I have some insight here, having been raised a Seventh-day Adventist. For generations, the SDA church promoted ABSOLUTE avoidance of all alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. The avoidance of caffeine extended to a ban on chocolate and colas. I think this really accounts for much of their longevity.
For years they also promoted absolute avoidance of pork and shellfish, but only recommended vegetarianism and never promoted veganism. A Seventh-day Adventist might eat beef, chicken, and finfish, and still be a member in good standing, but an SDA who began to drink coffee or alcohol or eat pork was considered apostate. No burnings at the stake, mind you :lol:, but you would find yourself on a prayer list if anyone found out. And, you could be expelled from an Adventist college if you were found to be drinking or smoking.

Here is a study that looked at coffee with SDAs:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/...11/ai_12673616/

Valtor - You posted a link to a video of Gary Taubes somewhere...he was talking about how fructose may be the issue, rather than carbs? Could you post that link again?

Strange, really... Quite a few of the people on this forum came here after having tested all that low-fat, vegan, high-carb stuff, found it didn't work, in whatever way, and turned to the low-carb way of eating. Seems that Matt Stone is just doing it the other way round...

I tried the Joel Fuhrman way of eating, too, once upon a time. I did lose weight, too, but basically because I was absolutely starving the whole time (I thought this was a good thing, so I did it happily). I lost muscle in the process, too, and I will never ever go back to that way of eating.

I wonder if Matt Stone will also monitor his body composition as he follows this diet??? I wonder if he will suffer from the same loss of muscle as I did???

The difference between me and Matt, though, is I never decided to open a big-mouth blog and proclaim myself an expert on anything, let alone start giving advice to diabetics. The guy needs to put his ego on a serious weight-loss diet, that's for sure!!!

I can't believe that this guy is for real.

amanda

There you go: http://www.dhslides.org/mgr/mgr060509f/f.htm

Slide 48.

Patrick

Thanks Valtor. Interesting that Taubes himself appears to be confirming the theory that fructose is the majority of the problem.

Makes me cringe when I think of the absolutely obscene amount of fruit I used to eat on Cordain's version of paleo diet. When he said "eat all the fruit you want", that was all the excuse I needed to gorge on the stuff.

Watched the video/slide presentation by Taubes. It's very compelling stuff, and Gary is certainly sticking by his guns.

But if I were in that audience, I'd be asking why - if carbs drive insulin, drive fat - are Asians not generally fat. Why are Peruvians who eat BIG ole starchy potatoes not fat. Why are many vegans so slender on very high carb intake?

His arguments appear "bullet proof" but too many real world populations which eat plenty of carbs appear to totally refute his main thesis.

Michael Eades has posted Gary Taubes’s answers to questions sent in by readers. The first one, “How do Asians and others living a seemingly high-carb existence manage to escape the consequences?” Taubes’s answer:

There are several variables we have to consider with any diet/health interaction. Not just the fat content and carb content, but the refinement of the carbs, the fructose content (in HFCS and sucrose primarily) and how long they’ve had to adapt to the refined carbs and sugars in the diet. In the case of Japan, for instance, the bulk of the population consumed brown rice rather than white until only recently, say the last 50 years. White rice is labor intensive and if you’re poor, you’re eating the unrefined rice, at least until machine refining became widely available. The more important issue, though, is the fructose. China, Japan, Korea, until very recently consumed exceedingly little sugar (sucrose). In the 1960s, when Keys was doing the Seven Countries Study and blaming the absence of heart disease in the Japanese on low-fat diets, their sugar consumption, on average, was around 40 pounds a year, or what the Americans and British were eating a century earlier. In the China Study, which is often evoked as refutation of the carb/insulin hypothesis, the Chinese ate virtually no sugar. In fact, sugar consumption wasn’t even measured in the study because it was so low. The full report of the study runs to 800 pages and there are only a couple of mentions of sugar. If I remember correctly (I don’t have my files with me at the moment) it was a few pounds per year. The point is that when researchers look at traditional populations eating their traditional diets — whether in rural China, Japan, the Kitava study in the South Pacific, Africa, etc — and find relatively low levels of heart disease, obesity and diabetes compared to urban/westernized societies, they’re inevitably looking at populations that eat relatively little or no refined carbs and sugar compared to populations that eat a lot. Some of these traditional populations ate high-fat diets (the Inuit, plains Indians, pastoralists like the Masai, the Tokelauans); some ate relatively low-fat diets (agriculturalists like the Hunza, the Japanese, etc.), but the common denominator was the relative absence of sugar and/or refined carbs. So the simplest possible hypothesis to explain the health of these populations is that they don’t eat these particularly poor quality carbohydrates, not that they did or did not eat high fat diets. Now the fact that some of these populations do have relatively high carb diets suggests that it’s the sugar that is the fundamental problem.

