Why You Can’t Trust the ABC (or Gary Taubes & Robert Lustig) to Report the Truth About Diet, Exercise & Fat Loss

Back in August, I reprinted an email I’d sent to journalist Maryanne Demasi asking why her recent Toxic Sugar segment on the ABC show Catalyst was so replete with nonsensical claims. I listed several of the false statements made on the show by herself, the narrator and the guests (which included book authors Gary Taubes and Robert Lustig). I cited research that readily disproved these claims, and asked Demasi how she could possibly reconcile the results of that research with the statements made on the show.

Demasi’s response was to claim she was busy working on a segment about cholesterol, and that she’d answer my questions as soon as possible. Then, in a rather remarkable display of audaciousness, she asked if I would help her prepare her segment on cholesterol.

Um, no thanks.

As I fully expected, I never heard back from Demasi. But on August 27, I did receive the following email from a Kirstin McLiesh, who identified herself as “Head, Audience and Consumer Affairs” at the ABC:

Dear Mr Colpo,

I refer to your email of 11 August to Maryanne Demasi.

In accordance with ABC Complaint Handling Procedures, your correspondence has been referred to ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs.  Audience and Consumer Affairs is separate to and independent of content making areas in the ABC.  Our role is to investigate complaints alleging that ABC content has breached the ABC’s editorial standards.  These editorial standards are set out in our Editorial Policies and Code of Practice, available here – http://about.abc.net.au/how-the-abc-is-run/what-guides-us/our-editorial-policies/.

The concerns outlined in your email are currently being assessed. The ABC endeavours to respond to all complaints within 30 days of receipt. However, please be aware that due to the large volume of correspondence we receive, and the complex nature of some matters, responses may at times take longer than 30 days.

Yours sincerely,

Kirstin McLiesh

Head, Audience and Consumer Affairs

I’m not sure who passed on my email to the Corporate Affairs crew at the ABC, but at any rate, I didn’t expect much to come of their so-called “independent” investigation (for the record, when an outfit investigates itself, it is not an independent investigation; a bonafide independent investigation would be one conducted by a party totally unrelated to the ABC and with no vested interest in the findings).

And so I pretty much forgot about the whole charade until September 19, when I received another email from the ABC, this time from someone identifying himself as “Mark Maley, Audience & Consumer Affairs”.

Here’s the email, followed by my comments:

Dear Mr Colpo

Thank you for your email of 11 August concerning the Catalyst program, “Toxic Sugar”.

As your correspondence raised concerns of misleading content, your email was referred to Audience and Consumer Affairs for consideration and response. The unit is separate and independent from ABC program areas and is responsible for investigating complaints alleging a broadcast or publication was in contravention of the ABC’s editorial standards. In light of your concerns, we have reviewed the broadcast and assessed it against the ABC’s editorial requirements for accuracy, as outlined in section 2 of the ABC’s Code of Practice: http://about.abc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/CodeofPractice2013.pdf . In the interests of procedural fairness, we have also sought and considered material from Catalyst.

This segment was a presentation of theories expounded principally by Robert Lustig and also by Gary Taubes. Some of their conclusions are controversial and some experts do not agree with their concentration on the effects of fructose and insulin as the principal agents of increasing obesity and metabolic disease. However, the program did not endorse their theories or present them as fact. The program, however, stands by its assessment that Robert Lustig and Gary Taubes are credible and responsible and that their theories are worth consideration.

Your email focussed on two of their claims that you assert are misleading. Firstly that the reason why exercise fails to produce weight loss is because it simply makes you hungrier and secondly that carbohydrates, via their effect on insulin, increase body fat gain.

In relation to exercise Gary Taubes said:

“The studies show that exercise has virtually no effect on weight loss. One thing exercise does is it makes people hungry.

The program then summarised his argument:

“Burning calories through vigorous exercise triggers hunger signals in your brain so that you eat to replace those calories. Your body knows it’s losing vital energy stores, so it reacts by slowing down your metabolism to conserve that energy.”

Catalyst advises that Taubes’ statement  was based partly on literature from the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine who published joint guidelines for physical activity and health.  They did not conclude that physical activity would lead to weight loss, they concluded the following:

“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.”

Mr Taubes also cites a 1989 Dutch study in which researchers trained couch potatoes to run a marathon. After 18 months of training and having run a marathon, the men lost 5 pounds of body fat; the women had 0 percent change in body composition.

Catalyst notes that evidence exists both for and against the role of physical activity in weight control. High levels of physical activity and successful maintenance of body weight may be a result of better coupling between energy intake and energy expenditure, potentially mediated by physiological changes in appetite, albeit in the presence of large inter-individual variability. Prospective studies, however, find little evidence of the more physically active members of a population gaining less excess weight than those who are the least physically active.

Dr Demasi prefaced the discussion of the issue by noting that “overeating and being sedentary can make you gain weight” and summarised this section of the segment by saying that “exercise does have other health benefits that extend beyond weight loss”. She was not saying that exercise has no role in weight control, rather that Gary Taubes is saying that the role of overconsumption of sugar and starch is of much greater significance in the rising incidence of obesity and that controlling their intake is the crucial factor in weight loss.

The role of exercise in weight loss among overweight individuals is controversial. However, the focus of this section was not to advise against exercise but rather against the excess consumption of sugar and carbohydrates. On review, we are satisfied that reasonable efforts were made to ensure factual elements were accurate and that the section was not materially misleading.

On Insulin, Professor Robert Lustig said:

Our fat consumption has stayed exactly the same over the last 30 years. And look at the disaster that has befallen us. And that is because our consumption of dietary carbohydrate has gone through the roof. Anything that drives insulin up will drive weight gain.

The idea that carbohydrates stimulate the insulin response and that insulin is one of the main hormones that promotes fat storage is not disputed by most obesity experts. Professor Cowley, for example, said in the program:

“If you constantly provide carbohydrates to the body, you’ll have constantly high insulin levels, and that will lead to increased fat deposition in tissues.”

The program advises that it interviewed one of Australia’s top nutritionists Dr Alan Barclay for the story.  Dr Barclay pointed out that starch is just as much of a problem as sugar when it comes to the insulin response. The segment did not advocate the Atkins Diet and did not say that people cannot lose weight due to calorie restriction.  Taubes and Lustig believe that calorie restriction is difficult for people to maintain for a long period of time, and that lowering insulin by lowering carbohydrates is the option they would take.

The program was clear that there is still ongoing debate surrounding these theories. Dr Demasi emphasised that:

“There is still ongoing debate surrounding Professor Lustig’s theories. Some nutritionists warn against demonising sugar in the same way we demonised fat in the ’70s. They say the focus on sugar will result in unbalanced dietary advice.”

In summary, Audience and Consumer Affairs are satisfied that the segment made it sufficiently clear that the more controversial aspects of Taubes’ and Lustig’s theories were unproven and not factual. We are also satisfied that reasonable efforts were made to ensure the accuracy of factual statements made in program.

Thank you for taking the time to write; your feedback is appreciated.

For your reference, the ABC Code of Practice is available online at http://about.abc.net.au/reports-publications/code-of-practice-2013/

Should you be dissatisfied with this response to your complaint, you may be able to pursue your complaint with the Australian Communications and Media Authority, http://www.acma.gov.au .

Yours sincerely

Mark Maley

Audience & Consumer Affairs

Okay, before I answer Maley’s reply, I have to say that I don’t like having my intelligence insulted, and I strongly object to people taking me for an idiot. I’m not sure if this was Mr Maley’s intention, but nevertheless it’s exactly what he proceeds to do in his email.

