Year: 2007

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Controversies Over Carbohydrate and Fats

In nutrition, it’s rare to find a complete consensus on anything.   Even with decades of data there continue to be controversies surrounding dietary protein intakes, generally revolving around kidney or bone health, among others.  But even those pale in comparison to some of the current arguments or controversies over carbohydrates and fat.   While there are many, the main ones I will examine here will have to do with the health related controversies.  Body composition issues will have to wait for a separate article.

Two (or Three) Dietary Camps

Generally, folks fall into one of two camps regarding whether they think carbohydrates or fats are good or bad. For a couple of decades now, the mainstream of dietary advice has been more or less stuck in the mindset of “fat is evil” and “carbohydrate is good”  This trend started with the early work of Ancel Keys on dietary fat and heart disease .… Keep Reading

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Examining Some Dietary Protein Controversies

The following represents the entirety of Chapter 8 from The Protein Book: A Complete Guide for the Coach and Athlete.

Protein Controversies

Before looking at whole proteins and protein powders, I’d like to address some of the most common protein controversies that tend to surround the high protein intakes typically seen in and recommended to athletes. The major ones are kidney function, bone health, and heart disease and colon cancer. Related to the issue of bone health, I’m also going to address the topic of metabolic acidosis and the impact that dietary protein intake has upon it.

Kidney Function

A common criticism of high protein intakes/diets is the concern that they are damaging to the kidneys. This belief seems to stem from the fact that, in individuals with preexisting kidney damage, protein intake often has to be reduced to prevent further development of the disease. Incorrectly, this has been turned around to suggest that high-protein intakes are damaging to the kidneys.… Keep Reading

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A Look at Common Contest Dieting Practices Part 1

Of all athletes in the world, bodybuilders (and other physique oriented folks such as fitness and figure girls) tend to be the most anal compulsive and neurotic about their food intake. Nowhere is this seen more than during contest dieting where folks that are already on the far edge of what most would consider sane turn batshit crazy about their food intake.

The normal approach to clean eating (which I’m not going to get into here) becomes even more extreme and it’s not uncommon to see these folks diet on the same 5 or 6 foods eaten day in day out for 12-16 weeks. This list might include skinless chicken breast, tuna, broccoli, oat, rice, sweet potatoes and nothing else. Fat intake can be highly variable, many try to remove dietary fat completely (a huge mistake for any number of reasons) while bodybuilders who live on the edge will allow natural peanut butter.… Keep Reading

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How Do Dieters Fail on Their Diets?

Note: The following is the entirety of Chapter 5 from A Guide to Flexible Dieting.  Specifically it looks at some of the common ways that dieters fail on their diets.

In this chapter, I want to discuss some two of the primary ways that dieters tend to sabotage their own efforts on a diet, that is the way that dieters fail diets. These two ways are being too absolute and expecting perfection and by thinking only in the short-term.

And before you complain about how bad it is form wise to write a short introductory paragraph instead of just going straight into the text, I’ll defend my style choice by explaining that I don’t like starting a chapter with a bold-faced sub-category. So there.

Being Too Absolute/Expecting Perfection

Perhaps the single biggest reason I have found for dieters failing in their diet effects is that many dieters try to be far too absolute in their approach to the diet something I alluded to in the foreword.… Keep Reading

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Comparing the Diets: Part 2

Having examined the traditional high-carbohydrate/low-fat in Comparing the Diets: Part 2, I now want to look at the second major diet ‘type’; moderate-carb/moderate-fat.

A quick note on the percentage nutrient notation: as much as possible I tried to adhere to a format where the percentages represent percentages from protein/carbohydrates/fat in that order. So a notation of 30/60/10 means a diet where 30% of the calories are protein, 60% are carbs and 10% are fat.

The Moderate Carbohydrate/Moderate Fat diet

The next major dietary camp refers to any diet consisting of relatively moderate carbohydrate and dietary fat intakes. This includes diets such as Barry Sear’s “The Zone”, Dan Duchaine’s “Isocaloric diet”, 30/40/30 nutrition and others. Such diets generally recommend a macronutrient split based on fairly equal amounts of protein, carbs and fat. Various scientific rationales, usually involving hormonal control are typically given.

The Zone, for example, recommends a 30/40/30 split while Dan’s Isocaloric diet is 33/33/33.… Keep Reading