Stanford
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2010–2017
1:16:43 · 309K views · May 23, 2008
Stanford's Christopher Gardner presents his large, long comparison of four popular diets under real-world conditions, in which the lowest-carbohydrate Atkins diet came out on top.
Recommended as a researcher presenting actual diet-study results, including a trial with 311 women on different diet books.
4 comments from Hacker News
To steal a line, dietary science is younger than it looks. Don't be surprised if decade spanning long held beliefs start collapsing. Another good video. Stanford nutritionist and self-described vegetarian admits benefits of low carb diets: this video
There's a good (old) talk where Stanford's Christopher Gardner researched different diet books with 311 women. The Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?) this video The study was announced at [LINK]
> High fat/high sugar foods offer the most calories/dollar. So what? Well, the theory is that cheap vegetable oil and sugar causes these metabolic disorders which then causes obesity. >Taubes' insulin theories have been debunked by experiments. They're not his theories. He makes the point repeatedly in GCBC that they form part of modern, standard biochemistry. The only controversial points that he makes is that they should be applied to obesity research. > Taubes' insulin theories have been debunked by experiments. what are those experiments? My understanding is that carbohydrate-restricted diets generally fare better in terms of weight-loss, muscle-maintenance, and improvements in risk factors of chronic diseases: [LINK] this video Apparently they results are best for people who are insulin resistant, as you might expect. "PLASMA FREE FATTY ACID TURNOVER RATE IN OBESITY" I'm not sure exactly what that means, is this referring just to the rate at which FFAs cross fat-cell membranes, or the rate of esterification and lipolysis? Because it's the latter that Taubes argues is primarily important.
I haven't stayed up to date on the nutrition science stuff much, but there are studies showing that low carb, high fat diets (paleo, essentially) are better than the opposite. Here's a researcher presenting the results of their study as well as discussing several others[1]. Their study had 311 subjects, but most of the other studies the researcher mentions have extremely small sample sizes (one of the common problems with many nutritional science studies). Exercise science is really kind of a joke, though. The Starting Starting Strength community does an annual review of the year's important exercise science studies. Almost every single one is not capable of actually testing the stated hypothesis. Here's the review from 2012, if you're interested[2]. [1]: this video [2]: [LINK]