As for the results of the ABC’s distinctly non-independent investigation: It’s hardly surprising that the ABC ruled in favour of itself. I wasn’t exactly expecting them to write back with, “You know what Anthony, we double-checked the statements made by our narrator, Demasi, Taubes and Lustig, and guess what? You were right! They have no foundation in sound science and we apologize for ever putting this slop to air!”

The ABC did what I fully expected it to do; it simply avoided the evidence I presented and instead reflexively defended itself with a mix of half-truths and outright lies.

There are so many mistruths contained in Maley’s email it’s hard to know where to start. Well, before we hit the hard science, how about we address the allegedly “credible” and “responsible” nature of the guests on their show.  Maley claims:

“The program, however, stands by its assessment that Robert Lustig and Gary Taubes are credible and responsible and that their theories are worth consideration.”

I suspect Catalyst’s “assessment” of Gary Taubes wasn’t very thorough. If they’d done their homework they would have quickly found out he’s got quite the reputation for cherry-picking evidence that supports his arguments while blatantly ignoring that which doesn’t.

Now, anyone can accuse someone else of being a cherry-picker, and the accusation is thrown around quite freely these days by proponents of opposing dietary viewpoints. But I must say, Taubes seems to go out of his way to confirm the allegations made against him. He evinces a strong and consistent habit of citing only the evidence that supports his own arguments, while blatantly and unashamedly ignoring that which doesn’t.

And according to many of those who’ve been interviewed by Taubes, his one-sided approach to constructing arguments hardly stops at selective research citation. Taubes was widely lambasted for misquotation after his seminal 2002 New York Times article titled “What if it’s all been a big FAT Lie?” This is the article that blasted Taubes into the public consciousness and lined him up for a book deal with Alfred Knopf for which he received a cool $750,000 advance.

According to several of the researchers interviewed by Taubes, it was indeed all “a big FAT Lie” – his article, that is. Reading like a giant infomercial for Atkins, it quoted a number of prominent researchers and academics who – once staunch opponents – suddenly appeared to be supporting the low-carb Atkins Diet with which Taubes had become so enamoured with.

Gerald Reaven, the Stanford University researcher who coined the term “Syndrome X”, was one of many who complained he had been quoted out of context. “The article was incredibly misleading”, he said[1]. In fact, Reaven was so embarrassed and angered by what Taubes had done that when another writer, Michael Fumento from Reason magazine, contacted him for commentary he refused to be interviewed. Eventually he relented and told Fumento:

“I thought [Taubes'] article was outrageous. I saw my name in it and all that was quoted to me was not wrong. But in the context it looked like I was buying the rest of that crap.” He added, “I tried to be helpful and a good citizen, and I ended up being embarrassed as hell. He sort of set me up.”[2]

“He took this weird little idea and blew it up, and people believed him,” says John Farquhar, also a professor emeritus at Stanford University. “I was greatly offended at how Gary Taubes tricked us all into coming across as supporters of the Atkins diet,” says Farquhar.  “I think he’s a dangerous man. I’m sorry I ever talked to him.”[2]

Taube’s article ended with a quote from Farquhar, asking: “Can we get the low-fat proponents to apologize?” But the quote was taken out of context. “What I was referring to wasn’t that low-fat diets would make a person gain weight and become obese,” explains Farquhar. Like Willett and Reaven, he was worried that the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet incessantly promoted as the epitome of healthy eating could in fact raise the risk of heart disease. “I meant that in susceptible individuals, a very-low-fat diet can raise triglycerides, lower HDL cholesterol, and make harmful, small, dense LDL,” said Farquhar[1].

“We’re overfed, over-advertised, and under-exercised,” says Farquhar. “It’s the enormous portion sizes and sitting in front of the TV and computer all day” that are to blame. “It’s so gol’darn obvious—how can anyone ignore it?”[1]

“It’s silly to say that carbohydrates cause obesity,” said George Blackburn of Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in response to Taubes’ article, which misleadingly portrayed him as an avid supporter of the Atkins Diet. “We’re overweight because we overeat calories.” [1]

On the contentious subject of ketosis, Taubes’ article included reassuring words from National Institutes of Health researcher Richard Veech, who said that “ketosis is a normal physiologic state.” Veech told Fumento the quote was correct, but that Taubes conveniently “omitted to say that I strongly urged people to not use the Atkins diet without the supervision of a physician”, due to Veech’s concerns about potential cardiovascular complications[2].

“He knows how to spin a yarn,” said Barbara Rolls, an obesity researcher at Pennsylvania State University. “What frightens me,” she said of Taubes, “is that he picks and chooses his facts.” Taubes interviewed her for some six hours, and she sent him “a huge bundle of papers,” which he simply brushed aside. “If the facts don’t fit in with his yarn, he ignores them,” she said[1].

Taubes was “very selective in what he chooses to include because he’s trying to sell a specific line,” said Rolls. “He is a good writer; that’s the thing that scares me. This is such a good example of how you can pick and choose your facts to present the story you want. But that’s not how science should be done. You can’t interview everybody and simply ignore the people you don’t want to hear.” [2]

But from all accounts, that’s exactly what Taubes did. The truly remarkable aspect of Taubes’ NYT article was, not the compelling scientific support for its central claims (despite masquerading as a science-based exposé, it did not include a single scientific reference), but the consistency with which the supposedly supportive “experts” he cited rushed to distance themselves from the article. One after the other, they couldn’t emphasize strongly enough that Taubes had left out critical (and non-supportive) statements, and blatantly quoted out of context those he did see fit to include.

Danish researcher Arne Astrup, who had already published two extensive reviews confirming the efficacy of low-fat weight loss diets, was interviewed by Taubes for the article. Astrup’s two papers analysed results from 20 studies involving nearly 2,000 people who followed low-fat diets. In one report published in 2001 in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders, Astrup found low-fat diets “prevent weight gain in normal weight subjects and produce weight loss in overweight individuals.” The other report, published in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, Astrup and his colleagues concluded low-fat diets “consistently demonstrate a highly significant weight loss” of seven to nine pounds in normal-weight and overweight participants.

But none of this found its way into Taubes’ NYT article. When Washington Post writer Sally Squires asked Taubes why, he replied: “Astrup is problematic”. Taubes said he didn’t like the fact Astrup “chose studies that put people on low-fat, low-calorie diets and compared them to people who ate normally,” a rather pointless criticism given the goal of such studies is often to determine whether alternative approaches work better than those believed to be causing the very problem being studied, in this case obesity.

Simply by enrolling people in a weight loss study, Taubes claimed, “you turn them into healthier people and intervene in their lives,” which he says is why he didn’t mention the findings in his article. Again, this was a most disingenuous excuse given many of the trials reviewed by Astrup did in fact control for this potential confounder. Taubes, apparently, has no understanding of the concept of clinical trial randomization. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to understand it; Astrup says he explained this to Taubes during a half-hour telephone conversation, but again, Taubes did not see fit to include this inconvenient information. “I reviewed all the evidence suggesting that low-fat diets are the best documented diets and was extremely surprised to see that he didn’t use any of that information in his article,” Astrup said[3].

Another researcher Taubes considered ‘problematic’ was F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, director of the Obesity Research Center, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Medical Center in New York. Pi-Sunyer was part of a 12-member National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute panel who authored the 1998 Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. The panel identified four dozen published, well-designed, randomized controlled clinical trials on low-fat diets. A review of this literature led the panel to conclude that cutting dietary fat can “help promote weight loss by producing a reduced calorie intake” and that “reducing fat as part of a low calorie diet is a practical way to reduce calories.”

So why didn’t Taubes mention this?

“Anything that Pi-Sunyer is involved with, I don’t take seriously,” Taubes said during an interview in which he mistakenly identified Pi-Sunyer as a psychiatrist (Pi-Sunyer is in fact an endocrinologist). “…He just didn’t strike me as a scientist. He struck me as a grand old man… Pi-Sunyer was one of the people who in the course of interviewing I decided was not a good scientist.”

