A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Sam Feltham on his Smash The Fat Live show.  He told me at the time that he was running an N=1 experiment to see what would happen if he consumed 5,000 calories per day on a high-fat/low-carb diet for 21 days.

Before we look at the final results, here are some quotes from an article Sam wrote when he was halfway into his experiment:

10 days ago I started a 21 day experiment where I eat 5,794 calories of a low carbohydrate high fat diet to see if a calorie is really just a calorie. I have come across some militant scientists, who say my experiment is bogus, and some very supportive ones, who have applauded me for trying to push science forward. The only premises that I’m starting with are that a calorie is a calorie, that if you eat more than you burn you put on weight and that 1lb (0.45kg) of fat is 3,500 calories.

At the start of my 21 day experiment I weighed in at 85.2kg in the morning and 86kg in the evening making my mean for day 1, 85.6kg. My waist measurement was 78cm in the morning and 81cm in the evening making my starting mean 79.5cm. As it stands from this morning, halfway, I’m in a calorie surplus of 26,841 and according to the calorie formula I should be 3.5kg heavier than when I started at 89.1kg. On day 10 of the experiment I currently weigh 85.7kg and my waist is 76cm, so a gain of 0.1kg and a loss of 2.5cm.

So after 10 days, he gained a miniscule amount of weight, but lost a bit of fat around the middle.  In other words, he probably gained a bit of lean tissue.

Now here’s his report after 20 days of consuming more than 5,000 calories per day:

Day 20, and I am 86.7kg at 3am as I’m off for the weekend! Which is 0.4kg down from last night’s weigh in where I was 87.1kg making my mean for yesterday 86.45kg, which is 0.85kg up from my starting mean weight! According to the calorie formula I should be up by 6.6kg as I’m now in a 51,239 calorie surplus to 92.2kg from my starting mean weight of 85.6kg.

My waist measurement this morning was 76cm which is 2cm down from my starting AM measurement. Last night I was 77.5cm giving me a mean waist of 76.5cm, which is 3cm down from the start!

Translation for those of us not on the metric system:  he gained slightly less than two pounds, but lost just over an inch around the waist.  According to the usual (and wrong) interpretation of the calories-in/calories-out theory, he should have gained more like 15 pounds.

Predictably, the calorie fanatics who commented on his experiment are insisting that he simply has a super-high metabolism.  Oh, really?  By that logic, he should have been wasting away when he was on his normal diet of somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 calories per day.  And yet he wasn’t.  So that “super-high metabolism” is a new development.

In two of my posts about the low-carb cruises I attended, I mentioned that despite eating three and sometimes four meals per day – larger meals than I typically eat at home, by the way – I didn’t gain any weight.  In fact, on the first low-carb cruise I attended, I weighed myself in the ship’s health club on the first and last days of the cruise.  I was a pound lighter on the last day.

People who insist weight loss and weight gain is all about counting calories like to point to studies of semi-starvation diets – people consuming 1,000 calories per day or thereabouts.  Yup, in most of those studies, there’s not much of a difference between low-carb and low-fat diets.  (In others, there was a difference.  The low-carbers lost more.)

But in my experience, the advantage of a low-carb diet isn’t in losing more weight at a very low calorie intake.  It’s in not gaining weight at a high calorie intake.  Pardon me for comparing apples to oranges a bit here, but when Morgan Spurlock consumed 5,000 calories per day of high-sugar, high-carb food in Super Size Me, he gained 24 pounds in 30 days and got fat around the belly.  Sam Feltham gained slightly less than two pounds while losing in inch around his waist.

After my first low-carb cruise, I wrote to Dr. Mike Eades to ask why I hadn’t gained weight while stuffing myself with eggs, bacon, sausage, burgers, steaks, lobster, salads with creamy dressing, etc.  He replied that he’d seen the same phenomenon dozens of times with his patients.  Some of them took being on a low-carb diet as an excuse to stuff themselves, then were disappointed when they didn’t lose weight, or only lost a couple of pounds in a month.  (For the record, Dr. Eades has always insisted that losing weight requires a calorie deficit.  Read the original Protein Power book if you think otherwise.)  When he checked the disappointed patients’ detailed food journals, he found that they were consuming 4,000 calories per day or more.  And yet they didn’t gain weight, or even lost a bit.

