Diet, Nutrition & Fitness: Whatever the question, the right answer is "It all depends".

The carbohydrate pendulum keeps on swinging! Bloggers keep on fighting!

Carbohydrates are good. No, they're bad. Wait, they're good again. Nope, bad again. Good again. Aargh!

So, are carbohydrates good or bad? See the title. Gluten? See the title.

As Everyone is Different, whether "X" is good, bad or indifferent all depends on genes (including gender), the expression of those genes, environment (i.e. birth weight, exposure to pollutants in the womb & after birth), general diet (i.e. nutrients, anutrients & anti-nutrients), lifestyle (i.e. sunlight exposure, stress, sleep etc) and type, level & volume of activity.

Failure to communicate, civil wars and dim bulbs.

Hat-tip to marie (who's a very bright bulb indeed!) for the following video.


Whaz so civil 'bout war anyway?

The reason why I'm writing this is because there's (un)civil war on the internets between various "camps".

At any given moment:-
There are people who function physically & mentally at their best on VLC/Keto diets.
There are people who function physically & mentally at their best on LC diets.
There are people who function physically & mentally at their best on MC diets.
There are people who function physically & mentally at their best on HC diets.
There are people who function physically & mentally at their best on VHC diets.
As people's circumstances change, they move to a different category.

If you don't understand what I wrote above, you are a dim bulb.
If you think that insults can offend me, you are a dim bulb.
If you think that agreeing 90% with someone makes me an ass/arse-kisser, you are a dim bulb.
If you think that I'll take insults from you without retaliation, you are a dim bulb.
Sadly, due to the Dunning–Kruger effect, dim bulbs are too dim to know that they are dim bulbs!
If you are offended by anything that I wrote above, I don't care.

In other news...
Mum's condition has deteriorated to the point where she is unresponsive and no longer has a swallow reflex. It's just a matter of time before she dies. I've been prepared for this for quite some time.

The Comfy Chair?

Because nobody expects...


I'm writing this post lounging like a lounge-lizard on a comfy three-seater sofa. When I'm driving from A to B, I'm sitting in a comfy chair. Basically, I have a cushy life. I go for a walk in the evenings and I go to many music events, but as I'm (a bit of) an information junkie, I spend many happy hours on-line, lounging on my sofa. My bad.

Thanks to technology and energy, many of us have labour-saving devices and horseless carriages. Therefore, many of us don't burn much energy from doing hard physical work and from having to walk everywhere.

Therefore, to maintain energy balance, many of us have to eat little food energy to maintain a reasonable weight and body composition. To get all of the vitamins*, minerals, fibre/fiber etc required for good health from little food energy requires the consumption of foods with high nutrient densities. You know where this is going, don't you?

*Except for Vitamin D, which requires sensible sun exposure between the end of March and the end of September when your shadow is shorter than you are.

If you enjoy irony, see What Did You Expect? Coca-Cola's Newest Anti-Obesity Ad Blames Chairs, Not Coke.

P.S. According to the BBC TV series "QI", the Spanish Inquisition gave thirty days notice of their arrival. Therefore, according to "QI", everybody expected the Spanish Inquisition!

P.P.S. As a cushy life results in muscles burning carbohydrate at a low rate, sedentary people are better-off eating less carbohydrates. See 10 Rules New Low-Carb Dieters Should Follow.

Oh no, not again!

Today's title is a quote from Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".



There seems to be a lot of hysteria & worry around the Internet.

Oh, noes! They took away her lunch-box (they didn't)! Her lunch-box! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They made her eat chicken nuggets (they didn't)! Chicken nuggets! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They made her eat a portion of grain! A portion of grain! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They wanted to give her a carton of skimmed milk! Skimmed milk! That's crap!

Oh, noes! They wanted to give her a carton of chocolate milk! Chocolate milk! That's crap!

Is there too much fat in this Guacamole?

Is there too much omega-6 in this pork?

Is there too much BPA in this bottled water?

And so on...

Firstly, chicken nuggets, grains, skimmed milk and chocolate milk are not crap. They're not perfect, but they're far better than chocolate/candy bars and fizzy drinks.

Schools act in loco parentis, so they are not going to feed the children crap. USDA guidelines are nowhere near perfect, but children who aren't humongously fat are metabolically-flexible. Therefore, whether they eat carbohydrates or fats, their bodies will burn them. If a child has been diagnosed with Coeliac disease, they won't be given gluten grains (unless the school wants to get sued).

Eat some carbs, dammit. See Why I Ditched Low Carb.

To quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again, DON'T PANIC! The dose makes the poison. Dietary fructose is used by the liver to make blood glucose to run red blood cells & the brain. A non-keto-adapted brain uses ~140g/day of glucose. Therefore, in the absence of any other dietary carbohydrates, a child could eat 100g/day of fructose, or 200g/day of sucrose without harm. Obviously, other carbohydrates are being eaten, so the amount of fructose that can be eaten without harm is probably ~50g/day, or ~100g/day of sucrose, or ~90g/day of HFCS55.

Warning, irony alert. So, light up a large spliff and chill a bit! Here's a song to help.



EDIT: Worrying about "X" may be worse for you than "X" itself, due to the adverse effect of chronically-elevated cortisol.

Does it really matter?

I mean, does it really matter exactly how & why low-carb diets work? My thoughts...