Yep, just like that. With no further explanation of just it was about Pi-Sunyer that made him such a poor scientist and nothing more than “a grand old man”, Taubes conveniently eliminated another two-dozen studies that failed to support his preconceived conclusion.

Similarly ignored was renowned obesity researcher Dr Jules Hirsch, whom Taubes interviewed in his office at Rockefeller University in New York. Hirsch had published ground-breaking research in which volunteers were fed isocaloric diets of greatly varying macronutrient composition. Low-carb, no-carb, high-carb, moderate-carb…it didn’t matter; so long as caloric intake was kept the same, it didn’t make a whit of difference to the subjects’ weight status.

“I just kept telling him, it doesn’t matter what kind of calories you eat,” says Hirsch, but Taubes clearly wasn’t listening[2]. Taube’s’ hearing seems to mysteriously shut off when presented with information that conflicts with his preconceived “insulin and carbs make you fat!” thesis.

Perhaps the most telling comment from Taubes came when he told Squires, “I know…I sound like if somebody finds something I believe in, then I don’t question it.”[3]

Damn straight. The overwhelming consensus among the aforementioned researchers was Taubes had already decided the conclusion of his story long before he interviewed them, and that his article was a terribly one-sided affair that ignored a wealth of contradictory evidence.

Now I know what Mark and some of you die-hard Taubes fans are saying at this point:

“Hey man, that New York Times article was way back in 2002. Maybe Gary’s cleaned up his act since then?”

Yeah, good old 2002. I remember it clearly. People got around by horse and cart, washed their clothes on a scrubbing board, and listened to the football on a scratchy old radio.

Seriously, apart from Facebook and iPads, not a whole lot has changed since 2002. Our politicians are still full of shit and promising change that never comes, the military-industrial complex is still waging ‘freedom’ on Middle Eastern nations, and Gary Taubes is still peddling the same old rot about carbs, insulin, and exercise – and he’s still using the same highly creative and selective methods of evidence acquisition.

Taubes is still unwavering in his claim that insulin and carbohydrates make us fat. Along with Lustig, he’s claiming the effects of insulin and carbohydrate are independent of calories, and that carbohydrates and insulin – not calories – are what determine whether we lose or gain weight.

As Mark Maley’s response clearly shows, both he and the crew from Catalyst think this is a valid claim. In fact, Catalyst’s own narrator stated unequivocally, despite the complete lack of supporting science, that “The higher your insulin, the more likely you are to store fat, because insulin is the main hormone that puts fat into fat cells.”

Maley, by the way, also claims:

“The idea that carbohydrates stimulate the insulin response and that insulin is one of the main hormones that promotes fat storage is not disputed by most obesity experts.”

I don’t want to give too much credence to statements like this, because they rely on the “Appeal to Authority” fallacy. This fallacy occurs when people who cannot construct a sound argument for whatever viewpoint they are supporting instead point out that a lot of people with big credentials and fancy initials after their name believe in said viewpoint, and therefore it must be valid.

I couldn’t give a rat’s rectum whether or not a bunch of purported ‘experts’ support a particular theory; I’m far more interested in the evidence they cite in support of that theory. Nonetheless, it behoves me to point out that Maley’s claim about the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis not being disputed by most ‘obesity experts’ is absolute nonsense. Most of those whom could reasonably be described as “obesity experts” – i.e. pioneering and prolific researchers who have performed substantial research on the subject, as opposed to hyperbolic book authors – maintain that calories are the overriding determinant of fat gain and loss.

Arne Astrup, George Bray, George Blackburn, Jules Hirsch, Theodore Van Itallie, Barbara Rolls … are you familiar with any of these names, Mr Maley? Probably not, because none of them have written popular format diet books that sold a squillion copies by promising easy weight loss, and none of them shamelessly pimp gimmicky solutions to obesity instead of the plain, unsexy truth about calories.

But the fact remains these are the biggest names in obesity research, and they will all tell you in no uncertain terms that a calorie surplus is what causes obesity, not insulin or carbohydrates.

Dr Arne Astrup was recently ranked among the world’s top five on a list of the world’s 172,000 most productive obesity research authors.

Did Catalyst, which apparently places so much value on “credibility”, bother to seek out Dr Astrup for his views?

Evidently not. Catalyst was happy to simply round up two hyperbolic American book authors making nonsensical claims, along with an Australian nutritionist and an Australian professor who happily parroted these untenable claims. In other words, Catalyst made no effort whatsoever to present a balanced story – it simply rounded up a small handful of commentators already committed to the “Insulin and carbs make you fat” world view, and presented their views unopposed. On top of this, Mr Maley then has the audacity to claim that the disproved pseudoscientific view of this small hand-picked selection is representative of the scientific community at large.

What rubbish.

But even if the majority of ‘experts’ did believe in the insulin-carbs fairy tale, that still doesn’t change the fact it’s a fairy tale. Ultimately, Mark, it doesn’t matter what ‘obesity experts’ claim or think. It only matters what tightly controlled evidence shows. The truth is determined by demonstrable fact, not collective consensus. That you have to keep deferring to other commentators merely confirms my contention that neither you nor the folks at Catalyst have a clue yourselves as to the real science behind obesity. That’s fine, as we can’t all be experts on everything … but why pretend to be worthy disseminators of sound science on a subject you clearly don’t know anything about?

Here’s a quick crash course in obesity research for Mr Maley and the folks at Catalyst.

How to Determine When a Low-Carb Shill is Trying to Hoodwink You, in One Easy Step!

If someone claims that diets low in carbohydrate cause greater fat loss or less weight gain than isocaloric diets high in carbohydrate, then there is only one way they can validate this unlikely claim.

No, it’s not to incessantly spout a bunch of clever-sounding hogwash about the fat-producing effects of insulin.

Because the fat-producing effects of insulin are a very short-term phenomenon that cannot be reproduced over the longer-term. Sure, intravenously infusing insulin into the arms of experimental subjects or exposure of fat and muscle cells to insulin in a petri dish can indeed produce immediate-term reductions in lipolysis and increases in lipogenesis[4-6].

One of the most time-honoured cons in science is to take such isolated pieces of experimental data, then use them to paint a bigger picture that doesn’t exist. The low-carb crowd exemplify this approach with their “insulin makes you fat” sham. They take the results of the aforementioned experiments, and use them to create a world view in which eating carbs causes insulin release, which in turn blocks fat burning and increases fat deposition, which in turn makes people fat.

There’s a wee problem with this worldview: It’s complete rubbish.

The reason it’s rubbish, Mark, is because it ignores critical events that promptly follow on from the immediate changes in lipolysis and lipogenesis. Namely, when you eat more carbs, rather than converting the extra carbohydrate to fat and stockpiling it in adipose cells, the body responds to increases in carbohydrate intake simply by increasing the amount of carbohydrate used as fuel. At the same time, the body decreases the amount of fat used for energy[7]. That’s why, when volunteers are fed high- and low-carbohydrate diets of equal caloric content, the subsequent differences in lipogenesis are so small as to be meaningless in terms of fat gain[7,8].

Lustig and Taubes never mentioned any of that, huh?

Yep, the “insulin blocks fat-burning” theory is simply an exercise in manipulating metabolic minutiae, Mark: The practice of blowing up isolated bits of experimental laboratory data into something they’re not. As a substitute for controlled experimentation of the actual effects of isocaloric diets on weight status in real live human beings, it fails miserably.

So too does selectively quote food consumption data, as Lustig did on your show.

