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Featuring Guest Gary Taubes
1. Gary, did you do any research on the affect that artificial sweetners (splenda, sweet & Low, etc) have on insulin?
2. Gary and Robb, I have read that the insulin secreted after consuming a protein-rich meal can be as high as after a carb-rich meal. Can you explain why the former does not tend to lead to fat accumulation nearly as effectively as the latter?
3. I have read both of Gary’s books and think he has done an amazing job of exposing the public dietary advice bullshit for what it really is… What are his views on the Kitavans and why they can be so healthy on such a high CHO intake? I think its fairly obvious that they had no early or prolonged exposure to the processed high sugar/PUFA frankenstein foods that we have, so is it possible that if we maintain our metabolic machinery the way it should be from a young age, the metabolism has no problem in dealing with natural starches? (with low anti-nutrient content)
4. Stephan Guyenet and Chris Masterjohn among others are making the claim that it is leptin resistance and not insulin resistance that causes obesity, citing that insulin resistance seems to occur downstream of leptin resistance. The implication of this is that fat mass is regulated in the brain, not the fat cells themselves. In the past, you have dismissed this idea. I was wondering whether in the face of new information, such as animal models spontaneously losing fat mass when leptin is injected directly into the hypothalamus, you have investigated this viewpoint.
5. Gary’s main audience, when talking about how exercise doesn’t necessarily lead to weight loss, is obese people who are in metabolic derangement. But I’d love to know whether Gary thinks weight loss can be accelerated through exercise–-provided you’re sticking to a low-carb approach. It makes sense that a low-carber who ramps up the activity level could burn through existing fat stores faster.
It seems plausible that the sheer caloric load does not drive fat accumulation directly, which is then regulated by hormones. But could it still be that excess calories (from any source) trigger fat storage mechanism indirectly by first impacting those hormones (just as stress or high blood glucose do)? Looking back at our ancestors, can we imagine a situation when the winter is coming, the body must put on fat to survive, and for some reason the only available food is meat? Shouldn’t our bodies have developed a mechanism to store fat (again, for pure survival purpose) even without carbohydrates in the diet?
Taubes addressed this point, I think. He basically said we know that meat doesn’t make people fat. And we also know that people lose fat when they cut the carbs. So that is what has to be explained. That protein produces an insulin response doesn’t change the fact that you can’t get fat eating a protein and high fat diet. It might mean other things are going on, which I thought Gary freely admitted.
I think we should really be questioning the validity of “calorie” as a scientific concept. What does the heat generated by burning food in a bomb calorimeter have to do with human metabolism? I suspect nothing. In other words, not only is “calories in calories out” wrong, “calories” period is wrong. We shouldn’t even include the concept of “calories” in our theoretical paradigm.
I really appreciated Robb raising this issue with Taubes at the end of podcast.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/28/feds-sting-amish-farmer-selling-raw-milk-locally/
Thought you would love this.
I saw that. Ouch.
This is terrible. Its hard enough that I have to drink all the way to Pennsylvania from Jersey for this stuff.
strengthfoodlife.blogspot.com
I didn’t listen to this whole podcast, but as a TYPE ONE diabetic, if I eat meals with purely protein, I still need to take insulin to avoid blood sugar spikes. If I eat a meal with a few carbs and some protein, I need to take more insulin to cover all of that then I would if I just calculated it for the amount of carbs I ate. Other diabetics also have to do the same thing. Some also add in fat, but I haven’t found that necessary.
Just my experience – anyone else experience this?
I’m not a card-carrying Paleo person, just a visiting (very) low-carber here; also not a Type 1 D. However, I’m very interested in the insulin response to protein, and think that some low-carbers are a little complacent about it. I would also question that it’s never possible to gain weight on a purely protein and fat diet; never say never.
People say, don’t worry about the insulin response to protein: it’s countered by the glucagon response. Yes, but what does glucagon do? Cause the liver to secrete glucose. So you are getting both an insulin and a glucose response.
As I understand it, in a person with a healthy metabolism, the insulin-glucagon balance is under pretty tight control. One can imagine however that in type 1 diabetics, type 2 diabetics, pre-diabetics and people with metabolic syndrome, there is potential here for things to go awry.