Why?  I don’t know exactly.  Neither does Dr. Eades.  He told me all we know is that the body finds ways to burn the extra calories.  The body may produce extra heat, it may repair and replace cells at a faster rate, it may engage in other energy-using processes no one has identified yet, or some combination of all three.  Somehow, given the right hormonal conditions, a body can resist accumulating fat even with a higher-than-usual intake of calories.  Dr. Richard Feinman told me pretty much the same thing.

And by the way, neither of them claimed that the extra calories vanished into thin air.  They claimed that somehow, a dramatic increase in calories in caused a compensating increase in calories out.  That’s what happened to me when I pigged out on the cruises, and it’s what happened to Sam Feltham during his 21-day experiment.

And no laws of thermodynamics were harmed in the process.

Yup, I figured someone had captured the annual cruise tradition of me singing “Elvira” with Jimmy Moore.  Denise Cripps (Chareva’s long-lost sister) uploaded this today.

Life in the country isn’t all always peaceful and pretty, as it turns out.  A couple of weeks before we left for the low-carb cruise, Chareva found one of our egg-laying chickens dead in the chicken-yard, headless and torn up around the breast area.

Two days later, she found another chicken in the same condition.  Then another three days after that.  Some kind of predator had discovered our flock and was climbing over the fence to help itself to chicken dinners.  Our original flock of 10 was down to seven.

Our nearest neighbor, who knows a lot more about the local critters than I do, told me when you find a headless chicken, the most likely culprit is a raccoon or a possum.  A fox was also a possibility, but foxes tend to kill every chicken in the barn, even if they only eat one.  Ours were getting mauled one at a time.

I must confess, I didn’t know raccoons attacked other animals.  The girls have a story book with a raccoon on the cover, and darned if it doesn’t look cute and harmless.

I put a light out by the chicken barn so I could see, then spent three nights sitting in my car nearby with a .22 in my lap, listening to audiobooks (very quietly, with earbuds) until 1:00 a.m.  I don’t know if the predator was scared off by my presence or just wasn’t hungry, but nothing approached the chicken yard during my vigils.  I saw what looked like a possum slinking through the grass one night, but it was too far away to be sure, and since it didn’t come anywhere near the barn, I didn’t want to take a shot.

I was worried that the predator would finish off the flock while we were gone for the cruise, so I bought a spring-door trap and set it by the chicken-yard on the day Chareva’s parents were due to arrive.  (They stayed at the house while we were on the cruise to look after the girls, the chickens and the dogs, bless them.)  I didn’t keep watch that night, figuring abandoning my in-laws to sit outside with a rifle might give them the impression I’m rude and ungrateful, if not borderline psychotic.

Sure enough, the next morning I looked out my bedroom window and could tell the door on the trap had sprung shut, although I couldn’t see what I’d captured.  By the time I showered and dressed, Chareva’s father had already taken a walk outside and informed me there was a raccoon in the trap.

Chareva’s mother is an animal-lover – she feeds a raccoon that hangs around their property in Chicago.  She asked if I could possibly drive the raccoon somewhere and let it go.  I told her what our neighbor told me:  those things will find their way back and go after your chickens again.  At the very least, it’ll find someone else’s chickens and kill them instead, which isn’t exactly a neighborly way of ridding yourself of a predator.  She understood.  Since they were all planning on going shopping, I said I’d take care of business while they were out.

When I first approached the raccoon in the cage, it was docile and kind of cute.  Gulp.  Then as I got closer, it began hissing and raging and baring its teeth and banging around inside the cage.  Thanks, Rocky Raccoon.  Now I’m seeing the predator that ripped the heads off my chickens.  That made it easier to pull the trigger.  I dumped the carcass in an overgrown area near our property, figuring the local coyotes or carrion birds will take care of it from there.