His claim that fat consumption has not increased over the last 30 years can be maintained only by citing data from the CDC. Taubes also uses this tactic in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories, citing a 2004 CDC article reporting that total fat intake increased among women by a mere 6.5 grams but decreased among men by 5.3 grams[9]. The impression this gives is that overall fat intake has remained relatively unchanged.

That’s all well and good, but it flatly ignores the USDA data (see below) that shows fat intake did indeed increase during this time.

So why the two disparate data sets? Well, the fat intake changes reported by the CDC were derived from the four National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) conducted by the US Government to track food consumption trends. These surveys are not without their problems: They rely on the ability of people to accurately recall their food intake, and they involve only a small portion of the US population.

In NHANES, the sample sizes ranged from 14,167 men and women in NHANES III (1988-1994), to only 3,733 men and women in NHANES 1999-2000[9]. These samples were then assumed to be representative of the entire US population. Each of the men and women from these samples took part in a single dietary recall interview about the foods and beverages they consumed during the preceding 24 hours; this 24-hour recall was then taken to be representative of each subject’s diet for the 1- to 6-year periods covered by each NHANES project.

Stop and think about this for a moment; how many people eat exactly the same thing every day for several years in a row? Obviously, questioning someone about what they ate during a single 24-hour period is a manifestly inadequate way in which to ascertain someone’s intake over a period spanning years. However, because of the random selection of respondents and the consistent method of questioning from one survey to the next, the NHANES data is still helpful in assessing overall trends.

Except, perhaps, for fat intake. There is a wealth of evidence showing food recall surveys are routinely plagued by underreporting. Again, if this held constant among macronutrients and from one survey to the next, we would still get a reasonable picture of overall trends. However, the research on dietary misreporting shows that dietary fat is the most underreported macronutrient of all. Given that the aforementioned NHANES surveys occurred during a period when dietary fat was being roundly vilified as a fattening and artery-blocking toxin, it’s not hard to understand why respondents (especially those participating in a face-to-face interview) would be inclined to significantly underreport their intake of this nutrient.

In contrast to NHANES, the USDA determines the total amount of food available in the US, then calculates what remains available for human use after deducting exports, farm and industrial uses, and end-of-year inventories. This amount is then divided by the population of the US to give a per capita “food disappearance” figure. The obvious flaw of food disappearance data is that it cannot account for food wastage; both food outlets and households discard significant amounts of food due to expiration, spoilage and incompletely consumed meals. As a result, while self-reported data like that from NHANES is likely to under-report true fat and calorie intakes, food disappearance data would tend to overestimate individual caloric and macronutrient intakes.

Obviously, both methods of estimating food intake have serious shortcomings, although you could make a case that the USDA data, which always involves nationwide data as opposed to small random fragments of the US population, is more consistent. You could also point out that the USDA data does not involve food recall surveys, and therefore is not prone to personal under-reporting of fat intake in a culture where fat is roundly vilified as some kind of dietary villain.

At any rate, good science dictates you discuss both data sets when attempting to tie in nationwide dietary trends with concomitant changes in obesity prevalence. Neither Lustig nor Taubes, however, evidently have time for conflicting data sets. They simply cite the NHANES data they think supports their argument and ignore the USDA data that doesn’t. Lustig also ignores the fact that even the NHANES data showed an increase in overall caloric intake in the period 1971-2000.

And again, that’s evidently A-OK with the mob over at Catalyst. But I don’t think it’s OK, so for those who would like both sides of the story as opposed to the very one-sided case presented by Taubes, Lustig, and Catalyst, here’s the USDA data:

 Per capita carbohydrate intake, 1909-2000

Lustig and Taubes are quick to point out that carbohydrate intake increased over the last 30 years, as evinced by NHANES food surveys and also USDA food disappearance data, the latter of which is depicted above.

Per capita calorie intake, 1909-2000

Per capita fat intake, 1909-2000 (total fat intake represented by the upper broken line)

The above two graphs show USDA food disappearance data for the period 1909-2000; starting in the early 80s, per capita disappearance of calories and fat rose significantly. While quick to selectively cite the NHANES data showing an increase in carbohydrate consumption, neither Taubes nor Lusting feel it necessary to discuss the above USDA data. Despite the very selective manner in which they cite research, the ABC maintains Taubes and Lustig are “credible” and “responsible” commentators.

So if wanking on about metabolic minutiae and throwing around food consumption data of questionable accuracy don’t cut it, what does? How, exactly, do you determine whether or not a low-carbohydrate diet causes greater fat-derived weight loss than an isocaloric high-carbohydrate diet?

Simple: You conduct clinical trials. In each of these trials, you take a bunch of people, randomly assign half of them to follow a low-carbohydrate diet, and the remainder to follow an isocaloric high-carbohydrate diet.

Or you can take the same volunteers, and have them follow both diets at different points in time, for similar periods and in random order (this is known as a “crossover” trial).

There’s one very important criteria that must be fulfilled if the results of these trials are to be taken seriously: Namely, they must be conducted under tightly controlled ward conditions, so we can be sure the participants really did eat the same number of total calories on the low- and high-carbohydrate diets.

And guess what? Such studies have indeed been performed – over two dozen of them – since 1935, and they have repeatedly shown that low- and even zero-carb diets offer absolutely no fat-derived weight loss advantage over isocaloric high carb diets.

None whatsoever.

I mentioned these studies in my email to Demasi, and interestingly neither you nor her ever bothered to email back and ask for the citations.

Which indicates one of two things:

–You guys already have the citations, but ignored their results, or;

–You don’t have the citations, and are not interested in them because you fear they are going to refute the claims made on Catalyst.

Neither possibility gives much confidence in the level of scientific rigor employed at Catalyst, does it?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone in ignoring these studies. They completely demolish the entire “metabolic advantage” sham promoted by the low-carb movement, so this movement – including leading lights such as Taubes and Lustig – blatantly ignore them.

There was one other low-carb guru who also attempted to ignore them, but then his sizable ego, pomposity and self-conceit got the better of him. Things didn’t go too well for him after that:

The Great Eades Smackdown Part 1

The Great Eades Smackdown Part 2

I guess Lustig and Taubes have learned from the fate of their buddy Eades; any evidence that doesn’t support your preconceived conclusions is better left ignored.

ABC and Catalyst Trying to Back Away From their False Claims About Exercise?

As for exercise, you claim “Catalyst notes that evidence exists both for and against the role of physical activity in weight control. “

No it didn’t. It clearly quoted Gary Taubes as saying:

“The studies show that exercise has virtually no effect on weight loss. One thing exercise does is it makes people hungry.”

How did Catalyst attempt to balance this wild claim? It didn’t. It actually supported it with the following outlandish statement spoken, not by Taubes or Lustig or Barclay or Cowley, but by your very own narrator:

“Burning calories through vigorous exercise triggers hunger signals in your brain so that you eat to replace those calories. Your body knows it’s losing vital energy stores, so it reacts by slowing down your metabolism to conserve that energy. This is thought to have helped us evolve as a species and to survive in times of famine.”

Whoa, wait a minute! With that statement, Catalyst unequivocally pronounced that exercise causes human metabolism to slow down. Where is your evidence for this astounding statement? All the available evidence shows that exercise either makes no difference to resting energy expenditure or, in the case of vigorous exercise, increases it due to a process known as excess post exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC)!

Where does Catalyst get off making these patently false claims about exercise? Again, where is the evidence showing that exercise slows metabolism?

Please forward the published papers demonstrating this at your earliest convenience. If these papers are not forthcoming, I will take this as proof you have no such evidence.

You claim “the program did not endorse their [Taubes’ and Lustig’s] theories or present them as fact.”

