to think the diet industry is utterly evil?

[ICBINEG]

been watching 'The men that made us thin' and am simply overwhelmed.

So diets don't work....most people end up heavier than if they had not dieted at all...one guy was like "well duh! if they worked we would lose our customers"....another wrote a book aimed at teenage girls including the advice to " buy scales and keep them secret from your parents"

The constant stream of adverts aimed at middle aged women are seen by children who by age 6-7 have self-esteem issues and can quote the number of calories in most foods...

My evil-ometer is broken.

It is well accepted these days that too rapid a weight loss does increase your risk of gallbladder stones. Nobody is debating that.

Re "current diet advice" - This depends on which dietitian you ask, I suppose, but the advice I got was not at all "to mostly eat carbohydrates", neither have I ever heard of anyone who was told this by a dietitian. I don't know who you heard this from but maybe don't listen to him/her anymore.

I was told to have 1 slice of bread (or its equivalent in calories) of complex carbohydrates at each meal. Even including the fruits after every meal, I can't see how that would make up anything remotely close to "40-60% of calories from carbohydrate". I really would change that dietitian.

The 1-day diet you list has nothing to do with the diet advice of today. I have never been told to have a ham sandwich for lunch and a plate of pasta (no matter the sauce) for dinner. That sounds like the diet of people who have never consulted a dietitian in their lives.

The NHS 'eatwell' plate which indicates that carbohydrate should be the main basis for a 'healthy' diet.

Because if you add fruit and veg and starchy foods together, the NHS is recommending that our diet should be around 60% based on carbs.

This is from the NHS. Not from an individual dietician.

Re animal fat & gallbladder stones - You will of course do what you want and follow the diet you believe is right, but please don't ignore the myriad studies that have shown that a diet high in animal fats increases risk of gallstones.

I recommend modifying your Google searches by adding "scholarly articles" in front of your search terms. For example, scholarly articles diet fat gallbladder stones yields these studies at the top of the page:

This one says "Intake of high energy, simple sugar and saturated fat favors gallstone formation. Fiber and moderate consumption of alcohol reduce the risk".

This one says
"In Japan, postwar westernisation has provided an example for the interplay between environment and disease. Since the late 40s, the prevalence of gallstones in Tokyo has more than doubled. Moreover, there has been a change from pigment to cholesterol gallstones and the sex ratio has changed in favour of females.41 This increase in gallstone incidence was associated with an increased fat intake and a decreased fibre content of the diet and consequently was attributed to the westernisation of the Japanese diet."

This study says " Saturated fats were a risk factor for gallstone formation" and " Conclusion: These findings suggest that a sedentary lifestyle and a diet rich in animal fats and refined sugars and poor in vegetable fats and fibers are significant risk factors for gallstone formation."

Those were the first four links on the page.

worth a read

BIWI - On that (very outdated and somewhat ridiculous) "Eat well plate", complex carbohydrates are 1/3 of diet and fruits and vegetables are another 1/3. I can't tell how much is that is supposed to come from vegetables as opposed to fruits. Can you?

The recommendation to eat cakes and drink Coca Cola to the order of what looks like 15-20% of your overall calorie intake makes me . This looks like damage control rather than proper diet advice. And NHS is probably trying to protect itself from lawsuits from Coca Cola, choc biscuit producers etc by not saying "Don't eat that crap".

Still, if you think about it, the 140 kCal in a can of Coca Cola makes up about 12% of a 1,800 kCal daily calorie intake, so basically what NHS is saying is "If you have 1 Coke per day, don't have any cake, biscuits, choc chip cookies, etc" which is probably very useful info for the majority of the population.

I know the threads moved on a lot but I've come back with a specific example about "diet " foods. In tesco earlier buying cottage cheese so I picked up a light choices cottage cheese and a tesco everyday value cottage cheese to compare.

Same size tub, light choices was £1 and the everyday value one was 59p.

The everyday value one was lower in calories, fat, saturated fat, and salt! It was slightly highr in sugar but negligible.

Have a look...

www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=264562500

www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=263278815

Re "Worth a read" - To put it mildly, that is really not the kind of "resource" I think anyone should turn to for information, and not least because it concludes with "I got bored of finding the studies just to prove the point of how ridiculous it became."

Worthy of note is that the one study she shows as support for "A low-fat diet gives you gallbladder stones" concerns Modifast meal replacements and not an actual low-fat diet.

Personally I think the NHS advice is being misinterpreted. Admittedly it's vague but I don't disagree with the general proportions.

30% complex carbs is ok. I eat less than that but is fine.

I also see the sugar/fat portion to make up about 5%, which again is fine.

Bottom line is that these proportions are ok providing you're not shovelling it in. Maintain your BMR and there's nothing wrong with that advice.

My mother is currently struggling thanks to having to take certain drugs which bloat you. She was told quite honestly she would have to live with it or battle it for life. Then they told her to battle it she should have 2000 calories a day. She gained even more weight. So they got the premise, just not the understanding of 'average'. And Sis, who is medical based, tried to tell her I was wrong. In the end, in desperation, she listened to me about TDEE and brought her eating down. She's lost s little and hasn't gained for a while and realises this is her reality. But medical professionals do not know it all.

