew wheat and bread lead to diabetes and obesity.

Scientific knowledge is a progression. For the most part these agencies do the best they can with what they have. Without their guidelines most people would just ignorantly eat what tastes good in the moment.

Some of those 95% confidence intervals contain 1,0, yet the conclusion states that there is an effect. Eg. all-cause mortality (0,92-1,14).

I'm a bit rusty with statistics, but doesn't that mean that the effect is not statistically relevant?

You mean seed oils, olive and avocado oil are healthy.

I'm gonna need a source for this.

Bread makes you fat???

Depends on "when" in the past. In terms of evolutionary time the longest period (IE before agriculture) two thirds or more of our calories came from animals.

TL;DR No, this is pretty wrong.

So why are Asians so healthy?

I asked “so why are Asians so healthy” before reading this. I didn’t read the study but the headline doesn’t make sense to me.

No. Eating bread does.

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Plus, the Seventh-Day Adventist community, and other Blue Zones in Greece, Italy, Japan, and Costa Rica?

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The Okinawan diet consists of 85% carbs and they have the longest life expectancy. But they also stop eating at 80% full.

Check out the Okinawan diet and it will explain their diet and food practices. Very high carb, low protein.

Sounds like it’s not from carbs but getting overweight

People ate mainly what they gathered. Berries and roots. Meat was not easy to obtain.

Plant oils have little nutritional value and loads of cholesterol.

No. They have little nutritional value and loads of cholesterol.

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They also eat a smaller quantity than Americans, with far more variety in their diet. Each meal is accompanied with multiple different vegetables.

Doesn’t make their white rice healthy, just allows them to get away with it.

High Starch consumption was a survival advantage that the human willingly took up 12,000 years ago to avoid the potential risk of failed hunts and inability to forage. Doesn’t mean it’s what’s healthiest for us, just what gave us the best chance at surviving. Surviving does not equal thriving

High vegetable consumption, smaller caloric intake, more food variety, and less emphasis on fried junk food and sugars.

Any Asian populations that stray from this model turn out unhealthier, aka if they start adopting SAD characteristics

So perhaps the US food pyramid recommending 7 servings of grains per day should be revisited.

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Try fruitarians. Even before the ice age, before our agriculture revolution,we went after fruits,and plants. I'm talking when we haven't left Africa yet.

You are correct in that.

Global cotton inc. they are on the front lines of byproduct waste turned to cattle food and oil for people to cook with.

This study is so misleading. Remember we have amylase to break down starches. Keep eating your whole grains fruit and veggies. Stay away from high fat food and all processed junk food.

Most calories came from bread in Europe until the middle of XXth century but diabetes and obesity skyrocketed with the modern diet. I would not exaggerate the role of wheat in the current obesity epidemic.

You can go high carb low fat (with natural foods and good fats), or you can go low carb and high fat/protein.

The in-between is deadly.

This is why the diabetes association pushes low fat /high carb, but people tend to find more dramatic results with keto.

No, but there are better and worse carbohydrates. Unprocessed whole grains are probably fine to eat to your hearts content, partly because your heart will likely be content off far less, ha.

Then let them eat cake.

Should prob stop eating plants then

Which is what they do now

What does amylase break starch down into?

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Increased consumption of anything that makes you obese will be associated with disease risk. I mean obese people tend to eat more of everything as well. So do fit people, who are actually healthier. What are we supposed to take away from this ? That we should stop eating carbs ? Sounds like a bad idea to me.

It’s the sugar.

It’s always the sugar.

They eat an unprocessed diet rich in antioxidants. Carbs mainly from sweet potatoes and smaller portions of rice. Generally higher quantities of vegetables compared to the western diet. Small portions of meat. Tea and turmeric. Lower PUFA and lower total calories. My takeaway from their diet would definitely NOT be high carbs and low protein alone.

I completely agree. That's why I said look it up. Then gave an oversimplified "it's very high in carbs" statement. I could have pulled it up and copy/pasted, but I'm lazy.

Because plants.

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Increased intake of non-dietary carbohydrate is associated with childhood choking hazards, chewed pencils and vampiric death. Of these chewed pencils are considered associated with low risk of mortality outcomes, whereas staking is associated with abrupt flamboyant termination.

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OK, but I need 2500 kcal per day to function. If I don't eat carbohydrates, what am I going to replace them with?

Whats so bad about the in between? Is it because it leads to overconsumption or is there something inherently bad about med-carb med-fat diets?

Surprising fact to some but Asians do have high levels of diabetes especially without being overweight

It has to do with how the body responds to the release of insulin. Keto/low carb works because your blood sugar stays low, so fats (generally) become fuel rather than storing it away in your arteries.