Could’ve fooled me, not to mention all the readers who wrote to me after the segment agreeing what a load of pseudoscientific, one-sided tripe it was. Your own narration, after all, follows up the above with the comment:

“That aside, exercise does have other health benefits that extend beyond weight loss.”

The inference is quite clear: Exercise doesn’t work for weight loss, but it does have other benefits.

Exercise does have many benefits – and weight loss is one of them. Why remove a major motivating factor for participation in exercise when the evidence simply does not warrant it?

I presented some of this evidence in my email to Demasi, and you simply ignored it.

Why can’t you acknowledge the evidence I cited showing as activity levels increase and calories burned from exercise increase, the incidence of overweight goes down?

Why do you ignore the thorough, all-encompassing reviews I cited from Titchenal and Elder and Roberts that show that the calorie burn from exercise consistently outpaces overall caloric intake and hence commonly results in weight loss? Did you bother to read those reviews and the studies cited within?

Nope, you clearly ignored this evidence and instead claim that “Catalyst advises that Taubes’ statement was based partly on literature from the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine who published joint guidelines for physical activity and health.  They did not conclude that physical activity would lead to weight loss, they concluded the following:

“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.”

Do the folks at Catalyst not have any shame?

Mark, I advise that you need to stop with the politician-like carry on, stop insulting my intelligence, and start actually reading the research if you want me to take you seriously.

For your edification, the citation for the joint AHA-ACSM paper in question is:

Haskell WL, et al. Physical Activity and Public Health: Updated Recommendation for Adults from the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2007; 39 (8): 1423–1434.

I don’t have an online link for this one, but I’m sure someone in your office can scoot their butt down to the nearest uni library and retrieve it for you. If you bother to pull up the full text for yourself instead of relying on Taubes or your ass-covering cohorts over at Catalyst, you’ll discover someone somewhere along the chain of information delivery has deliberately cut that last sentence short. Here’s the full quote:

“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling (57), but some observational data indicate that men who report at least 45–60 min of activity on most days gain less weight than less active men (16).”

The bold section is the section that Catalyst left out (it is possible that they simply relied on Taubes for this quote, and he left out the bold section before forwarding it to them, but this would merely indicate that the Catalyst staff didn’t bother reading the paper for themselves).

I need to point out a few things here. The aforementioned recommendation paper, co-authored by the AHA and ACSM, was in fact an update of a joint statement first published in 1995 by the CDC and ACSM. It appears that after the AHA and ACSM joined forces, they really didn’t put a whole lot of effort into the update.

You’ll notice, for example, that they cite a grand total of one paper in support of their claim that evidence for a correlation between high energy expenditure and reduced overweight is “not particularly compelling”.  One single paper – that evidently is the best they could muster from all the literature on the subject! To make matters worse, that paper (reference #57) is not a study but in fact another statement paper by Saris et al titled “Outcome of the IASO 1st Stock Conference and consensus statement”.

And so we have the absurd spectacle of a statement paper citing another statement paper! Whatever happened to doing your own research and coming to your own conclusions?

Or is that too much like hard work?

That IASO statement paper, by the way, was published in 2003, so it clearly cannot discuss the Weinstein 2004 and Sulemana 2006 studies I cited in my email to Demasi[10,11]. Again, these studies show that “As physical activity levels/calories burned from physical activity increase, body mass index decreases in both adults and adolescents”. Do you and the folks from Catalyst have anything worthwhile to say about these studies, or are you just going to keep pretending they don’t exist?

While we are talking about the AHA-ACSM statement, let’s return for a moment to the “credible” and “responsible” nature of Gary Taubes, which you jokers over at the ABC apparently hold in such high esteem. Let’s also consider at this point the credibility of the AHA.

Along with Gary Taubes, I personally don’t think the AHA is a worthy source of info on anything these days; we’re talking the same mob, after all, that was instrumental in bringing us the pseudoscientific farce that is the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease. The AHA is also the same mob that introduced the extremely questionable practice of taking monetary payments for the handing out of so-called “Heart Checks”.  Over the years, AHA-endorsed foods displaying these Heart Checks have included sugar-rich junk foods, juices and cereals – the very same foods that Demasi, Taubes and Lustig railed against in the “Toxic Sugar” segment!

And so while Taubes is quick to lambast the AHA and their low-fat theories, he is more than happy to cite them when they make a pathetically under-referenced statement that appears to support his fallacious claim that exercise is useless for fat loss!

I mean, really Mark? This kind of hypocrisy doesn’t bother you and the folks from Catalyst? Not even a little bit?

As for Taubes’ citation of “a 1989 Dutch study in which researchers trained couch potatoes to run a marathon. After 18 months of training and having run a marathon, the men lost 5 pounds of body fat; the women had 0 percent change in body composition.”

Again … did you or any of the Catalyst jokers bother reading the actual study?

Again, I think we both know the answer to that.

So here we go again, full text time:

Janssen G, et al. Food Intake and Body Composition in Novice Athletes During a Training Period to Run a Marathon. International Journal of Sports Medicine, May, 1989; 10 (Suppl 1): S17-S21.

C’mon’ Mark, read the study with me, it will be instructive.  You won’t even need to reach the end of the abstract to realize Taubes is up to his old tricks again.

As we begin reading through the paper, something quickly becomes evident:

This was not a weight loss study.

Again, repeat after me:

This was not a weight loss study.

It was simply an observational study that took a total of 18 men and 9 women and observed the subsequent dietary and physiological changes as they trained over an 18-month period for a 25km race (held at 12 months) and a marathon (at 18 months).

Once again, in case you missed it the first two (2) times:

Weight loss was not a goal of this study.

Nor was it unlikely to have been much of a concern for the folks involved, as the baseline characteristics show they were not overweight. Mean BMI in the men was 23.4 among the men, and even lower again among the women at 21.1.

Nevertheless, at 12 months, the men lost 2.8kg of fat and the women had lost 2.2kg.

At 18 months, 2-weeks prior to the marathon, when self-reported energy intake was highest among the women, the respective fat losses were 2.4 and 0.9kg, respectively. None of these differences reached statistical significance, hardly surprising given the size of the changes and the small number of subjects involved.

If this was a weight loss study, these would indeed be pretty uninspiring results. But, for the umpteenth time, it was a study of normal weight volunteers who were not trying to lose weight. In fact, food intake data showed the men slightly increased their caloric intake, while the women did not. Keep in mind this food intake data was self-reported, and that there is a wealth of research showing that study participants routinely under-report their food intake, and that women are far more prone to under-report their caloric intake than men[12-18]. That their weights remained relatively unchanged despite a marked increase in their weekly activity levels does indeed indicate (to those who are not brainwashed members of the Latter Day Church of Low-Carb) that the true caloric intakes were greatly underreported in this study.

And so out of all the relevant studies examining exercise and weight loss that Taubes could have discussed, he instead cherry-picks one that did not even attempt to induce weight loss in support of his fantasy-based anti-exercise stance!

And again, you jokers, evidently unable or unwilling to analyse the science for yourselves, fall for it hook, line and sinker.

Bloody brilliant.

By the way, in the very same issue of the International Journal of Sports Medicine, there was an article reporting the daily food and macronutrient intakes of Tour de France cyclists. Taubes can’t claim not to have seen it, because it was only 5 pages after the marathon study he so eagerly misrepresents:

http://world.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/file1571.pdf

This study tracked five pro cyclists as they pounded their way through the Tour de France. At a mean bodyweight of only 69kg, they ingested, on average, a massive 849g of carbohydrate and some 5,800 calories daily. Despite these massive intakes, their weights barely changed during the gruelling 3-week event.

Carbohydrates make you fat and exercise is useless for fat loss?

What utter garbage.

