The Never-Ending Diet Wars

His conclusion is correct about there being a consensus among Nutritionists re: a diet that is low in fat, low in refined carbs but high in whole grains, fruits, veggies, legumes, and "good" fats being the optimal way to lose weight and improve health. I think many of the "diet gurus" offer a path to that end, if you're wise enough to choose it...

It has no flaws! Check out the other reports, and don't listen to this one guy, who has mis-represented other diets repeatedly and is the source of some of the ugliest rumors and mis-information about them.

I'm not sure about the physiological impossiblity of losing weight even though 200 more calories have been consumed. I think that the resting metabolic rate accounts for about 60 to 75% of energy expenditure making it a big factor in weight loss. It would seem to me that if one of these diets had some impact either positively or negatively effecting metabolism; that could account for the seeming unlikelihood, as far as the number of calories.

Ornish's comments are interesting, but a bit arrogant.

According to him, virtually every human society in the past 50,000 years has been eating WRONG. They have been killing themselves, and didn't realize it. Or they were too stupid to realize they were eating deadly. It's wonderful the Ornish has come to earth to save us all.

The Laplanders eat caribou and caribou milk. Ornish says they're killing themselves.

The Swiss Lake Dwellers ate fish. Ornish calls animal protein a no-no. They were just stupid.

The Yanomamo of the Amazon eat game, river fish. Ornish says this is unhealthy.

The American Plains Indians relied on buffalo meat. Ornish would claim they were foolish.

Okinawans eat port and cook in lard. Forbidden by Ornish.

The Japanese eat prodigious quantities of seafood and shellfish, rich in cholesterol. Ornish says this is stupid and the Japanese are wrong.

The Andorrans include milk and cheese in their diets. Ornish would claim they are harming themselves.

Native Americans of the American Northwest thrived on salmon and game. According to Ornish, they were eating wrong.

The Clovis societies in North America fashioned spearpoints to hunt game. But they were ill-advised, according to Ornish. Better to hunt broccoli, or wait for it to be invented.

The Chinese cook in oil. Tsk, Tsk, according to Ornish.

Bedouin drink camel's milk. They are foolish according to Ornish.

Pacific Islanders lived on coconut and fish for eons. Which is a bad thing, because of the animal protein and the saturated fat, says Ornish. Perhaps they should wise up.

Australian aborigine ate kangaroo, and the fattiest parts thereof. A mistake, says Ornish. They should have eaten plants.

The Pygmy of Africa hunted game. They were compromising their health, but didn't know it.

I'd like to know of ANY society anywhere that was traditionally vegan/eggwhite/fat-free as Ornish contends is the correct human diet.

It seems that the author of the article is at least partially responsible for the "never-ending diet wars" by his apparent refusal to acknowledge the growing body of scientific evidence that the low-carb approach does provide significant weight loss and other benefits. However, the low-carb fanatics also fuel the controversy by their "my way or the highway" approach to diet recommendations. They seem regard any suggestion that there might be acceptable alternatives almost as a personal insult. The excellent results obtained by the Okinawans, Cretans, and vegetarians seem to suggest that low-carb is not the only way to achieve a positive outcome. Perhaps we should leave the "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude to the soldiers and politicians. Those of you who are bewildered and confused by this trivial bickering should probably speak to your doctor and work out a plan with his/her professional advice and assistance.

Notice that Ornish did not mention that the low-carb arm of the study was not calorie-restricted. In other words, the low-carb eaters could eat as much as they felt they needed to feel well-fed and energized, allowing their bodies to regulate intake, rather than having to artificially regulate intake through calorie-counting and portion control. The study does not discuss this, but you have to wonder: Were the people eating a low-fat diet hungrier than the people eating as much as they felt they needed on a low-carb diet?

Your body doesn???t know anything about ???diet wars??? or controversies regarding nutritional information. Your body is just going to continue to do what it was already designed to do: it will use protein for building and maintaining itself; it will use fat both for energy and for essential contributions to the body???s structure; it will use carbohydrate for fuel when it is given carbohydrate, but that carbohydrate will cause you to store any excess calories that are not immediately used as body fat and it will send the body once again in search of the nutrition it really needs.

Newsweek editors, the public deserves better than this. Please find someone to comment on health issues who is current with the research as it is now being generated, who is not tied to a particular dogma, who is interested in scientific truth rather than propping up a crumbling hypothesis upon which his career depends.