For a more elegant and educated explanation, I highly suggest Gary Taubes: Good Calories Bad Calories (or any of his works, really).

Edit: I should add that for people without metabolic disorders, there is more wiggle room, but the principle stays true.

Into sugars your body then uses for energy

It used 41 studies, which probably didn't control for sugar intake either. No one does.

The real culprit is meat, dairy, eggs, fish, refined foods.

We should stop eating meat, dairy, eggs, fish. Eat whole food plant based if you want to be healthy.

Whole food plant based if you want to be healthy, dairy shouldn’t even be a food group

Is that because of the diet or because they drink like fish?

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And the Mediterranean diet is associated with increased cardiovascular health. Things like lentils and soy are associated with longevity and not nutritionally the same as refined wheat and sugar.

Our brains need carbs. If you're only looking at the heart, maybe carbs seem bad, but we consist of a whole body.

Taking Olive leaf extract and resveratrol would give similar benefits to the Mediterranean diet.

As usual, important to point out this user u/meatrition posts nothing but fake/misleading studies funded by Big Meat to trick people.

Why is this user still allowed to post here???

Yes. But the p-value was 0.008 for their nonlinear fit. The other two showed significance in the linear fit.

I thought that the numerator of I^2 was the variability between studies. So if it equals zero, that means the effect was perfectly consistent across studies...?

I'm absence of dietary carbohydrate intake, the liver makes all of the necessary carbs for the brain and body. The process is gluconeogenesis.

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Building on the response from u/the—larch:

Carbs and fats are processed by two different metabolic pathways and the carb pathway is more efficient so it is used first. You can then burn up the glycogen provided by the carbs while your body is slowly converting the fats which will feel like a blood sugar crash, so you eat more carb+fats. The process keeps going through the day and the fat has no where else to go except as triglycerides in your fat cells.

This issue can be abated if you’re willing to and can ignore the carb crash as a signal of hunger or if your carb source has high fiber as part of its nutritional matrix because the fiber slows down glycolysis. I would imagine we could potentially one day design a food with the ideal matrix where the ratio of carbs/fiber/fats provides the right amount of energy at the right time, but it won’t be as tasty as a donut.

>refined foods Agreed.

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Guys, it's u/meatritian. Just a keto pusher that cherrypicks studies.

Sad that he's allegedly a grad student. I have an MS in exercise physiology and people like this devalue my hard work.

Big Meat? I think I saw him in some movies.

Why is this guy allowed to post still?

Take my r/angryupvote

I plan to start eating humans

That’s one of the most vegan things you can do.

It’s the high graphite content. All that carbon detoxes the body.

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Ugh. Don’t call me that. I still wear leather.

Isn’t this stating the obvious?

Do you enjoy animal abuse and torture?

Only the ones I’m going to eat. Are you volunteering?

Where's the data?

Huh…wonder what’s it’s doing at the bottom of the food pyramid.

My dad has never been close to overweight and lives off of simple carbs and chocolate. His arteries were all 70% blocked and worse. One was completely blocked, he had a heart attack.

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The Case Against Sugar by Taubes agrees with you.

If you add Processed Sugars to the list, I am with you.

If your body never runs out of carbs to burn you never burn the fat and it accumulates. People should do periods of LOW carbs or fasting regularly so the body switches to burning fats.

On the Internet. The one of the reasons the Mediterranean diet works is due to the olives and grapes.

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You are spouting a misinterpretation of I^(2)

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Its so annoying that he just posts terrible articles here basically every day. A few months ago I went into his profile. Here on r/science he just spams any and all scientific papers that support his extreme keto diet, but in his profile he posts and comments on all sorts of medical related subreddits and tells people they can cure their irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, depression, and pretty much all diseases by eating like 90% meat, and the more red meat the better. Its dangerous to have these propaganda posts on a supposedly scientific subreddit.

nah. the usda has been pushing high carb low fat for years now. it is a failure. it is why the US has a huge obesity problem. low car high fat/protein is the way to go.

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It has failed because we do it poorly, but clearly there are cases where it can be effective. (Traditional asian and Mediterranean diets, for example).

For actual intervention, I agree. I've been low carb for 20 years.

I work with a dietician who's been following labs on people for decades. Ive learned from her that eating carnivore longterm is terrible for your arteries. Just like doctors have been saying for quite awhile now. It's never been about dietary LDL -- it's about saturated fat and how that influences LDL and triglycerides.

How do you know if they had cvd?

It's not like humans were pinnacles of health up until the last 50 years.

Look, I'm not the brightest marker in the caryon box, but if it's a burrito i eat

Keto/carnivore 4 lyfe!

Man all carbs is ass

Carbs is sugar. Whether its table sugar or brown rice…it eventually becomes the same in the body after it is broken down

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They also eat quite a lot of fish as well.