But hey, just like the marathon trainees, these pro cyclists didn’t enter the Tour de France to sharpen up their six-packs. So let’s not fall into Gary’s trap and start wanking on about studies that didn’t even involve weight loss. Instead of cherry-picking irrelevant studies, Taubes needs to dramatically lift his game and start examining studies involving exercise in which the stated purpose was weight loss.

And because a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially in the hands of a notorious cherry-picker like Gary, he needs to (be forced to) factor something very important into his analysis of these studies.

The problem with not an insubstantial number of the published clinical trials examining the impact of exercise on weight loss is their poor design. They’ll do things like take a bunch of obese free-living women, tell them to walk a few times a week, compare their body fat and weight losses after a few months, then proclaim the whole thing a failure when meaningful losses are not forthcoming.

But my dog (who, by the way, devours rice and pasta like there’s no tomorrow yet is much leaner than Taubes, Lustig or any of the other commentators on that woeful Catalyst segment) could easily point out the flaws inherent in these studies.

Huh? What’s that Ramone?

There’s no point in conducting an exercise trial for weight loss if you haven’t factored in the overriding importance of a calorie deficit?

G-o-o-d boy! Smart dog!

 They call him Ramone, The Chosen One. Faster over 1km of suburban streets than a speeding police car, able to leap 7-foot fences in a single bound, and infinitely smarter (and leaner) than any anti-carb diet ‘guru’.

Along with Ramone, non-insane humans know full well you can’t lose weight via dietary means without establishing a calorie deficit.

Yeah, I know, you note that “Taubes and Lustig believe that calorie restriction is difficult for people to maintain for a long period of time, and that lowering insulin by lowering carbohydrates is the option they would take.”

Do you understand what they are saying there, Mark? They are saying that by manipulating carbohydrate intake and lowering insulin, people can lose weight without lowering calories.

They say this even though this false claim has already been repeatedly disproved by tightly controlled clinical ward trials.

Again, I’d be happy to forward you the citations for these trials … you know, if you give a damn about them.

The reality is Mark, that if you, Demasi, Taubes, Lustig, Barclay, Cowley or anyone else on Planet Earth want to lose weight and you want that weight primarily derived from fat, you must create a calorie deficit. That’s an unavoidable law of nature, and it doesn’t magically suspend itself because you work for the ABC, nor because you are allegedly “one of Australia’s leading dieticians”, nor because you have an American accent with which you loudly espouse untenable theories on insulin and carbohydrates (as the photos capturing the prodigious bellies of Taubes and Lustig clearly demonstrate).

If you do lose non-fluid weight on a low-carb diet, it wasn’t because of carbohydrate restriction – it was because you lowered calories. Just because that calorie reduction may have been unintentional does not change one iota the fact that it occurred, and that it is the only reason you lost weight.

Even exercise is not immune to this reality. Exercise too must implemented in accordance with the laws of nature in order to produce fat-derived weight loss. You can’t burn a few extra hundred calories a week by mindlessly plodding on a treadmill, then ‘reward’ yourself with a few extra hundred calories of ice cream, then wonder why you haven’t lost weight.

That’s not a serious attempt at weight loss … it’s a complete toss.

Therefore Mark, if you want to see the true weight loss effects of intelligently-applied exercise, what you need to do then is go looking for exercise-weight loss studies that were conducted by researchers who understood the importance of a calorie deficit in both dietary- and exercise-based attempts at weight loss.

One of the reviews I’m betting Taubes never shared with you or the Catalyst crew, Mark, was conducted by Robert Ross, Jennifer A. Freeman, and Ian Janssen, from the School of Physical Health and Education at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

I don’t have a link to a free full text, so you’ll need to add the following citation to your gopher’s library list:

Ross R, et al. Exercise alone is an effective strategy for reducing obesity and related comorbidities. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, Oct, 2000; 28 (4): 165-170.

As the researchers note in the abstract:

“The commonly held view that exercise alone is not a useful strategy for obesity reduction is drawn from studies with limitations that confound interpretation. Recent evidence counters the dogma that daily exercise produces only modest weight loss and suggests that exercise without diet restriction is an effective strategy for reducing obesity and related co-morbidities.”

What kind of “limitations” are these clued-in Canadians referring to?

Exactly what my precocious pooch said before:

Failure to account for the overriding importance of a calorie deficit.

If you start exercising, but fail to exercise sufficiently, or offset your new increased calorie burn with an increased intake of Cheerios, then – not surprisingly – you will lose bugger all weight.

Ross et al begin their review by noting that in 1998, a group of ‘experts’ (I’m starting to develop a very, very deep distrust of that word) from the NHLBI and other NIH branches got together and had a “round table” session on the topic of obesity. In other words, they sat at a big table on swivel chairs, drank water and bad coffee for a few hours, and pretended to engage in ‘scientific’ discussion on a subject many of them clearly knew little of value about. From this collective charade, they then concluded, as did their buddies over at the AHA years later, that exercise alone was largely ineffective for weight loss.

If you think I’m being overly cynical, I’m not – this is exactly how the absurd cholesterol theory of heart disease became ‘official consensus’: via a NHLBI “Consensus Development Conference” in Maryland in 1984 (I detail the whole sordid story in my book The Great Cholesterol Con, of which I sent Demasi a free eBook copy. When she takes her next lunch break, sit down at her computer and read through Chapter 11, then tell me why we should trust any NIH ‘consensus’).

Like yours truly (and my savvy canine), Ross et al weren’t fooled. They knew something was rather fishy about the NIH-NHLBI exercise ‘consensus’, so they donned their bullshit-repelling skinsuits and dove head-first into the literature.

Here’s what they found:

“…in the vast majority of studies, individual energy intake and expenditure was neither rigorously controlled nor accurately measured.”

“Moreover, with few exceptions, the negative energy balance induced by exercise was modest to the degree that one would not expect substantial weight loss.”

“Indeed, no compelling evidence exists to support the observation that exercise alone is not useful for reducing total or abdominal obesity. In addition, evidence published after the consensus statements suggest that exercise without [dietary] caloric restriction is an effective method for reducing obesity and its comorbidities.”

What Ross et al did was scour through the research for randomized trials in which there was sufficient data to calculate the negative energy balance induced by diet and exercise, respectively.

I’ve reprinted Table 1 from their paper below. You’ll notice that in most of the studies, the diet groups had a significantly greater caloric deficit than the exercise groups. Not surprisingly, the diet groups in these studies lost more weight.

Take a close look at the last two studies listed in the table, the ones headed by Sopko and Ross (yes, the same Robert Ross who also headed the review we are discussing right now – he clearly enjoys doing real, properly-conducted research. If only there were more researchers like him). In both of these studies, the calorie deficit in the exercise and diet groups was identical. And so too was the subsequent weight loss.

In the Sopko et al trial, the authors rigorously ensured that the reduction in calories seen in the diet-only group was matched by an increase in expenditure in the exercise-only group. As a result, both groups maintained a deficit of 3500 calories per week, and after 12 weeks both groups lost 6.1kg (13.5lbs)[19].

In the Ross et al trial, the researchers implemented 700 calorie deficits in the diet-only and exercise-only groups. The latter achieved this 700-calorie burn by walking on a treadmill at 70% maximal heart rate (around 60% Vo2max) for 60 minutes daily. The researchers weren’t messing around; they verified 24-hour energy expenditure in all their groups with the doubly labelled water method. Over 12 weeks, both weight loss groups lost 7.5kg.

The total weight loss figures don’t tell the full story; in both trials, the exercise-only groups lost a greater percentage of weight in the form of fat.

Tell me again how exercise is useless for fat loss?

A summary of weight loss RCTs in which energy deficit was or was not matched between diet and exercise groups. When the energy deficit was the same in both groups, identical weight loss occurred. Unless your name is Gary Taubes or you work for the ABC, this should hardly come as a surprise.