Our neighbor had warned me that there could be a family of raccoons nearby, so I re-set the trap before we left for the cruise.  Knowing her parents wouldn’t want to shoot the next predator, Chareva gave them our neighbor’s phone number.  (He had kindly volunteered his services if need be.)

When we returned from the cruise, we learned that the trap had captured a large possum the night before.  I don’t know for sure that the possum was after our chickens, but at this point I pretty much have to assume that any chicken-killing species that gets caught in a trap near the barn was looking for a chicken dinner.  Chareva’s parents called our neighbor, who came over and did the deed.

On a more positive note, we have a rooster now.  He’s not one we’d want to mix with our hens, so his job is to walk around the land and eat bugs, which he seems happy doing.  He’s especially fond of patrolling the area near the creek.

We got him from yet another neighbor who knocked on our door and asked if we wanted a rooster.

“Is there a reason you don’t want him?”

“Yup.  He’s mean.  He attacks my other chickens.  If you want him, you can have him.”

“Our hens are inside a fence, but if he gets in there and attacks them, he’ll probably end up in a soup pot.  Are you okay with that?”

“I’m fine with that.  We just need to get rid of him.”

The rooster has his own food and water inside the fence where we raised guinea fowl in our failed free-range guinea experiment.  He has no interest in staying inside the fence during the day (he climbed out immediately), but if he’s smart, he may spend his nights in there to avoid the coyotes that killed our guinea fowl.

If not … well, like I said, life in the country isn’t always pretty.

UPDATE:  Nope, the rooster wasn’t so smart.  While writing this post on Saturday morning, it occurred to me that I wasn’t hearing the rooster announcing his presence outside.  “Hmm, it’s quiet out there …. too quiet.” So the girls, my visiting nephew and I took a walk around the pastures.  We found a pile of feathers, then found some bones nearby.  The local coyotes can thank us for yet another tasty meal.

You’ve probably seen various versions of an “obesity map” like the one above.  Most of them show higher obesity rates in the South, which has led to a lot of tsk-tsking and speculation about possible reasons for the regional differences. TIME magazine ran an article in 2009 titled Why Are Southerners So Fat? that offered the usual explanations:   It could be all that southern-fried food with gravy.  Or perhaps obesity is just a marker for poverty, since more Southerners are poor.  Or maybe it’s that people living in the South don’t spend as much time outdoors in the summer because it’s too hot and humid. The problem might even be a lack of public transportation, according to the TIME reporter:

That’s another problem, by the way: the South doesn’t have many bus stops. Public transportation is paltry, and for most people, the best way to get around is by car. “You don’t really think of riding the train as exercise, but at least you have to walk a few blocks to get to the stop,” says Bassett. States like Mississippi and Tennessee also have a surprising lack of sidewalks, discouraging even the most eager pedestrians. Many roads are narrower than those in the North — where streets have wider shoulders to accommodate winter snow — and people who want to bike or jog find themselves uncomfortably close to traffic.

Poverty, fried food, humid weather, not enough sidewalks, too much sweet tea … take your pick.  But there’s another possible explanation that most of the obesity experts haven’t considered:

Those damned Yankees might just be a bunch of big fat liars.

Obesity rates are calculated by the Centers for Disease Control based on phone surveys.  According to a new study, people who answer those surveys might not be (surprise!) completely honest:

The South often gets tagged with having the most obese population.

But it doesn’t appear to be true, a University of Alabama at Birmingham study suggests.

The study recently published in the journal Obesity found that there’s a significantly higher percentage of obese people in a region of central and northwest states including Minnesota, Kansas and North and South Dakota.

“What we found is the West North Central region has about 41 percent obesity compared to 31 percent obesity in the southern region that includes Alabama and Mississippi,” said George Howard, professor in the Department of Biostatics at UAB. “By the way, 31 percent is not a good thing — but it’s not at the bottom.”

How did Southerners get such a fat reputation? Apparently because they are more truthful.