In GCBC when Taubes was talking about the china study he pointed out (this is a VERY fuzzy recall here) that it was the addition of grains that were not rice, in some areas, that seemed to be the factor correlated with health issues. This seems to be the same for what I read about other cultures and their carbs. E.g. lots of rice = ok; lots of fat = ok; lots of root veggies (in other cultures, and I mean 'sweet potatoes' NOT beets/potatoes) ok; 'some' foods as grains like fermented millet porridge etc. ok; but add wheat and it collapses even when there wasn't a lot of sugar, and this might be because it often is more 'sugar' to the body than sugar itself I suppose. He did not dwell on this, it is just something I took away from it, so maybe someone else can quote a more specific/accurate part (I don't have the book here).

It does seem more and more as if bad oils, fructose, and wheat, are at the heart of all of this.

The real question is what fixes it. You can eat good oils, take supplements to try and balance the bad oils you're trapped in like store bought meat, avoid fructose in every form except the rare berry, and ban all grains and even gluten. How long does it take for that to fix something? Does it fix something? In how many? Are there other factors that matter to 'healing'? If it's done metabolic damage already does that mean that every major gland and organ and hormone actually has problems, as well as stomach digestion, small intestine absorption, etc.? Is the complexity of this in part because the damage is pervasive body-wide and not just limited to a few key transactions like storing fat? These are the things I wish someone knew.

I understand what you mean PT, I decided I was fed up with my metabolism and I'm going to fix it for real. If not eating carbs is only a patch, then I'm going to find my real issues. I actually ordered some Metformin and Cytomel. My temp at 96.5 is not normal, whatever doctors tells me. I am now entering a more dangerous territory with this sort of experimentation. But self medicating might be the only thing that fixes me for real.

So I will try the WT3 Protocol (Wilson's Temperature Syndrome T3 Protocol). It's supposed to be done with timed-release T3, but all I have access to is Cytomel.

I'm really sick of trying to fix the problem by treating the symptoms. I want my properly functioning metabolism back and I'm going to fight for it ! :)

Patrick

Regarding improperly functioning metabolism. Yes, hormones are important in that regard. But so is muscle. Do you weight train?

I did, but only 5 hours a week of intensive supersets and dropsets for about 6 months. I did get bigger muscles, but that did not change anything for my temperature. I lost 5 pounds on the scale, so less fat and more heavier muscles. It was about 15 pounds fat loss and this was combined with low-carbing.

It never became natural for me to do this, which means it is not what my metabolism needed to function properly. I need a good endo, but this is a ridiculous thought where I live. So I'm taking things in my own hands. I will fix myself no matter what it takes.

Patrick

Hmm...self medicating with any hormone seems mighty risky unless you are VERY educated about proper doses. For instance, the amount of estrogen a woman secretes over a 30 year period weighs about as much as one postage stamp.

Dem hormones sho is powerful stuff!

Indeed, I've been reading on this for the past 3 years and it is just now that I really feel confident about it. I feel like I could become an MD if I only had the prior grades to be accepted (I was too lazy in school). ;)

Patrick

Valtor - 37 degrees centigrade was, IIRC, determined by the French. It was NOT intended to designate temperature to the tenth of a degree - body temperatures naturally vary. The US equaivalent of 98.6 is scientifically a mis-statement as normal temperature. It mistakenly implies that normal can be determined to a tenth of a degree. Other information regarding body temperature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_temperature