Attention Mark, Catalyst, Gary Taubes: Please take careful note of how the thorough, no-bullshit approaches of Ross et al and Sopko et al are a stark contrast to simply taking a half-assed walk around the block, then exclaiming “whew, I’m knackered!” before dropping onto your couch and demolishing an entire box of muesli bars because, you know, you just worked out so hard and you deserve a little reward for your ‘excruciating’ effort.

The former will produce significant fat loss; the latter will simply lead to failure and provide fuel for duplicitous anti-carb gurus to appear on shows like Catalyst making blatantly misleading claims about exercise.

So instead of roundly and wrongly dismissing exercise as “useless” for fat loss, a far more honest thing for Gary Taubes to say would be:

“If you treat it like some kind of joke and institute it in a half-assed manner, then yes, exercise is very likely to be a waste of time for fat loss. Duh! But if you act like a mature, intelligent adult who is prepared to take responsibility for his physical condition, acknowledge the reality of calories in versus calories out, and exercise like you mean it most days of the week, then exercise is actually very effective for weight loss!”

Of course, saying a distinctly non-sensationalist thing like the above probably won’t grab him the same kind of attention as making sweeping and controversial statements like “exercise is useless for fat loss!” But Taubes is now being enlightened as to the truth about exercise, so his stance from this point on will tell us whether he’s more interested in the truth or whether he’s more interested in continuing to grab attention with sensationalist and patently false claims.

Ditto for the ABC.

Before I finish on the topic of exercise, I think it’s worthwhile to discuss some especially well controlled trials. Ward studies involving exercise, unfortunately, are very rare … much rarer than ward diet studies. But they’re out there.

One of these was conducted by James Hill and his colleagues at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville, Tennessee. They took obese women (140-180% of ideal body weight) and studied them in a metabolic ward during 1 week of maintenance feeding, followed by 5 weeks of an 800 cal/day liquid formula diet. Five subjects participated in a supervised program of daily aerobic exercise and three subjects remained sedentary.

So what happened?

At this extremely low calorie intake, total weight loss was not different between exercising and non-exercising groups, but don’t get too excited, this in no way supports the anti-scientific bollockery of Taubes. The exercising subjects lost 74% of their weight as fat and only 26% in the form of fat-free mass. The non-exercisers, in contrast, lost only 57% of weight as fat but a hefty 43% as fat-free mass. The exercisers, in other words, lost significantly more fat and significantly less fat-free mass than the subjects who did not exercise.

Exercise is useless for fat loss?

I think not.

The most recent ward trial of exercise and weight loss I’m aware of was conducted by Nancy L. Keim and her colleagues from the USDA’s Western Human Nutrition Research Center in San Francisco. They performed a study involving ten overweight women utilizing diet plus exercise or diet only. At the beginning of the study, the women were subjected to a two-week weight stabilization period where they were fed just enough calories to maintain their weight (median intake of approximately 2,450 calories). The researchers then divided the women into two groups. One group kept eating their ‘maintenance’ diet for 12 weeks, and performed treadmill exercise 6-days a week. The second group performed the same exercise routine, but also had their calorie intake slashed in half for the duration of the 12-week period.

At the conclusion of the study, the group that added exercise to their maintenance-calorie diet lost an average 0.5 kilograms per week. The women who utilized exercise and calorie-restriction lost an average 1.1 kilograms per week – over twice as much as the exercise-only group[21]. These results should come as no surprise to anyone; after all, a greater calorie deficit equals greater weight loss[22].

So here’s the bottom line Mark: When the NHLBI, AHA, ACSM, Catalyst, and Gary Taubes proclaim exercise as being “useless” or of “limited efficacy” for fat loss, they are not accurately representing the science. To the contrary, they are merely showing off their scientific ineptitude for all the world to see.

Don’t encourage them, for chrissakes.

Package for Robert Lustig. Contents: The Sweet Truth

Mark, I need to wrap this up. Unlike you lot, I’m not being paid to do this – unfortunately, I have to debunk fallacious nonsense on my own time and at my own expense (one of the very sad realities of our world is that the dissemination of sensationalist bullshit is a highly lucrative endeavour. Telling the truth? Not so much).

So I think I’ll wrap this up with a little present for Robert Lustig. I mean, I’ve focused mainly on Taubes in this reply and I don’t want poor Rob to feel like Gary’s stealing his limelight.

Judging from his appearance on Catalyst, Robert Lustig is an angry man. I mean, listen to him going off at 0:25 in the Catalyst video – his rage at the suggestion that calories were responsible for the obesity epidemic is palpable. Hey, nothing wrong with getting indignant about something that really is bullshit, but for Lustig to be getting so bent out of shape over a contention that is in fact 100% correct is most unbecoming.

So how can we help Dr Lustig get over his terribly misdirected anger?

Well, I find discovery of the truth to be a very clarifying and uplifting experience, so hopefully Robert will find the same. To that end, I present research showing that when consumed in isocaloric amounts, there is sweet FA difference in weight loss or gain between low- and high-fructose diets, and low- and high-sucrose diets.

Why Sugar Doesn’t Do jack to Make You Fat Unless You Consume Enough to Create a Calorie Surplus

Researchers have been studying the effects of increased sugar intake on subsequent bodyweight changes for decades. After reviewing these trials, I can sum their findings up quite simply:

–If an increase in sugar intake results in an increase in caloric intake, weight gain will occur.

–If an increase in sugar intake is compensated for by a decrease in other non-sugar calorie-containing foodstuffs, so that overall caloric intake remains unchanged, weight remains unchanged.

I’m hardly the only one to have arrived at these conclusions. Lisa Te Morenga, Simonette Mallard and Jim Mann from the University of Otago in New Zealand conducted an extensive review of these same trials, and published their results in the British Medical Journal. You can access their paper freely right here:

http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e7492.pdf%2Bhtml

In their review of clinical feeding trials, they found:

“In trials of adults with ad libitum diets (that is, with no strict control of food intake), reduced intake of dietary sugars was associated with a decrease in body weight (0.80 kg…P<0.001); increased sugars intake was associated with a comparable weight increase (0.75 kg…P=0.001).”

And when overall caloric intake remained unchanged?

“Isoenergetic exchange of dietary sugars with other carbohydrates showed no change in body weight”.

They concluded:

“Among free living people involving ad libitum diets, intake of free sugars or sugar sweetened beverages is a determinant of body weight. The change in body fatness that occurs with modifying intakes seems to be mediated via changes in energy intakes, since isoenergetic exchange of sugars with other carbohydrates was not associated with weight change.”

In other words, the only way sugar can make you fat is by increasing your overall caloric intake.

One more time, for those who are a little slow off the mark:

INSULIN AND CARBOHYDRATES, INCLCUDING SIMPLE SUGARS, DO NOT AND CANNOT MAKE YOU OVERWEIGHT INDEPENDENT OF CALORIES.

Contrary to the rantings of Lustig, there is nothing inherently fattening about sugar aside from the fact that it is a calorie-dense substance that often lends itself to overconsumption. There is nothing in sugar that causes some bizarre metabolic derangement that subverts the laws of nature and causes unexplained weight gain in the absence of a calorie surplus. To claim otherwise is simply another disingenuous exercise in the dissemination of anti-calorie bullshit.

So what people need to be told is something like the following:

Consuming a surplus of calories – whether it be from sugar, starch, fat, protein or alcohol – for a sufficient length in time will cause bodyweight and bodyfat gain. Some foods and beverages lend themselves to overconsumption due to their low volume and high concentration of calories. Highly palatable foods and beverages that are high in sugar, high in fat, or both, or high in alcohol, are more likely to lead to caloric surpluses. Because of this ability to promote caloric overconsumption, consumption of these foods and beverages should therefore either be avoided or compensated for by concomitant decreases in other caloric sources by those wishing to either lose weight or avoid weight gain.