Yup.  The researchers found when they compared what people say they weigh versus what they actually weigh, the Northerners were more likely to … uh … underestimate their weight.  Men in the North were also more likely to overestimate their height, which reduces their calculated BMI.

Thanks to the inability of Northerners to accurately estimate their heights and weights, the regional data on obesity may not be relevant after all:

The study analyzed the weights in the nine geographic regions used by the U.S. Census Bureau.

It found that the West North Central region, which includes Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and North and South Dakota, ranked fourth in obesity by the telephone survey results. But when actually weighed in the REGARDS study, people from that region ranked first in the nation for obesity.

In the telephone survey results, the East South Central region, which includes Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, ranked highest. But when weighed, that southern region ranked fifth.

That’s fifth out of nine national regions, mind you.  As I wrote after we moved to Tennessee, I was surprised at how few obese people I saw in our immediate area.  I see a higher proportion of obese people in my hometown in Illinois than I do here, but I figured perhaps that’s because Franklin is in a prosperous part of Tennessee.

“It is hard to know exactly what is going on, but my speculation is that people in the South are telling the truth more,” Howard said. “Perhaps there is not as much stigma connected to obesity as say someone in California, or in this case, Minnesota.”

Oh, I don’t think it’s because Southerners are less ashamed of being fat, Dr. Howard.  I think it’s because more Northerners are less ashamed of being big fat liars. There are a lot more religious people in the South; perhaps they consider lying to the CDC to be a sin.  (I’m not religious, so I consider lying to government officials to be a patriot duty.)  Sure, we grow some big fat liars in the South, but they tend to run for office, serve out their terms in Washington, then move to New York or California and write fictional autobiographies or make scary documentaries.

Anyway, since I’m sure the folks at TIME magazine wouldn’t want us to think they secretly enjoyed portraying the conservative South as a region populated by a bunch of fat Bubbas, I’m looking forward to their upcoming article, Why Northerners Are So Fat – And Why They Can’t Read A Scale.

Interesting items from my email inbox ….

How to ruin chocolate

Since replacing fat in our diets with various forms of sugar has been such a smashing success, why not extend the practice to chocolate?

Scientists have managed to halve the fat content of chocolate by replacing cocoa butter and milk fats with fruit juice.

Although the process, which uses tiny droplets of orange, cranberry or apple juice, gives the bars a slightly fruity taste, it can be applied to milk, dark and white chocolate.

Tests are ongoing, but if the ‘mild’ fruit taste of the chocolate proves too strong and cannot be lessened, researchers believe the same result could theoretically be achieved with a mixture of water and vitamin C.

The potentially ground breaking technique was developed by scientists at the University of Warwick and unveiled by lead researcher Dr Stefan Bon at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.

Dr Bon said: “We have established the chemistry that’s a starting point for healthier chocolate confectionary… This approach maintains the things that make chocolate ‘chocolatey’, but with fruit juice instead of fat.”

Just what the world needs:  a repeat of the Snackwell’s phenomenon.  You remember Snackwell’s, don’t you?  Cookies and cakes and dessert bars that were good for us because they were low-fat! That was back in the 1990s, and all that fear of fat sure made everyone thinner and healthier, didn’t it?

I can’t help but wonder what kind of scientist ends up toiling in a lab to replace fat with fruit juice.  I’m guessing not a scientist whose other option was working in particle physics.  I also can’t help but wonder what kind of journalist considers removing fat and adding fruit juice to be a ground breaking technique.  Seems to me a moderately talented tinkerer could accomplish that feat in his basement.

It’s all about selling pharmaceuticals

As if we didn’t already know, Medical News Today recently pointed out what’s wrong with diabetes research:

An analysis of diabetes trials worldwide has found they are not addressing key issues relating to the condition with almost two thirds focusing on drug therapy while only one in ten addresses prevention or behavioural therapies. The research is published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), and is by Dr Jennifer Green, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA, and colleagues.