The following site contains some interesting information about insulin-glucagon and other related matters:
http://www.medbio.info
See specifically this article:
http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%203-4/homeostasis_2.htm
[quote]
Insulin and glucagon secretion is coordinated
Insulin has many actions, the most well-known is stimulation of glucose and amino acid uptake from the blood to various tissues. This is coupled with stimulation of anabolic processes (or synthetic reactions) such as glycogen, protein and lipid synthesis. Glucagon has opposing effects, causing release of glucose from glycogen, release of fatty acids from stored triglycerides and stimulation of gluconeogenesis. The balance between these two hormones holds metabolism “on the line”, promoting a stable inner metabolic milieu (or homeostasis).
Consumption of carbohydrates triggers release of insulin from beta cells. Alpha cells become inhibited and cease to secrete glucagon. Taken together, these actions produce a rapid return to fasting blood sugar levels and storage of glucose as glycogen or lipid.
A protein-rich meal leads to release of both insulin and glucagon. The latter stimulates gluconeogenesis and release of the newly formed glucose from the liver to the blood stream. The very moderate rise in insulin associated with the protein meal stimulates uptake of the sugar formed in the liver by muscle and fat tissue.
[/quote]
Now the type 1 diabetic won’t be releasing the insulin, but will they release the glucagon?
Yes, and up regulating ketone production:
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/metabolism-and-ketosis/
Robb,
Do you have range for T levels available somewhere? Evidently my doctor says that a level of about 200 is considered normal. I’m 27 and my T-level is 467. I’m guessing that’s kind of low…
Why can’t the calorie deficit be what causes the fat cell to release fat?
I like this dialogue a lot. We all have to agree to this:
If insulin is the problem (I don’t think it is THE problem but it is certainly a problem once there is metabolic derangement) then both insulin sensitivity and carbohydrate load are both factors. We can list off dozens of things that improve insulin sensitivity and make carbohydrate more benign so this is ultimately an important part of the equation.
Also +1 on the bread. Gary’s CRP is 0.7 on a fairly low carbohydrate diet..which is “low” but mine is 0.1, I eat the sweet potatoes, not the bread.
Interesting discussion about “good science”. Gary remains so steadfast on his position about clinical trials. I guess you need to be when your goal is to topple the Nutrition Council’s grain paradigm. How do you structure a trial when you’re not sure about the mechanisms?
I’m more of the n=1 person myself. Try it out and see how you look, feel and perform. Where have I heard that before? Study and try to understand the most likely mechanisms. In 20 years, the clinical trials may be complete; It would be nice to know you’ve been taking care of yourself in the meantime.
I loved this podcast. I always wondered what it would be like to get Robb and Gary together and I wasn’t disappointed. I also thought that Gary has a really good sense of humour which hasnt come across in other podcasts I have heard.
Robb,
Thank you so much for bringing Gary Taubes on the show. Taubes always offers very stimulating conversation with regards to nutrition. It was Taubes who convinced me of the efficacy and scientific validity of low carb eating, and it was you, in your book, who taught me how to implement the low carb dietary practices in the best possible way.
If I had one wish, it would be to have a round table discussion podcast featuring you, Dr. Mat Lalonde, Dr. Loren Cordain, and Gary Taubes. Now, talk about a meeting of some big minds. One can only dream, I suppose.
-Lawrence
Robb,
Any idea what that article about the FDA and class action lawsuits is called or where I could read that?
Thank you.
-Ty
It was a NewScientist piece, circa 2001.
Great podcast. How much of a geek am I that I get so excited about listening to things like this. Gary is awesome, and was a big influence on me getting into all this stuff.
About the Paleo vs. Mediterranean diet study (http://www.springerlink.com/content/h7628r66r0552222/fulltext.pdf), you said that carbs were pretty much equal, but they estimated about 100g more in the Mediterranean diet, and about twice the glycemic load, and 450 more calories. Not to be an ass, but just figured I’d point that out 🙂
I wish I had Bill Gates/Oprah money, I’d fund all these dream studies that should be done (and buy a private island where I’d spend my days eating grass-fed beef and japanese sweet potatoes smothered in coconut cream).
Thanks squatch.
Why all the softball questions ? Where is the scrutiny that would befall a public figure ?
It’s clear that Taubes is a big celebrity right now especially as he is promoted by the mainstream media but can we really allow celebrity to tell us the truth?
Still nothing on hypothalamus and arcuate nucleus, agouti-related protein, neuropeptide y, glucocorticoids and especially cortisol ,corticotropin releasing hormonge, cathecholamines ,ghrelin and leptin,proopiomelanocortin ,serotonin and polyunsaturated oils. All of these have much clearer effects on weight gain, health and even the despised carbs over the most disdained insulin.