There's a lot of in-fighting on the internet about low-carb & paleo diets etc. Which is "best", exactly how they work and so on. I don't believe that there is a best diet. Everyone is different (in genetics, environment, activity etc). To boil it down to the basics:-

1) Eat real food that hasn't been buggered-about with too much. Grains that have had the outer husk removed (e.g. white rice) are O.K. Grains that have been rolled flat or inflated to a large size by heating to >100°C are O.K. Grains that have been ground into dust are not O.K.

2) If eating "X" causes you problems, stop eating "X". If certain proteins cause you problems, you either have a genetic condition (e.g. coeliac disease) or excessive gut permeability. The first isn't fixable but the second may be. If certain carbohydrates cause you problems, you either have a genetic problem or insulin resistance. The first isn't fixable but the second may be.

The real enemy here is the food manufacturers. They don't want people to stop eating their highly-profitable Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB), as it's bad for business. They also influence Governments. So let's stop fighting amongst ourselves and attack the real enemy any way that we can. Lead by example.

Why have we all become paranoid weirdos?

Except for you & me, and I'm not too sure about you!

Please note: "Why have we become increasingly distrustful and afraid?" is far more accurate, but nowhere near as attention-grabbing.

Adam Curtis has a few ideas.



For more Adam Curtis videos, see http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=%22Adam+Curtis%22

Politics - Bleurgh!

Just recently, I've been lying in my bed, thoughts running through my head. This always happens when I come out of a long period of depression. Here's a nice song from Robbie Williams.



When I started this blog, I made a decision to not discuss politics & religion, as they are about beliefs rather than evidence (I don't believe in angels, by the way). However...

Governments influence what we eat & drink with "Healthy Eating" guidelines.
Governments influence what we eat & drink with subsidies & taxes.
I therefore need to discuss politics.

In an ideal world:-
Governments discourage people & organisations from doing harm.
Governments discourage people & organisations from being A-holes (IMO), as A-holes make the world a worse place to live in for everyone.

In the real world:-
Governments are influenceable.
More money = more influence.
Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB) makers make humongous profits turning cheap (and often heavily-subsidised) crops into CIAB. They have loads of money.
Fat people eat more CIAB than thin people. More fat people = increased profits.
See where this is going?

Governments do bad things. I'm not under any illusions. Governments also do good things.
I believe that greed & corruption in government is the problem, not government itself. How to solve the problem of greed & corruption in government? Answers on a postcard, please.

Nutritional dogma.

Gary Taubes now has a blog. His first two posts have resulted in a lot of opinions being expressed, mine included.

As Henry Larson said in the film "Home for the Holidays (1995)":- "Well, opinions are like assholes, honey. Everybody's got one and everybody thinks everybody else's stinks."

I don't know why, but people adopt nutritional beliefs with a religious fervour. See Low Carb Talibans and read the comments. They choose their TOP EXPERTS (to quote Razwell) and believe everything that they write & say, dismissing any contrary views. What people don't appreciate is that even "experts" get things wrong and have cognitive biases that affect their opinions. See also Elvis lives!

I try to support my opinions using peer-reviewed studies from PubMed. As there are over 20,000,000 studies on that site, the average Joe & Josephine may have difficulty in finding what they're looking for. Here's a tip. Limit the results to studies in English on humans that have abstracts or free full text.

E.G. To find all studies by Leibel RL that meet the above criteria, copy & paste the following line into the search box:-

Leibel RL[Author] AND ("loattrfree full text"[sb] OR hasabstract[text]) AND "humans"[MeSH Terms] AND English[lang]

Other authors worth searching for are Frayn KN, Jéquier E, Flatt JP, Hellerstein MK, Parks EJ, Krauss RM, Dreon DM.

Does anyone have any other author suggestions?

Another useful resource is NCBI Bookshelf.

How stuff works.

My last post got a bit technical and delved into the finer points of cell biochemistry. For those who would like to learn more about how cells work, I thoroughly recommend the book Metabolism at a Glance (Paperback) by Jack G Salway, Sen. Lecturer in Medical Biochemistry, University of Surrey. It's crammed with diagrams of metabolic pathways.

I've also got Medical Biochemistry at a Glance (Paperback) by Jack G Salway. EDIT: I thoroughly recommend this book, too.

For more general information on nutrition and metabolism, I recommend the book Introduction to Nutrition and Metabolism (Paperback) by David A Bender, Sen. Lecturer in Biochemistry, UCL.

A good website for medical biochemistry information is MedBio.info by Prof. em. Robert S. Horn.

A good website for enzyme structures is Enzyme Structures Database.

Here's a searchable version of Biochemistry by L Stryer. It's a bit dry, but of interest is Food Intake and Starvation Induce Metabolic Changes and Phosphatidate Is a Common Intermediate in the Synthesis of Phospholipids and Triacylglycerols.

Here's NCBI Bookshelf where you can search many textbooks.

Here's an absolutely humongous diagram in .pdf format of Metabolic Pathways. You need a fast machine to view this.

Update: Here are some cool Animations and Computer-Generated Movies by Harvard University.

Here's a YouTube video of ATP Synthase, which takes a proton gradient and, using a molecular motor-generator, converts ADP + Phosphate into ATP, the energy source that cells use.

Happy reading and viewing!