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Fascinating PBS Interviews with Taubes, Others

Happened across these interviews with leading diet/nutrition 'experts' as part of a PBS documentary on the 'Diet Wars'

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...iet/interviews/

The Taubes interview is fascinating. Willet is a little wishy-washy. Agatson (South Beach is there too. And admits saturated fat isn't as bad as he thought.) Didn't read the Ornish and Pritikin nonsense. The others spout the usual hearsay and dogma, but sound less than certain .

But it's all there.

Thanks for posting this link. So even Agatson is coming around toward Atkins view about fats. Very interesting indeed.

Excellent... I like this quote and this summarizes why I don't like CSPI:

Quote:

Some people said it was the best article they ever read, went on the diet. I got crucified in a variety of publications. A Washington Post reporter went after me, who had been advocating low-fat diets since the early 1980's. The Center for Science in the Public Interest went after me for having the nerve to suggest that low-fat diets might not be healthy. They'd been probably the primary force in the 1970s pushing low-fat diets, and through the 1980s. It was fascinating. They go after the messenger as much as the message. ...

Wow - the Gary Taubes interview is dazzling.

The Taubes piece was indeed a gem. I managed to control my gag reflex enough to read the Ornish one. Bragging about his peer reviewed studies. i suggest you all google on quackwatch and ornish and gorski, and you will see testimony before congress, on just how "scientific" Ornish is.

This caused me to sit back. I knew juice was bad for you but this is an amazing anecdote :

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agatson

Well, concentrated orange juice, where you've taken out the pulp and again the nutrient, the fiber, and just concentrated a lot of juice, is drinking a lot of sugar. And I always recall the experience I had with a patient who came in with a very high blood sugar, new onset diabetes. Usually [we] would expect [the cause to be] an infection or recent surgery. What it was, was that they got a juice machine in the office, and he was drinking juice all day. And once he stopped, the diabetes resolved.

Thanks for the link, this is great.

I gotta confess, I actually read the whole South Beach book the other day, and it's really like Atkins, if you put in a little fear of fat and speed up the phases.

I got the wrong impression from an interview Dr. Agatson gave. So I'm 'fessing up!

From the Agatson interview:

Quote:

From your point of view, what's wrong, if anything, with the Atkins diet?

Well, we do emphasize that our diet is a lifestyle, not a diet. The way we developed it for our heart patients, losing weight or normalizing your blood chemistry just for a few weeks or a few months does nothing to prevent a heart attack or stroke. It has to be over years.

The problem with the Atkins diet is, firstly he lumped all fats together, including saturated fats, at the beginning even trans fats, and said they're good.

They're all okay.

They're all okay.

And you're telling me trans fat's terrible.

Trans fat's terrible. Saturated fat's bad. Mediterranean oil's good. The other thing was basically lumping all carbohydrates together. And again I give Dr. Atkins credit. At that time, we didn't understand the importance of fiber or the concept of glycemic index. And he felt that you had to avoid basically all carbohydrates. You would deplete your sugar storage in your liver, and you would begin burning fat for energy. And that caused the creation of something called ketone bodies, ketosis, and he felt ketosis was the reason why we weren't hungry on the diet, and that's how we lost weight.

When you eliminate all those carbohydrates, including the vegetables with all the good nutrients, you're eliminating very important sources of vitamins and minerals, and we didn't want to do that. Also, when you go into ketosis, you lose a substantial amount of water, and particularly with older heart patients, we didn't want dehydration. So we gave our patients enough carbohydrates so that they didn't go into ketosis, and we measured that. We found still in the first two weeks, they lost their cravings for sugars and lost weight without difficulty. So you could have the healthy carbs and still lose cravings and lose weight.

The other thing about the bad fats is, as far as sugar and insulin metabolism, they are not good for it long term, whereas the good fats are, and that may be part of what makes people go off those diets and balloon up after a year. It's really important to have a transition into a lifestyle, a maintenance phase, and one that's simple, and we emphasize that very much.

:rolleyes:

Might want to keep up with the times, before slamming the competition.

He goes on at length about how exercise is crucial for maintaining weight and then goes on to say

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walter Willet

Unfortunately, what we've created is now being exported to the rest of the world. And in almost every country, in Europe as well as Africa, Latin America and Asia, rates of obesity are climbing rapidly.

I can well believe that the US is exporting a boatload of crap food to the rest of the world, but they aren't exporting lack of exercise as far as I know. That tells me that lack of exercise isn't such a factor in the obesity epidemic.

This series of article is really interesting. I am now reading the bit with Marion Nestle. She is of the opinion that a calorie is a calorie, blah blah blah. Once you get past that however she has interesting insights. Here is one

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marion Nestle

Yes. The food industry is in trouble, in the sense that it is in a hugely competitive environment. Our country has available in the food supply 3,900 calories a day for every man, woman, and child in the country. That's roughly twice the actual population need. Food companies are beholden to stockholders. They have to grow in order to maintain their stock prices. We already have 3,900 calories a day and 320,000 different food products in the American marketplace. They can't all keep growing in that situation. So all they can do is to try to get consumers to eat their products instead of somebody else's, or to eat more in general, and they're just terrific at doing that.

And they do that not only through advertising and marketing, but also by enormous efforts to change the social environment, so that it is now socially acceptable for children to drink soft drinks in school and all day long, for babies to have soft drinks in baby bottles, and for people to snack all day long and to eat food in larger and larger portions, all of which are strategies to encourage people to eat more.