I have to say this Taubes theory and obsession with insulin that supposedly fatten you with carbs is just as bad as that other theory of bad cholesterol and saturated fat. Maybe insulin or cholesterol is not bad if its produced by the body , maybe it’s the wrong theory.
I’m the one who asked for a transcript a while back because I can’t hear the podcasts. I know transcripts require a lot of time to prepare and I would love a quick answer to this one. Could someone just quickly tell me if the answer to #5 is yes or no? Thanks!
—-
Gary’s main audience, when talking about how exercise doesn’t necessarily lead to weight loss, is obese people who are in metabolic derangement. But I’d love to know whether Gary thinks weight loss can be accelerated through exercise–-provided you’re sticking to a low-carb approach. It makes sense that a low-carber who ramps up the activity level could burn through existing fat stores faster.
“yes”.
Hey Rob,
Quick question. Chronic Tonsillitis: anything that eating paleo would do for that?
The person in question has had inflamed tonsils for a couple of years that seemed to stem from an incomplete root canal. The tooth and gum region became quite infected and then the tonsillitis appeared. The tooth and gums have since been fixed but the tonsillitis persists. The person has tried many different courses of anti-biotics to no avail. A pharmacist also mentioned something about dormant bacteria? Would the course of anti-biotics not take care of this? Oh, and as you may have gathered, this person does not eat paleo.
*If this makes the podcast: Greg, I must apologize for my poor writing style. I do have a reading and writing disability but I guess I can’t really hide behind that my entire life. Feel free to rip me to shreds on this 😛
Listen to the podcast with mat Lalonde.
Check on this write-up on Taubes’s latest book Why We Get Fat:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-05-04/
INTERESTING
same old skepticism… i don’t really see any new information there. I guess that in and of itself can be interesting in that it serves as a validation of the book when the main points are not refuted by a self-proclaimed skeptic.
This podcast is a health nut’s wet dream. Keep it up guys.
Take me down to the paleo city
Where the grass is green
And the cows are a plenty
Just a vegan livin’ under the street
I’m a leaky case that’s tough to beat
I’m your charity case
So buy me somethin’ to eat
I’ll pay you at another time
Take it to the end of the line
Omega 6 to omega 3
Or so they say
You gotta
Keep pushin’ for the anti inflame
You know it’s, it’s all a gamble
When it’s just a game
You treat it like a capitol crime
Everybody’ doin’ their time
Strapped in the chair of a vegetarian diner
why I’m here, I can’t quite remember
They say saturated fat is hazardous to eat
I’ll have some more bacon
But I can’t see
Tell me who you’re gonna believe
Capitain America’s been torn apart
Now he’s a CORPORATE jester
With a broken heart (MI)
He said turn me around
And take me back to the start
I must be losing my chyme
“Are you blind?!”
I’ve seen it all a mllion times
Now, you know I LOVE GNR, right? This is going on the front page!
Dude! front page?- Axl will sue you for copyright infringement! (a man’s gotta protect his market share y know)
I cant tell you how many miles I’ve logged listening to that cassette on my sony walkman in my long distance running days! Yet to no avail on my abdominal fat.
Gotta thank you man, for improving my health,energy,outlook, etc. no serious health probs, decent weight following lo carb for a coupla years but hovering ard 15-18%. Then discovered your podcast, but didn’t bc 100% gluten free until i got your book and went to your seminar in Toronto (im the guy who asked you if tylenol was ok for hangovers) “Tylenol is an over the counter (OTC) anti-pyretic (fever) medication. It has slight anti-inflammatory properties, but it IS NOT classified as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID).”
Feel MUCH better gluten free, can start seeing my lower 2 abs, and i have a 5 month old girl! It can be done! Ppl seriously need to chill out and relax a bit.
PS Greatest album ever. The spaghetti incident is what brought the band down. Too many carbs, too much gluten, exacerbation of manic depression, the rest is history.
Ok you asked for it
It’s so easy easy
when everybody’s gluten free baby
So easy
gluten free seems to please me
it all feels so right
when I sleep ear-ly at night
see Glen hit you
you fall down!
I see you SADers standin there
you think you’re so cool
why dont you just
frack off!
And that goes for all you punks in the press
That want to start shit by printin’ lies
Instead of the things we said
That means you
Tom Venuto
Dr OZ
Time magazine
surgeon General
the AMA
Barry Sears, what you pissed cuz Evander eats more fries than you?