The researchers found 2,484 interventional trials by selecting those with disease condition terms relevant to diabetes. Of these, 75% had a primarily therapeutic purpose while just 10% were preventive. Listed interventions were mostly drugs (63%) while few were behavioural (12%).

So very few diabetes trials involve diets.  And of course, when researchers do attempt to control diabetes with diet, they usually prescribe the high-carb, low-fat diet promoted by the American Diabetes Association, which is pretty much bound to fail anyway.

I don’t want to sound paranoid, but is it possible they choose that diet so they can declare that diets are ineffective for controlling diabetes?

Another a-salt on salt

Here we go again … another study (a meta-analysis in this case) claiming that drastically reducing salt would save lives:

A reduction in dietary salt intake by 50 percent could prevent approximately 100,000 deaths from heart attack and stroke in the United States every year, according to new studies published in the April 4 issues of British Medical Journal online.

And researchers suggest that the responsibility for reducing salt in foods lies primarily with the food industry.

“Eighty percent of the salt that we eat is added by the food industry,” study author Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, told FoxNews.com.

In MacGregor’s study, researchers analyzed data on 3,000 adults who decreased their salt intake over the course of about four weeks.

Results indicated that study participants saw an average decrease in systolic blood pressure of 5 mmHg. Similar results were found in a second analysis of 56 studies, also published in the April 4 issue of BMJ.  Achieving this type of blood pressure decrease across the entire population could have major health benefits, according to MacGregor.

I’d say according to MacGregor is the correct choice of words – because that statement certainly isn’t  true according to the science.

First off, notice that restricting salt reduced systolic blood pressure by a whopping five points – yipeekyai.  Since hypertension is defined as blood pressure that’s 20 points above normal, I don’t think five points is going to make much of a difference.

Secondly, the research on salt, hypertension and cardiovascular disease is inconclusive at best.  Here’s a quote from an article Gary Taubes wrote some years ago titled The (Political) Science of Salt:

University of Copenhagen researchers analyzed 114 randomized trials of sodium reduction, concluding that the benefit for hypertensives was significantly smaller than could be achieved by antihypertensive drugs, and that a “measurable” benefit in individuals with normal blood pressure (normotensives) of even a single millimeter of mercury could only be achieved with an “extreme” reduction in salt intake.

After decades of intensive research, the apparent benefits of avoiding salt have only diminished. This suggests either that the true benefit has now been revealed and is indeed small, or that it is nonexistent, and researchers believing they have detected such benefits have been deluded by the confounding influences of other variables.

Finally, if you really want to lower your blood pressure, trying cutting way back on refined carbohydrates — especially fructose.

Why I don’t trust nutrition committees

I guess it’s not just the USDA that’s essentially a division of Monsanto.  Private organizations are being co-opted as well:

The politics of genetically modified food has created a rift in a policy-setting committee of the influential Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that demonstrates the difficulty in finding anyone — anywhere — who doesn’t already have an opinion on the issue.

A dietitian working on a panel charged with setting policy on genetically modified foods for the academy contends she was removed for pointing out that two of its members had ties to Monsanto, one of the biggest makers of genetically modified seeds.

“Perhaps it is possible for someone who works for an organization that creates or promotes G.M.O.’s to be objective, however, that would be hard to do,” Carole Bartolotto, a registered dietitian in California, wrote in a Feb. 6 e-mail to an academy executive.

In February, Ms. Bartolotto sent an e-mail to Kari Kren, a manager of research and business development at the academy, asking about the academy’s conflict of interest policy and raising questions about two other members of the group, Marianne Smith Edge and Jennie Schmidt.

Ms. Schmidt, a dietitian who operates a farm in Maryland, won a $5,000 prize from Monsanto and is a test farmer for the company.

Ms. Smith Edge, chairwoman of the committee, is a senior vice president at the International Food Information Council, which is largely financed by food, beverage and agriculture businesses, including companies like DuPont, Bayer CropScience and Cargill, companies that were among the biggest financial opponents of the California labeling initiative.

Later, she questioned the academy’s decision to hire Christine M. Bruhn, a professor at the University of California, Davis, to write its position paper on genetically engineered foods.

