Duh, indeed!

I can’t read the name of the book because it is in Hebrew, and I can’t read Hebrew. I assume it’s the Hebrew for Protein Power, but it’s in three words.

MRE

Rabbi Hirsch Meisels
Jewish Friends With Diabetes International
http://www.FriendsWithDiabetes.org

I didn’t see it, but I asked my wife, who goes through all the emails we get, and she said she remembered seeing it. She (and we) are woefully behind in all our correspondence.

But it probably won’t be possible for you to do a translation because the book publisher owns all the rights to all languages. Protein Power is already translated into Hebrew and is sold in Israel. The others haven’t been. When an entity – typically a foreign publisher – wants to translate one of our books, that entity contacts our publisher and arranges to pay an advance to the publisher for the rights to translate and sell in that language. We don’t have the ability or the legal right to make those decisions; only our publisher does.

Eric Westman:
In reponse to the queries about what was eaten on the “low-carb” arm of
the study published this week in NEJM, I asked Dr. Shai to clarify what
kind of foods were eaten, because the sentence in the methods section
(page 231), “participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of
fat and protein,” has been interpreted to mean that this was a
“vegetarian low-carb diet.”

—————————

“Hello Eric,
This is kind of funny that some could think of a “vegetarian low-carb”
diet. Is it a new suggested strategy? could be interesting idea but this
wasn’t the case here. Our low-carb diet was based on Atkins, the
participants read the book and the recipes were more or less comparable
to what you know in the states. Beef is the main red meat. What could be
different? People here would not mix in the same meal meat and butter, a
salad is considered a very rich one and not a lettuce based, and the
main dressing is olive oil. As for beverages, same industry that makes
money everywhere.
For example, a plate could include : fish or fried/not bread coated
chicken/or red meet, broccoli and mushrooms coated with eggs, roasted
eggplants, vegetable salad (peppers, cucumber, green leaves, not
lettuce) with olive oil dressing. I understand that some of the
low-fat people find it hard to believe that such a low-carb diet was
tremendously favorable within 2 years in a well designed study, but
these are the facts and the science of tomorrow, with the next long term
studies in the pipeline, may confirm or not these findings.
Best regards, Iris [Shai]”

This from http://www.lipidus.org/node/1742

Maybe someone with Westman access could verify this, so a lid could be put on the discussion?

I have Westman access and the response is verified.

Regina Wilshire pretty much has it:

I received an email today from a friend who asked one of the researchers about the reference to plant-based (vegetable) fats and proteins. Dr. Shai assured him that the low carbohydrate group was not advised to consume a vegetarian low-carb diet, nor were they specifically restricted from eggs, cheese, red meat, poultry or fish. Due to dietary restriction (religious) the group would not, for instance have a cheeseburger or butter on top of their steak. Olive oil featured prominently. The participants did read the Atkins diet book. And the examples provided of the types of meals was “For example, a plate could include : fish or fried/not bread coated chicken/or red meet, broccoli and mushrooms coated with eggs, roasted eggplants, vegetable salad (peppers, cucumber, green leaves, notlettuce) with olive oil dressing.”

I read somewhere else that the emailer in question is Dr Eric Westman, but I cannot relocate the exchange right now. Suffice it to say that the Israeli low-carbers got lots of animal fat and protein. Only the question remains: Why does the study claim to have urges the low-carb group to eat vegetarian stuff?

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=8932341

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/zeitung/Sonntags;art7761,2575164

He states that low-fat and Med women were limited to 1500 calories, whereas the men got 1800. The Atkins people (and I say ‘Atkins’ because a different article said they were limited to 20g carbs/day) were not restricted in calories.

Did everyone read the same study?

“among the 272 participants who completed the intervention, the mean weight losses were 3.3 kg[LF], 4.6 kg [Med], and 5.5 kg [LC}, respectively.”

Over 2 years! Come on…this is hardly news worthy or even worth the trouble of dieting in this way. There is some small advantage to LC for improving blood profiles and there may be some if they focused on the blood sugar levels, etc. of diabetics. Over the long term it looks like the three performed about the same.

It seems unremarkable, but it’s a statistically significant difference. When you get a large number of subjects in a study such as this one, many of them don’t lose much and bring down the average for the group. The results in these types of studies are not as high as you would like to see, but given the numbers of subjects involved, the differences are meaningful.

“CAVEATS: Experts say the low-fat diet in the experiment allowed more fat than the American Heart Association recommends.”

So I guess the low-fat dieters would have fared even worse if they had followed the AHA guidelines.