People can be passionate about differing opinions ... even if wrong. It’s how science works. You’re not devalued, you’re just part of the process.

Didn't we know this back in the 1950's? How is this newsworthy?

Absolutely not quite and that's a toxic way of viewing the world.

Whole foods with fiber tend to be healthy, table sugar lack nutrients, fiber, and spikes insulin + produces inflammation and has many negative effects on the body.

There is hardly an issue with consuming say, berries and mangoes.

That's a kind outlook but experts have a responsibility to those they're influencing. The data is out there some just choose to ignore it.

Low carb and keto have me unable to gain muscle as easily. I also cannot recover from working out as easily, such that when I eat a large amount of carbs, fat, and protein, I can exercsie every day without feeling beat up.

If I skip the protein or carbs, it gets risky, especially by day two.

I've tried going carnivore with grassfed and whole grassfed milk, there is just something miraculous about carbohyrdates when it comes to working out, running, building muscle, or producing a pump from exercise.

I think it's best to be cyclical, so you're able to easily switch between burning carbs or fat, or fasting.

Berries and mangoes are still loaded with simple sugars. Not as bad as candy but still not great. Complex branch chained carbs (think things like oat meal, whole wheat bread etc) are the least likely to cause blood sugar spikes and are generally the most healthy carbs you can eat.

Well, no one said skip protein, especially while lifting. Plenty of keto lifters out there, though.

If you eat a surplus and work out, even low carb, you get muscles. Is it the same result as the guys that live on boiled chicken breast and rice? IDK, but I wouldn't trade real food for an extra 2# of muscle. Ymmv.

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corpses

the answer is corpses jimmy

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Fiber is also a carbohydrate. So you think we should avoid fiber?

Does the body respond differently to a drink of 15 g fiber vs 15 g sugar?

Glycemic index; Any food that ranks under 55 is considered low on this scale and may be a better choice for people with diabetes. The GI of mango is 51, which technically classifies it as a low GI food.

The GI of whole wheat bread is 74 ± 2.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-for-100-foods

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But what if it's vegan?

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Most fiber is insoluble. It just acts to carry everything through your system and clean you out. There are dietary fibers that do break down and are carbohydrates but that's a small amount. So it's a bad idea to just lump fiber as a carb.

"Dietary fiber is the kind you eat. It's a type of carbohydrate."

https://medlineplus.gov/dietaryfiber.html

"Your body cannot digest fiber, so it passes through your intestines without being absorbed much"

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000193.htm

I mean if he was eating red meat, store bought fruit, and store bought potatoes he could easily have had a lack of b vitamins and a lack of calcium, even while eating chocolate. which would have resulted in arterial build up and a heart attack.

that was the traditional okinawan diet. its very different now.

It’s made of carbon and hydrogen. It’s a carbohydrate. There are three main types of carbohydrates:

Sugars. They are also called simple carbohydrates because they are in the most basic form.

Starches. They are complex carbohydrates, which are made of lots of simple sugars strung together.

Fiber. It is also a complex carbohydrate.

I was making the point because the above poster was trying to argue that candy and brown rice are equally bad be abuse they are “carbs.” All carbs aren’t created equal. Brown rice has fiber and other important nutrients and overall drastically different physiological effects than pure simple sugar.

Ya. Sorry. I agree with you kind of. It was just a weird statement bc it's irrelevant if it's a carb if it just passes through. Also I'm skeptical of the "all fiber is carbs" statement. I mean all plant fiber, sure. But for a mountain lion hair and bone constitute fiber and I don't think hair is a carbohydrate. Or if a human ate hair wouldn't that constitute fiber in fecal matter. You may be right, I'm not an expert

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Hair is mostly keratin which is actually a helical protein.

Is interesting that while we don’t directly digest and breakdown fiber … our gut microbes do and in ferment them into short chain fatty acids which are also important for gut health. Having a masters degree in nutritional sciences I approach the question more in regards from the biochemistry of the molecule. If you revisit your nutrition facts label you will indeed find fiber as a sub component of carbohydrate. Under carbohydrate it lists dietary fiber, total sugars, and added sugars. Some products like cheerios list soluble fiber as well.

I was merely pointing out that being overweight had nothing to do with his situation. Being overweight isn't going to win health awards, but you can limit your calories and still be a train wreck inside.

What’s the best cooking oil to use with this in mind?

We have that food now. Bacon, Cheese, organ meat.

I work out 5 Days a week. I’m not an Olympian, but certainly don’t feel beat up from working out on keto/low carb.

You may need to supplement. It’s probably a lack of electrolytes, not a lack of carbs.

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The user who posted is a pro-meat propagandist. They literally don't care.