I’ve noticed a lot of bloggers who write sort of potpourri posts from time to time. I think I’ve written a few in the distant past. Hard to believe I’ve been at this – at least intermittently – for over 12 years now. I want to bring everyone up to date on what’s going on […]
The most common question I get asked via comments on this blog and email is how to lower cholesterol levels and/or LDL levels. People asking this question have usually just gotten a high cholesterol reading of one kind or another and have heard the pronouncement from their doctor: You need to go on a statin. […]
Since I’ve been writing this blog for the past 12 years, I’ve received innumerable comments and e-mails all containing the same words: Why are doctors so stupid about diet? statins? fat? saturated fat? carbohydrate restriction? low-fat diets? and on and on. I’m not sure stupid is the right word – the right word is probably […]
I think you’ll agree with me when I say that the forces arrayed against us meat eating, low-carbohydrate diet followers firmly believe the ‘fact’ that running herds of animals destroys the grasslands and ecosystem. And that’s not to mention that the methane from their belches destroys the ozone layer and worsens climate change. But is […]
I came across this short talk Dr. David Ludwig gave on some of his research on the difference between high-carb, low-carb, and slow-carb diets. The presentation is a great summary of the calories-in/calories-out way of thinking of dieting versus the alternative hypothesis, which is that carbs drive insulin, and insulin drives fat storage. Dr. Ludwig […]
If you’ve been following a low-carbohydrate diet for any length of time and have experienced the changes in weight and energy levels, the reductions in blood sugar and blood pressure, and the improvement in GERD that typically accompany such diets, you may wonder why the mainstream doesn’t jump aboard. I know I did. When I […]
As I type these words, I’m hurtling through the sky somewhere over the North Atlantic on my way to the US from Germany. I just woke up from about a two hour nap, during which I was flat on my back and got to stretch my 6’2” frame to the max without hitting the end […]
I read Gary Taubes’s new book The Case Against Sugar twice. First I read it in manuscript, then in galley proof. My intention was to write a review of it to be posted around the book’s publication date, but on or just before pub date a dozen other reviews hit the web. Consequently, some of […]
Paleolithic man doubtless ate anything he could get his hands on that was even remotely edible, drank his water from streams, ponds, and probably even mud puddles as dogs do today. Of the many ways scientists have to unearth the actual diets of early ancestors, stable isotope analysis is probably the most accurate. Such analysis […]
Have you seen the guy on the smart phone video popping up all over the internet saying he has disproven the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity? His name is Kevin Hall and he must be experiencing some real cognitive dissonance. Or I certainly am, given the sharp contrast between what his study results actually show and […]
As we know all too well there has been an explosion in the incidence of obesity and type II diabetes over the past 30-40 years. Depending upon the bias involved, many people have opined as to the cause of this sudden departure from what had been fairly stable rates of obesity over the previous decades. […]
The new 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) finally came out in 2016. They were held up an extra month because of the hostile and unexpectedly overwhelming response of the public to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Advisory Report. After political fiddling — which always happens in the face of an unexpected public outcry — and […]
It’s not often that faculty members of major academic institutions do anything but sneer at low-carbohydrate diets. But that all changes now. Today brings the publication of a new book by a professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. David Ludwig, on the virtues of low-carb dieting. As you can probably discern from the title, Always […]
Very soon the Department of Health and Human Services will be releasing the 2015 version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA or Dietary Guidelines). When it happens sometime this month (December 2015), I can guarantee you the occasion will be much in the news. So unless you’re living in a cave somewhere in the wilds […]
Well, I would say the new site is 95 percent complete. The new store is still under construction, but everything else is pretty much ready to go. I think. I hope. I pray. The tech guys fiddling with the last few piddly little things asked me if I could quickly whip up a post with few links […]
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal today makes the point that the recent ruling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to rid the American diet of trans fats more or less hastens what the market was already doing. And as I never tire of harping about, this piece also reminds us that it […]