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The Courage Corner Newsletter March 2010

After recently watching an interview with Gary Taubes (of "what if it's all been a big fat lie" fame), David Ornish (of the ultra low fat high carb fame) and the head of the American Heart Association, I am now thouroughly convinced that there are many experts in the field of nutrition that are still either ignoring basic physiology and research or have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

One of the arguments made by the Heart Association was that a calorie is a calorie, you can't go against physics and the 2nd law of thermodynamics.  The only way you can every lose weight is if calories in is less than calories out. Fat has 9cal/g and carbs have 4cal/g, blah, blah, blah.  It's an argument I'm sure you've all heard before and it's this dogma of counting calories that persists even to this day (watch biggest loser much?). Let's take a moment while I , bearing in mind that I won't elaborate too much on the science parts, but you are free to look them up yourself.

1)  Let's tackle the whole 2nd law of thermodynamics thing.  Now if your body was a test tube, and the only purpose of consuming these macronutrients was purely for energy, and your body digested, absorbed, transported and utilised them ALL in the exact same way, and that's even ignoring the effects on the body's hormonal profile, then this rule would apply.  But obviously, this is ridiculous. The very simple fact that your body will convert some of this ingested energy to heat (heard of the Thermic Effect of Feeding anyone?), means that a calories is simply not just a calorie.

2)  Let's ignore the fact that the fate of some of these ingested macro's are in fact for structural and hormonal purposes and pretend that they're all going to be converted to energy.  The conversion of substrates in the body ultimately end up as ATP, the universal currency used by all cells.  The complete breakdown of glucose in your cells yields around 36-38 ATP (it's actually quite a complex sequence and never really yeilds a whole number), whereas a molecule of fat being broken down (and this will vary on the type of fat by the way) will typically yield around 108 ATP.  Now, if carbs are 4cal/g and fat is 9cal/g, then fats should yield 2.25 times the amount of ATP than carbs do, so 38 x 2.25 should = 108...damn it, I think my calculator is broken.

3)  Have these people even looked at how fat actually gets deposited in the body?? Just like muscle tissue, adipose isn't just sitting there, it is in constant flux ie constantly getting broken down and rebuilt. Read any text book on physiology and obesity and they will all say the same thing. Insulin is the key hormone for depositing fat and it is even more potent at preventing stored fat from being released. It's pretty much damn near impossible to store fat without insulin! Just look at a type I diabetic. They often call it "starving in the midst of plenty". Fact is, you pretty much can't store any fat without insulin being present. Notice how at no point in this paragraph has an excess of calories been mentioned? This is one thing all scientists agree on, but when they're quizzed about fat accumulation?...oh it's all about calories in calories out...

4) There a many many studies that have looked at isocaloric diets and they're effect (ie keep the calories the same and vary the macronutrient ratio's).  By conventional wisdom of "a calorie is a calorie" if the calories are the same, then each diet should yield the exact same results. Yeah, well guess what? Obviously the don't. In fact there was even one study where one of the groups consumed MORE calories each day than the other and yet they still managed to lose more fat! Want to guess which diet that was? The low carb diet! That's right, if you were to eat the exact same amount of calories each day, but change their make up, the diet would yield completely different results. But how can this be?? A calorie is just a calorie! You can't violate the laws of physics! Eating fat makes you fat because it has more calories!

There are actaully more reasons to list and I could go on but I think I've proved my point. . . well two points. It's not just about calories, and your trusted dietary agencies have a grade school view about nutrition and science.

If you want to learn more about nutrition and training, become a fan of The Courage Corner on facebook. I'd provide a link for you, but I'm an academic and this pretty much covers my computer excellency, so you'll have to just look us up.