Health & Nutrition by Michael R. Eades, M.D.

About a month ago I posted on a Swedish overfeeding study and how the results were misreported in the press. This study showed that increased carbohydrate intake can cause an increase in certain liver enzymes associated with the metabolic syndrome. Along with this liver enzyme data the authors reported on metabolic rate changes that are instructive in our quest to determine the existence (or lack thereof) of the metabolic advantage.

I would imagine that most people reading this blog have had problems with excess weight sometime in their pasts. Those of you who have struggled with overweight probably have little sympathy for those who have the opposite problem - that of inability to gain. Despite how easy it seems for those with weight problems to gain weight and especially to regain lost weight, it is extremely difficult for many people to gain weight almost irrespective of how much they try.

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Yesterday a reader sent me a film clip from ABC news about resistant starch. (Click here to view the video) In this film clip a young woman who is a registered dietitian (RD) spoke about the virtues of a “type of fiber” that she referred to as resistant starch. According to her, this substance can cure a multitude of ills.

There is a type of fiber called resistant starch that’s naturally found in some high carbohydrate foods.

And it’s amazing, the benefits. It ranges from helping us burn fat, helping us boost our immune system, control blood sugar, reduce the risk of type II diabetes and reduce the risk of cancer.

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In late November of this year Gary Taubes gave a number of talks to members of various departments at the University of California at Berkeley. One of these talks - The Quality of Calories: What Makes Us Fat and Why Nobody Seems to Care - was recorded and can be viewed by clicking here. You need Real Player to watch the video. If you don’t have it, simply Google real player or real player mac and you will find a free download of the program.

Gary’s talk expands on one of the theses in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories: the idea that obesity isn’t caused by gluttony and sloth, but by excess carbohydrate intake instead. If you haven’t read the book or if you have and you want the weight-loss section explained in greater depth, this video is for you. He’s a little more open than he was in the book about naming names and pointing the finger at people who for whatever reason can’t see the forest for the trees. The video is long - almost two hours - but well, well worth watching.

I’m going to be seeing Gary in about a week. We’ll have one of our many hour visits at a coffee house in downtown Manhattan. If anyone has a question for Gary, put in in a comment, and I’ll ask him as many as I can while I’m overdosing on caffeine.

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I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but much of the material in it isn’t mine - it’s Anthony Colpo’s. Why don’t I simply link to the material instead of reprinting it? Because Anthony changes or removes his material when it proves to be an embarrassment to him. So I want you to see it the way it is as of today when I wrote this post.

For those of you unaware of the tempest in a teapot drama that has been going on for the past month or so, here’s the story.

About two months ago I wrote a post describing the Ancel Keys starvation studies of the 1940s and compared the data from these studies with those published by John Yudkin about 25 years later. I selected the Yudkin study because the subjects switching to low-carb diets spontaneously dropped their caloric intake to 1560 kcal, which was almost exactly the same as the 1570 kcal the Keys subjects consumed. I wrote then that I wasn’t
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