Frack you, suck my frackin cow
And in this corner, weighing in at a lean mean 155lbs,
Get in the ring!
Word-up. I think both Axl and Kurt Cobain have/had gluten/GI issues.
I’m really late to this discussion but I just now found these podcasts and especially the Gary Taubes interview, which I’m listening to right now. At the part where you guys comment on the “gatherer-hunters” vs “hunter-gatherers” I was surprised Gary noted he hadn’t read this in anthropology literature. As a student in anthropology (I have my MA and am about to enter a PhD program in hominin dietary ecology), I can definitely say that the notion that gathering possibly precludes hunting and provides the bulk of energy consumed is a popular hypothesis. Much of the literature I read by people such as Frank Marlowe, Richard Wrangham, Robert Sussman, or Katherine Milton (to name a few) favors the importance of plant foods and gathering by females as a more important provisioning system, especially because of its reliability, and indeed “gatherer-hunter” is used in the texts to denote this change of emphasis.
The purpose of switching the words in these contexts is not some conspiracy from meat-phobes to denounce carnivory in the human diet as Gary suspected by the health organization, but to acknowledge an alternative hypothesis, favored by many anthropologists, that gathering rather than hunting is an important legacy of human dietary history.
Thank you for the show and your work. Best regards to you all.
Steph-
What these folks (especially Milton) neglect is the transition that has occurred. The fossil record clearly indicates early H.sapiens, Neanderthals and h.erectus were big game hunters first, plant gatherers a distant second. This is not conjecture but evidence of stable isotope analysis. We see a fractal pattern of the transition from big game hunter to forager for a specific reason: our ancestors ate (into extinction) enough of the megafauna to necessitate diversified food strategies. This is the case whether we are talking the San francisco Bay area, the Americas or just about anywhere BUT Africa. Optimum foraging strategy and isotopic analysis simply do not support the Milton-esque camp until such time that we see HG’s living in highly marginalized areas.
Appreciate the response. I would like to agree with you on all that you said, especially when I have always inherently disagreed with Milton’s work. However, to try and avoid running with my own biases, I would like to point out new considerations. The main problem with bone isotope analysis is that it is inherently biased in what it records. We can only read whether the specimen ate C3 or C4 plants or the animals that ate those plants. Nitrogen isotopes can estimate trophic levels and quantities of aquatic or terrestrial food sources. Therefore, isotope analysis is good at saying we were meat eaters, but in assuming the markers show meat consumption, it effectively tells us nothing of the plant foods consumed. The problem with hominin dietary reconstruction is that we don’t have enough information about the plant foods. These don’t record well in bones, bone assemblages, or tools. They do not preserve well either in macrofossils, and are only just recently being parsed through phytolith analysis (microfossils), and this study itself is in its infancy, so the data is not as complete.
Optimum foraging strategy is kind of dodgy to use when we can’t know everything about the environment of our ancestors and so we cannot even know of the factors that may play in to deciding optimal foraging. Plus, culture and technology throw a wrench in the nice predictable pattern of non-human optimal foraging that we apply to early hominins and early humans.
And with regard to your point of extant hunter-gatherer groups living in marginalized environments…. exactly the reason the term “gatherer-hunter” may be more applicable in the context of modern literature. I only want to point out that the anthropologists are far from sure of our ancestor’s diet, so in turn, when using the anthropological literature to present a case for particular diets, one must keep a skeptic’s distance.
Exactly, and so, when we turn to molecular biology and genetics we find plant material (carbohydrate) a largely redundant and inferior fuel substrate:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17063032
We can build this from molecules & genetics up, or down from the anthropology/archeology.
Mr.Wolf,
This is my first day here, myself & my 2 teenage sons need to lose over 100lbs each! I know. I am very interested in learning how to eat all the proper foods, but I am confused by what we have been learning. Is there some where you have alist of foods we should be eating & a list of what we should never eat? I can’t afford your book at this time, but I would really like to do your life style change I NEED to & I want to. But I really need some guidence.
Thank you for listening.
Diane- it’s all in the FAQ!
6/21/2011 Today I watched Gary Taubes on the Dr. Oz Show. I was sooooooooooo disappointed. I don’t feel he represented the paleo diet at all. He shouldn’t go on TV if he can’t stand up and give specific reasons to eat and live paleo.
I have been trying to change my eating style to paleo and will continue on. But I could easily have been scared off by what Dr. Oz was saying and having his challenger (Gary Taubes) respond weakly.
Frustrated in Michigan ~ Billi ~