HB 2490 and Nutritional Dogma

So a number of progressive groups are collecting signatures to petition the AZ state government not to pass HB 2490. Apparently, this issue is so urgent, there's not enough time to provide much detail, either from change.org or democracyinaction.org. From what I can tell, the AZ legislature (specifically the House Commerce Committee at this point) wants to prevent local and municipal governments from placing restrictions on the kinds of give-aways offered by governments.

What this means is that local governments wouldn't be able to prevent companies from McDonald's from using toys as a marketing gimmick. Thing is, I'm not sure I support this. Although I strongly oppose marketing towards children, I also strongly oppose standard nutritional dogma, which local governments, such as San Francisco, will end up enforcing. Enforcing bad nutritional dogma disturbs me more than Happy Meals do, so this is one petition I'm not signing.

Photo Credit: Colin Grey

"Eating Too Much"

This is an off the cuff rebuttal of the idea that we “eat too much”. It’s an idea that is deeply ingrained in our culture and sneaks into the phrasing of everyday language in ways we don’t even notice… even for people that don’t believe calorie restriction leads to weight loss.

But I’d like to really ask the question, are we eating too much? Well, usually when we say that, we mean that a person will get fat and then acquire all the health conditions that associate with obesity. Never mind the dubious assumption that the amount of adipose tissue is causal or even correlates with ill health, you have to ask yourself whether calorie consumption would even be the primary driver of fat storage. Why not of muscle growth? Why not of a faster metabolic rate? Why not of more stamina, awareness, or immunity to disease.

But the real clincher: you have to ask yourself, shouldn’t the body be able to keep track and regulate everything using hormones. The answer is most certainly yes, because if it were not, the human race (and every other species that needs to eat for that matter) would’ve been toast long before civilization ever got off the ground.

And that’s where even using phrases like “eating too much” gets tricky, because it implies such a thing is even possible, that the energy storage systems would not be working towards homeostasis over the long term. Unless of course, fat people are just not hungry and feeling stuffed all the time, but just eat anyway. Yeah, that must be it.

So if “eating too much” is what makes you fat, “eating too little” must be what makes you thin. There are certainly plenty of people trying this. The problem with this is most people attempting this seem to suffer the converse of the symptoms listed above: loss of lean tissue, slowdown in the metabolic rate, etc. It makes sense when you think about it. From an evolutionary perspective, the body has to be able to deal with widely varying amounts of calorie intakes over long periods of time, and still maintain homeostasis, just like it has to do with all nutrients.

So if “eating too little” causes these responses in people, then presumably the reverse is also true. From an evolutionary perspective, we’d expect the body to take full of advantage of a calorie and nutrient surplus. Sex drive, lean body mass, etc. should all go up. But here’s the rub for all you chronic dieters. It’s well known that the body isn’t simply going to do this coming out of a starvation state. It’s instead going to store fat for quite a while, which is an appropriate adaptive response to the conditions of chronic dieting.

Some of the more astute out there may have noticed that weight gain occurs under times of stress, but then still rationalize it with sentiments like “stress makes people want to eat more”. But shouldn’t we consider that stress itself might be a primary driver in weight gain, considering that cortisol is one of the main hormones involved in the deposition of belly fat.

And it’s interesting too that animals in captivity seem uncannily to develop obesity and all the Western diseases. And it’s not due to the amount of calories.

So we have to ask the question, if obesity does correlate with Western diseases, then why? Is it because stress causes both belly fat and illness and we are all under some form of chronic stress? Is it because modern processed foods cause hormonal disruption which causes both? Is it because calorie deprivation (i.e. dieting) puts the body in a starvation response which then causes poor health and belly fat growth (later on)?

Personally, I’ve come to the point of never trying to “eat too little”. I certainly want my body to know whatever it needs is available. I don’t want it cutting back immune function or libido just so I can be “skinny fat”. I could go on, but I’ll end here.

Further Reading:
Calorie restriction is not effective for weight loss.

Blog Spotlight: Chris Masterjohn

Cholesterol. That is Chris Masterjohn’s main focus. It is one of the most maligned substances and one of the most misunderstood. And it is where we get some of our worst dietary advice from the mainstream media and medical industry.

Some of us give up on modern nutritional dogma after reading too much, when we realize it is too loaded with fallacies and cognitive dissonance. Others, such as Chris Masterjohn, give up after direct negative experience.

Cholesterol, and lipid metabolism, is a complex subject. It’s not surprising it’s been broken down into such stupefyingly simple terms. But this simplification has done the common man a great disservice. It gives the impression people know all they need to know and precludes debate.

Chris has dug deep, learning all that he can. He has provided critical reviews of both Uffe Ravnskov’s The Cholesterol Myths and Daniel Steinberg’s The Cholesterol Wars. I myself have not read The Cholesterol Myths, but I have read The Cholesterol Wars and Gary Taube’s Good Calories Bad Calories.

Perhaps I like Chris because I find he has come to many of the same conclusions I have. That may be confirmation bias. Or it may simply be the fact that he has discovered a way that makes all the pieces fit, and it is similar to how I have managed to put everything together and so far I have yet to see anybody piece it all together any better.

Chris rightly labels his theories as hypothetical and clearly delineates where and what type of studies would need to be performed to validate them. He’s also careful with terminology, with derivation of causation, and with what exactly can be ascertained from any particular study.

Recently, he’s written an alternative theory to the lipid hypothesis, which is really just an old debate that was closed without proper scientific evidence. Personally, I agree with Chris that is more likely the amount of time LDL particles spend in the blood, rather than the total level, that determines their role in athersclerosis. It was one of my biggest beefs with Steinberg, who stated simply that elevated cholesterol as a single variable “proves” that hypercholesterolemia alone is causal to heart disease*. I am impressed and grateful that somebody else has also seen this flaw in Steinberg’s logic.

If you want to get a real understanding of how lipid metabolism works, and what the likely factors are that cause it to break down**, then forget what you already know about cholesterol, LDL, HDL, and dietary fat. These concepts are simplistic, backwards, and will only get in your way. Prepare yourself like a sponge and get ready to start soaking in lots of information, because you’ll need it to start forming your own understanding and making your own decisions.


*Steinberg talks from the very beginning of his book about how he's laying all the groundwork to prove the lipid hypothesis, and I kept waiting for him to provide non-circumstantial evidence, but of course it never happens.


Further Reading:
More on the Lipid Hypothesis
More on Cholesterol and Heart Disease
Example of how misconstrued evidence can turn into wild claims in the media when it supports conventional dogma