It should be noted that even when consumed in a manner that does not lead to weight gain, high intakes of sugar-rich foodstuffs and beverages can be problematic for other reasons. Regular consumption of sugar-rich beverages and foods has been implicated in accelerated tooth decay, for example. In sedentary individuals, isocaloric diets containing high amounts of simple refined sugars can also increase visceral and liver fat deposition even though overall bodyweight remains unchanged.

Except when consumed during or immediately following vigorous exercise (the former of which has been repeatedly shown to improve performance in endurance activities and the latter of which promotes accelerated glycogen repletion after exercise), there is little reason for healthy human beings with normal digestive function to consume liquids rich in simple sugars. When consumed away from exercise, sugars should be consumed in the manner nature intended – as part of whole, minimally processed foods.

That is a far more truthful, accurate and balanced appraisal of the science than such bombastic Lustig-style hysteria as:

“An excess of calories and lack of exercise caused the obesity epidemic? GET REAL!! It was insulin, assholes! INSULIN release caused by poisonous sugar, I tell you!!”

It’s also far more sensible and, sadly, modern society seems to have little time or regard for common-sense. Telling people they can eat sugar without fear of weight gain so long as they consume it only in small amounts would mean they have to exercise such traits as restraint and moderation.

Yeah, I can hear some of you sniggering. Those are out-dated concepts that only anachronistic old farts stuck in the 1950s would ever dare recommend, I hear you sneering.

Well guess what? There was no obesity epidemic back in the 1950s.

Yeah, think about that.

One cannot have his cake and eat it, my friends.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

I must state clearly – before I am deliberately misquoted by the sleazy anti-carb crowd – that I am not “pro-sugar”. I’m just anti-bullshit. And to be quite honest, while I’m not pro-sugar, I’m not anti-sugar, either. When consumed in judicious amounts, the harm that will be caused to you by sugar would probably rank right between zero and bugger all. I have numerous Italian relatives who lived into their nineties, and they all added zucchero to the percolated coffee they drank on a daily basis. What they didn’t do was gulp, slurp, burp and fart their way through idiotic amounts of soft drink, fruit juice, and confectionery. It’s sad that as a result of the Anglo-Western predilection for dietary excess, the baby always seems to get thrown out with the bath water.

Heaven forbid we start promoting such concepts as self-responsibility and temperance in our habits. Hell no. This is the 21^st century, where people earnestly seem to believe they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and suffer absolutely no adverse consequences as a result. As a result of this delusional, reality-evading mindset, a lot of people earnestly seem to believe it is their birth right to be able to sit on their fat asses all day, eat whatever they damn well please, do no exercise, yet still sport the low body fat levels they once enjoyed in their teenage years. And anyone who comes along and tells them this is an unreasonable and untenable attitude is met with a barrage of vitriol. Meanwhile, those who are only too happy to fan the flames of bullshit by telling people that calories are inconsequential, that we’re all just victims of some big evil carbohydrate conspiracy, and that “calories in versus calories out is how we got into this mess” are met with much fawning, media attention, and lavish book deals. There’s a lot of money to be made by telling people what they want to hear and convincing them they’re just poor hapless victims.

Guess what? Contrary to the rabid rantings of Dr “Sugar is a Poison!” Lustig, calories in versus calories out is not how we got into this mess.

IGNORING calories in versus calories out is how we got into this mess!

And spouting a load of untenable bullshit about insulin and carbohydrates sure as hell isn’t going to get us out of it.

Both the NHANES and USDA data indicate that per capita caloric intake increased during the very same period that the obesity ‘epidemic’ occurred. At the same time, rapidly increasing automation has ensured that we are now the most sedentary population in the history of Homo sapiens.

And in spite of this, Robert Lustig claims the reason this obesity epidemic occurred is because people were awarding too much respect to the calories in versus calories out paradigm!

How on Earth can increasing caloric intake coupled with unprecedented levels of sedentary living reflect a failure of the calorie deficit approach to weight loss?!

It doesn’t: It reflects a complete and utter disregard by the population at large for the calorie deficit approach!

As the furious Lustig himself would say:

“GET REAL!!”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what Maley and the crew from Catalyst consider a “credible” and “responsible” commentator.

Geezus.

You may have heard of a little thing called the low-carb craze, Mark? Came, failed, and fizzled out. Why Lustig and Taubes and the rest of their carb-hating cohorts (and now the ABC) keep trying to flog a dead horse is beyond me.

Yep, welcome to Generation Sook, folks. The tech-laden generation that enjoys the most automated existence in the history of mankind, who will never know the need for the backbreaking labour that was an inevitable part of our forebears daily lives, yet pisses and moans when someone has the temerity to suggest that maybe they shovel a little less shit down their throats and spend 6 or 7 of the 168 hours that comprise a calendar week (i.e. less than 5% of their otherwise sedentary, inactive week) doing some exercise.

I can just see all my hardy late long-lived relatives – no strangers to physical and economic hardship – turning in their graves, face-palming and exclaiming in disbelief:

“Che mucchio di cazzi molli!”

(“What a bunch of soft-cocks!”)

In Closing

Mark, when you folks at the ABC launched your non-independent “independent” investigation, you had the opportunity to right a wrong. You guys had the opportunity to man up, admit that the folks at Catalyst slipped up, and put into place procedures and safeguards to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Instead, you simply chose to cover your asses. I don’t know exactly what occurred during your investigation, but it certainly wasn’t anything intelligent and impartial. Your reply to me is a truly intelligence-insulting catalogue of denial and further false claims.

It is also clear that you have not read the research you cite – if you did, you clearly didn’t understand what you were reading.

What’s especially regrettable about all this is that the ABC, and hence its so-called ‘science’ shows, are funded by the taxpayer. It’s bad enough when the commercial networks bullshit us, but when poor Joe Public funds your existence, and you reward his patronage with content that blatantly misleads him, then that is rather galling.

If I was in charge of whatever government agency had the authority to make you jokers lift your game, I’d designate a number of measures to correct the clear lack of scientific process at the ABC. And until I was satisfied all those procedures were in place and having the desired effect, I’d force your ‘science’ shows to prominently display the following disclaimer at the start of every episode:

“The AABC (Australian Anti-Bullshit Commission) advises that the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has been reprimanded for airing misleading content. This content consisted of statements about fat loss that were presented as scientific findings, but were in fact purely the unfounded and already disproved opinions of a small number of handpicked guests, some of whom benefit financially from disseminating the aforementioned false claims. The AABC has instructed the ABC to cease and desist in airing all such misleading content. Until such time as the AABC is fully satisfied that the ABC has ceased in airing misleading content, and has fully instituted the preventive measures recommended by the AABC, the AABC advises that viewers should treat any ‘science’ program on the ABC as being purely for entertainment purposes only. Until these requirements have been met, viewers are strongly advised not to make any decisions that could affect their physical or psychological wellbeing based upon information they may have viewed on any ABC ‘science’ show.”

My original appraisal remains unchanged: With few exceptions, journalists as a group consistently display remarkable gullibility when it comes to the acceptance of untenable health claims, and display a woeful inability to read and understand research for themselves. From what I have seen from their televised content and from my subsequent correspondence with ABC representatives, the journalists at Catalyst are certainly no exception.

Adios,

Anthony “Get Real For Real!” Colpo.

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Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher, physical conditioning specialist, and author of The Fat Loss Bible and The Great Cholesterol Con. For more information, visit TheFatLossBible.net or TheGreatCholesterolCon.com

Copyright © Anthony Colpo.

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