The idea that fat and cholesterol are ???garbage??? in your system is another fallacy that Ornish persists in trotting out every time his low-fat paradigm is challenged. Your body makes cholesterol. Cholesterol is the precursor to a number of important hormones. You would very soon cease to exist if your body did not have sufficient amounts of cholesterol. It is not ???garbage.??? As for fat, a typical cell in the human body is composed primarily of proteins and lipids (i.e. fat). Fat and protein are integral parts of the body???s infrastructure; your body needs fat. What your body doesn???t need is excess carbohydrate. If you are looking for ???garbage??? in the American diet, it comes in the form of excess carbohydrate, which your body truly does not need, and not in the form of fat and cholesterol.

The idea that an optimal diet is one that is low in fat is certainly not one which the medical and scientific community has reached consensus, as Ornish implies. The following is a quote from the USDA Dietary Reference Intakes, written by a panel of physicians, researchers, and nutritionists who may very well be considered to propose the ???consensus??? opinion regarding nutritional science in America: ???Compared to higher fat intakes, low fat, high carbohydrate diets may modify the metabolic profile in ways that are considered to be unfavorable with respect to chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease and diabetes.???

As for the fact that a diet must be low in fat in order to be healthy because fat has 9 calories per gram vs. carbohydrate???s 4 calories per gram, this is another one of Ornish???s leaps of logic. It tells us absolutely nothing about what happens to those calories once they enter your system. He neglects to mention that ALL carbohydrates (even whole-grains) convert to sugar in the body. He neglects to mention that all of this ingested sugar raises your insulin levels. He neglects to mention that one of the primary functions of insulin is to promote fat storage and prevent fat burning. Elevated insulin levels are going to prime your body to store ANY excess calories as fat, even the ones from low-calorie carbohydrates. In the meantime, these elevated insulin levels contribute to a cascade of metabolic problems, from type 2 diabetes to heart disease. Conversely, a diet low in carbohydrate and higher in fat keeps insulin levels low, primes your body to create fat-burning enzymes, and creates a metabolic profile that sets your body up to burn fat (both dietary fat and the stuff stored on your body), rather than store it.

. Unfortunately, if consumers are confused regarding nutritional information from the media, Ornish needs to step up and accept a great deal of the blame. He continues to promote dogma as fact and wishful thinking as logic, neither of which will bring us closer to the physiologically truth of how the body works.

It is not ???physiologically impossible??? to lose weight while eating more calories, ask any type 1 diabetic whose body is unable to make insulin. No matter how many calories a type 1 diabetic consumes, he will not be able to gain weight and will be very likely to lose weight.

Here???s what Ornish fails to mention: carbohydrates raise insulin levels; insulin promotes fat-storage and prevents fat-burning. If person with a normal metabolism is on a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, the calories consumed are ones that keep insulin levels at a low level, promote the utilization of already-stored fat and inhibit the storage of additional fat. If you are eating more calories, but your insulin levels are lower???as they would be on a low-carbohydrate diet???you will be less likely to store calories as fat and more likely to burn calories that have already been stored as fat. Conversely, if you eat a high-carbohydrate diet, you are creating a metabolic environment that is primed to store fat and adverse to burning fat.

The low-carbohydrate diet used in the study was not ???vegetarian.??? The author of the study explains that although there may be some cultural differences in what the study participants would eat as compared to their American counterparts: ???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.???

Ornish???s reasoning regarding the notion that the low-fat arm of the study was not low enough in fat is a remarkable feat of logic. If a moderately low-fat diet (such as the one in the study) does not compare favorably with a moderately low-carbohydrate diet (such as was used in the study), why would it follow that lowering the fat content even more would produce better results? If we can???t put out the fire with gasoline, maybe we???re just not using enough gasoline?

Vegetarians Are Evil! Everyone knows that!
http://www.VegetariansAreEvil.com

Lack of animal protein puts a person into "hunter/killer" mode physically and psychologically. Meat deficiency makes people testy, irritable and very aggressive. Vegetarians are hungry all the time and mostly rude and nasty people. They preach about their dietary religion from some imaginary moral high ground where they get to call all those who eat a healthy diet "meat addicted" and describe their sickly diet as somehow more 'ethical'.