Yes, Cote, I think the NHS guidelines are ridiculous. But they are the NHS guidelines.

And as for the stuff about gallstones - the whole point I was making about providing that link is just how much of it is contradictory. You can find anything online to support the view that you want to push.

"You can find anything online to support the view that you want to push."

... which is why imho it is a good idea to go directly to scientific studies for information, rather than dodgy websites written by non-professionals.

Not just re diet, either.

But Cote, that's the whole point! There is no consistency with scientific studies either!

biwi I agree. The internet that brought us so much information has also brought us so much misinformation. Most people can't read a scientific study or understand quite what its complexities and issues may be. As a statistician with multiple industry background, I often bang my head against brick walls on that.

And you think there is no consistency with scientific studies because that silly website said so? With its "proof" for no consistency re fat & gallstones a study that tested Modifast slim-fast products rather than a proper balanced low-fat diet?

Not just re diets but with everything, my personal view is that it is possible to figure out the truth and looking directly at the data is the best way to do that. Reality is not unknowable and scientific studies don't randomly churn out contradictory results. If you take the time to read 20, 30, 40 synopses the general picture should start to emerge pretty soon.

To each their own, of course, but that is how I see things.

cote its been my professional field for a while. there is truth to "lies, damn lies and statistics" for a very valid reason.

I studied some statistics at master's level and frankly don't remember lies being part of the curriculum

I suppose you mean that it is possible to manipulate the numbers, but I'd rather not assume that most scientists are dishonest and corrupt and therefore not to be trusted.

Its not a question of manipulation, its a question of basis and assumption quite often. There's a gold standard of studies, which generally is accepted to be double blind. These sort of studies can't be double blind therefore the methods can be opened up to questioning very easily, and also the very real causation vs correlation argument. However I'm no good a explaining these things and there are better people out there who can explain failings in studies.

Without meaning to claim I'm more of an expert than you are, I have to say that double-blind testing is more important in tests like Coke vs Pepsi or allergies where psychosomatic symptoms can appear. I dare say it is not that damning where obtaining the result involves ultrasound scanning of the gallbladder, unless we are going to wonder if knowing that the test subject can subconsciously conjure himself multiple gallbladder stones.

I am aware of "correlation vs causation" and so are many laymen and (I would hope) all scientists. This is why they try to control for different variables at each study and say things like "xx is associated with high risk of yy" rather than "xx causes yy".

I'm not saying that the scientific method is infallible on the level of individual studies, but rather that taken as a whole it allows us to understand the world we live in.

cote "which is why imho it is a good idea to go directly to scientific studies for information"

It is definitely a good idea...shame you don't follow through on it more often eh?

cote in which case you should know better than to pick and choose which the stuff that supports your argument and not shove other stuff out the window because it doesn't suit you. Me and ICB haven't agreed on the subject of this thread but I agree here.

this gives
A low-calorie, low-fat diet augmenting gallbladder volume may favor bile stasis and therefore the likelihood of developing gallstones.

this gives
Consumption of carbohydrate in refined form increases bile cholesterol saturation. The risk of gall stones might be reduced by avoidance of refined carbohydrate foods.

That's two studies that back raw about the fat low fat/high carb thing, from BIWI's link. BIWI is bang on about contradictory advice even at study level let alone just reading the summary page.

this one from suggested google searching on scholarly articles
These findings suggest that a sedentary lifestyle and a diet rich in animal fats and refined sugars and poor in vegetable fats and fibers are significant risk factors for gallstone formation.

So if raw's advice is taken as is, and you make sure the fats are "good" fats then it is backed up.

Yes, I'm cherry picking here on purpose. I'm not going to make a call about which study is more valid than others. But we still don't know how our bodies work and are still learning so challenging conventional wisdom is actually a great thing.

ICBINEG

Even if I were a total woo person who is not interested in scientific explanations & studies (which is the opposite of the truth), ad hominem is a logical fallacy.

So not sure what you tried to do there. Was it fun?

Eagle - I haven't been picking and choosing anything. Please don't accuse me of intellectual dishonesty.

There is no debate re high-carb. The debate is re low-fat.

Overwhelming evidence from numerous studies shows a diet high in animal fat increasing risk of gallbladder stones. Picking and choosing the very few that indicates otherwise (one testing just a slim-fast diet product, no less) is what I would call picking and choosing stuff that supports one's prejudices. (I know that wasn't you)

Nobody said there are never any studies that appear contradictory. As a statistician, you must know that better than most.

I'm on phone so can't elaborate but happy to continue later.

cote that is the point myself and biwi are making - there is contradictory regarding fat. raw incidentally never said anything about animal fats, she mentioned fat. nor, as far as I can tell, anything contradictory to current known function of the gallbladder - it does need fat to function and flush. So quite why you started at her regarding animal fats and biwi not being able to read a study for herself when both their points are backed up and valid enough I don't know.