Professor Bruhn, who works for the university’s agriculture extension service, was an opponent of the California labeling measure. Additionally, the university has scholarships and other programs financed by Monsanto.

I wasn’t familiar with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics – or so I thought.  Turns out that’s the new name for what used to called the American Dietetic Association.  Their web site describes the organization as the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals.  So doesn’t it give you confidence in their objectivity to learn that Monsanto has members of the board in its (very deep) pocket?

As if Monsanto’s influence weren’t reason enough to ignore anything this organization says, take a look at this paragraph:

But what really concerned Ms. Bartolotto was the academy’s decision that Professor Bruhn would write the paper before the work group finished its review of the scientific materials.

Forming an opinion before reviewing the science?  I predict some of these people will end up on the next USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee.

Fat gets the blame again

Yahoo published an article about a teenager who lives on ramen noodles and has lousy health as a result.  Here are some quotes:

Ramen-style noodles, a staple in the pantry of broke college students, has been the mainstay of one teenager’s diet for the past 13 years, according to an article in the New York Daily News.

Georgi Readman, 18, of the Isle of Wight, U.K., refuses to eat fruit and vegetables and exists solely on packaged noodle soup, a snack that often contains high amounts of fat, saturated fat, and sodium. One package typically boasts 400 calories and 20 grams of fat.

Readman, who is 5’3” and 98 pounds, told the Daily News that she became hooked on the noodles when she was five-years-old and her mother still buys her packages by the dozens. She estimates eating 30 miles of noodles per year and the thought of eating anything else makes her sick.

Readman could not be reached for comment but according to her doctors, she is malnourished and has the health of an 80 year old.

(Note to Yahoo’s online editor:  Those sentences should read ” … when she was five years old …” and “…  has the health of an 80-year-old.”  Please reivew the proper use of hyphens.)

So we’ve got a young lady who lives on noodles and is malnourished, and the reporter believes the problem is the SATURATED FAT?!!  Newsflash: people don’t become malnourished by eating saturated fat.  They become malnourished by not eating enough quality fat, protein, vitamins and minerals.  According to what I can find online, that 400-calorie serving of noodles that the reporter believes is chock-full of saturated fat would contain about 9 grams of the stuff, but 45 grams of carbohydrates – probably consisting mostly of mutant wheat created by Monsanto.

I’m starting to think when reporters are assigned to the health beat, they’re given a coffee cup with the words ALWAYS BLAME SATURATED FAT emblazoned on the side.  Or perhaps the interview process goes something like this:

“I see you’ve spent most of your career reporting on school-board meetings.  Do you actually know anything about health or nutrition?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“You can start on Monday.”

And finally, just for fun …

My nephew Eric (The Oldest Brother’s Oldest Son) sent me this email today:

One of my favorite shows is “Parks and Recs.”  It is about a park department where one of the heads is ironically a meat eating, hard core Libertarian name Ron Swanson.  I’m sure most of your Fat Head followers, especially in my age range, are quite familiar.  When someone asked about our views/beliefs, my friend Paul interrupted and simply said to them, “To sum up Eric and his dad: Ron Swanson.”  I was sent this link with a few of his greatest quotes.

After reading the quotes, I think I’ll have to start watching that show.  Ron Swanson seems like my kind of guy.

Chareva ordered a wood-chopping axe awhile back and has been anxiously awaiting her chance to become a log-splitter.  The axe arrived just before the weekend, so she put it to use for the first time yesterday.  (My job in this project is to take the big ol’ chainsaw and cut the downed trees into sections.  Just thought I’d mention that before anyone accuses me of giving my wife all the tough work.)

As you can see from the video I shot, she’s getting the hang of it pretty quickly and swings a mean axe.  (Have I mentioned she’s stronger than she looks?)

Speaking of videos, when I went to the YouTube video manager yesterday, I was surprised to see the view counter on this video, which I uploaded in 2009:

That video has racked up more than 655,000 views.  I had no idea until yesterday.