The simple fact is that humans were designed to be omnivorous, and in fact our stomachs produce pepsin, which is an enzyme for breaking down animal protein. We do not have good fermentation stomachs like a cow does - an animal designed to be vegetarian.

Look at the effect on the mindset of some very famous vegetarians... Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Charles Manson... madmen and very evil.

The vegetarians always try to say that people like Albert Einstein were vegetarians, and in fact he was - for the last year of his life. He died after a year of it. He also was not a vegetarian when he made all of his most famous discoveries - when he was a young man eating a healthy omnivorous diet. It is not proven that his vegetarianism killed him, but it probably did not help.

The atkins diet Does focus on cardiovascular health, and to losing weight in "a healthy way", not merely on losing weight for the short term or even the long term. Dr. Pillai, below, is not giving Atkins or the people who have studied his diet -- and the research behind it -- enough credit.
Frank Hummer, mathematician

Obesity per se is not the problem. The real issue is the health and mortality consequences which follow from obesity. In November Harvard Medical School studied obese mice. The team of researchers gave one group biotivia transmax resveratrol extract, a commercial version of a compound found in red wine, and the other a placebo. The group receiving transmax resveratrol lived 31% longer and did not contract the normal diseases of aging such as diabetes, tumors, and cardiac diseases. Their endurance and energy levels also improved dramatically. Resveratrol is clearly no substitute for a good diet, exercise and a healthy lifestyle but it may augment all of these and extend the potential for ultimate life span. We need to first concentrate of the prevention of the disease of obesity and treat the excess weight as a separate issue. This approach will result in a reduction of suffering and huge health care cost savings.

Dr .Ornish is one of the rare few in the medical community who has devoted his research to the effects of diets on cardiovascular health. As a practising physician I can attest to his views and findings without any hesitation. The reason we have so many negative comments about his atricle regarding Adkins diet is simply because people are focusing on just the body weight not theit bodys health or biochemistry.
Physicians are in a better position to assess the validity of his comments. You can lose weight simply by cutting caloric intake but HOW you reduce calries is crucial to the body chemistry. So if all one wants to do is lose weights there are may diets to do that with.. However if you are one who is deciated to improving your health (not just your body weight and size) then you would be better off follwing his advice . People who prefer Adkins diet will shortchange themselves in the long run. Those who choose his advice will eventually be in better health and enjoying their old age withou forking ot their retirement income on diabetes pills/ colestrol lowering pills and gout medicines.
ADKINS diet will in short term show all those wonderful numbers in the long term here is what awaits you :Vascular disease , Heart dosease, GOUT , fatty liver, diuverticuloses, colon carcinoma to name a few.
Its impossible to be objective if you are Predetermined NOT to be. Its high time someone had the courage to educate people about the power of helathy eating not just medicine consumption.I applaud Dr Ornish.
Sreeja Pillai MD

I whole heartedly agree with Dr Ornish. As a parcticising physician I incorporate his recommendations to my patients. Nutrition is such an important component to homeostasis that it can not be emphasized enough.
Its indeed rather disturbing that NEJM can be part of such a study. The main reason Adkins diet is so readily accepted by people is simply because is offers them the path of least resistance without changing their current eating habits. Apart from Coranary heart disease the other effects we are seeing include fatty liver , chronic fatigue,cancers etc to new a few. Without emphasizing the importance of diet we physicians simply keep increases doses of statins based on current guidelines for LDL lowering. While necessary statins are not all inclusive one pill ammunition that replaces healthy diet. While is hard to change certained ingrained dietary habits, its crucial that we physicians begin advocacy for dietary chnages with more detailed discussion of its impact on health.
I applaud Dr Ornish for addressing this issue far before it even came on the table ,so to speak.
Truly wish we had more cardiologists out there like you. Bottom loine its not JUSt about the body weight folks, its ALL about the body chemistry that changes with your diet.
Sincerely,
Sreeja Pillai MD

Of course this study has some serious flaws, one in particlar: it's not the "Ornish" diet.

Newsweek has given you a bully pulpit. You shouldn't use it to promote your own self-interest. This is an article you shouldn't have written.

Mr. Ornish may believe it is impossible to eat more calories and still lose weight, but I consume close to 2000 calories per day at pre-maintenance on Atkins. Other members of my family eat 1500 calories on low-fat diet, are not losing weight, and are getting ready to be put on cholesterol-lowering meds. I have lost 80 pounds over the last 3 years and my doc says my bloodwork is stellar.