[nitrogen]

What appears to work best on the scale of a clinical study may not work so well for some subsets of the population. I've yet to find any sort of plant-based meal that makes me nearly as energetic and satisfied as one that includes animal protein of some kind.

[noondip]

Please check my related comment below about adjusting taste preferences. While it's true a greater amount of non-animal foods are necessary on account of them being generally less calorically dense (while at the same time being more nutrient dense), you can certainly find meals to satisfy your desires with patience and resolve. Start small - replace the beef patty with a black bean patty, for instance.

[voidlogic]

Do you realize that most people that "do keto" end up eating more veggies that they did before? There are tons of keto friendly veggies.

You can eat a ketogenic diet and eat nearly unrestricted amounts (except by satiety) amounts of things like cabbage, cauliflower, radishes (great cooked btw), brussel sprouts, spinach, green onions, broccoli, kohlrabi, lettuce, avocado, sprouts, green beans, rutabaga, leeks, yellow squash, zucchini, mushrooms, herbs.

Add that with some fish, meat, nuts and/or cheese and you have a very healthy diet.

Between the satiety of fat/protein and high-fiber foods above, its very easy to hit one's caloric goals and have a minimal blood glucose level.

[noondip]

Thanks - I wasn't aware of such diets, and I'm glad to hear people are eating their greens regardless of which diet they follow.

However, you're incorrect to assume adding meats and dairy products - even so-called "lean" ones - which are laden with cholesterol, saturated and trans fats - is at all healthy. All credible evidence suggests quite the opposite. If you have any studies which contradict my assertion, I would love for us to examine them together.

[voidlogic]

I mean you no offense, but to me it sounds like your understanding of nutrition science is 10 years in the past.

I do want to point out naturally occurring transfat has very different properties than the artificial common forms. I have never seen a well designed study show a low-fat diet to be superior to a high-fat-moderate-protien-very-low-carb one (usually referred to as VHFLC). I'd be interested if you know of any.

It is no longer generally accepted that dietary cholesterol is dominate factor unless you have mutation such as some of the PCSK9 mutations. Your body syntheses much more cholesterol everyday than you actually eat. The latest US government dietary guidelines has drastically shifted its position on cholesterol, write-up: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/10/feds-...

We have since learned many things such as the importance of HDL/LDL ratio as being predictive over just LDL for example.

This is a very complex topic and I would recommend this series written by a MD: http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-chol...

This is a 5 part series befitting the complexity of the issue at hand.

[noondip]

No offense taken, I hear what you're saying quite frequently.

Regarding the 2015 DGAC - the report did no original research to exonerate cholesterol, but rather deferred to a 2014 report by the American Heart Association, which has a financial incentive to label cholesterol-laden foods as, "heart healthy". Of course the media has chosen to play them up to stir up controversy and give the illusion there is vast disagreement in nutrition science, but that's simply not the case.

What has happened "in the last 10 years" is intense pressure from food industry lobbying to dilute research, confuse the public and distract from messages warning of saturated fat and cholesterol. Please, check out these short videos to see what exactly I'm talking about:

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/bold-indeed-beef-lowers-chol...

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-the-egg-board-designs-mi...

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/eggs-and-cholesterol-patentl...

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/debunking-egg-industry-myths...

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/who-says-eggs-arent-healthy-...

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-problem-with-the-paleo-d...

http://nutritionfacts.org/2015/08/18/dietary-cholesterol-aff...

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/big-food-using-the-tobacco-i...

(I apologize if this seems biased, coming from a single source, but if you check the videos, each has links to cited studies discussed - I simply favor the format the material is presented in)

The Eating Academy articles you've linked are by Peter Attia, a co-founder of NuSI. Please do watch the earlier review of their work I suggested - http://plantpositive.com/warning-signs-nusi-guys-1/

The healthful HCLF diets you're seeking out are known as plant-based (usually vegan, but not exclusively) diets, and are always lauded as health-promoting, albeit supposedly "unpalpable".

Low-fat meaning, low in or void of saturated- and trans-fatty acids, high (10-15% of caloric intake) in essential polyunsaturated omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (in the right ratio, ideally 1:1, but more practically, 1:3 or 1:5). Yet, many media outlets and conflict of interest research have no shame in claiming a diet as high as 30, 40, even 50 percent fat (always from animal products) are "low". This is simply nonsense! Your body needs only a little bit of fat, for example to increase vitamin absorption at each meal, or convert it to EPA/DHA.

High-carb meaning, the majority of calories are derived from whole, unrefined, plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruit, legumes and whole grains, especially ones low on the glycemic index (e.g. brown rice, whole grain pasta, beans, dark green leafy veg, colorful fruit variation, etc.)

Heck, I challenge you to find me a study which says a high-carb, low-fat diet as I've described is not a great recipe for human nutrition. Unfortunately, so many people find such a diet unreasonable for practical, social and other, personal reasons. Also unfortunate is the fact there's little money to be made in promoting these simple and unprocessed foods, so the academic world is not determined to research them.

Anyway, if you're interested in reading more about these sort of diets, check out the work by Colin Campbell, John McDougall, Neal Barnard, Dean Ornish, to name a few. I've fully embraced the dietary lifestyle recommended by them and others, and can only praise the mental clarity, increased energy and satiation experienced as a result. I really believe the "trick" is to cut out processed and animal product foods altogether (at least to the degree you can sustainably practice and at the pace you find to be reasonable) - they're just unnecessary! Sure, it's anecdotal evidence, but I figure it's worth sharing with you.

[voidlogic]

I wonder if we are operating with different ideas of what a VLCHF diet might look like.

Lets talk specifics, let me give an an example of what I might eat in a day on such a diet:

Breakfast: Scamble: 2 eggs with 1 clove of garlic, one or two green onion strands, 3 diced radishes, mushrooms and cabbage (majority by volume). Coffee with cream.

Lunch: Salad: Raw salmon, spinach, watercress, 1/4 an onion, sliced radishes, sliced almonds, avocado, sunflower seeds with a whole fat greek yogurt + olive oil dressing. Water.

Supper: Medium rare steak with mushrooms, grilled kohlrabi and steamed asparagus. Unsweetened Iced green tea.

As you can see this would be a day low in processed foods, high in greens with both a low glycemic index and glycemic load, weighing in at a reasonable 1800 kcal. It blows my mind that the video's you shared calls something like this dangerous?! Not only is it far better than the average American diet, unlike a high-carb diet this no chance of leading to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and eventually type II diabetes.

[DrScump]

"However, you're incorrect to assume adding meats and dairy products - even so-called "lean" ones - which are laden with cholesterol, saturated and trans fats"

Oh, dear.

First of all, meat and dairy don't HAVE meaningful amounts of transfat. Problematic transfats are man-made.

Secondly, there is NO proven link at all between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol absent carbs, Essentially all blood cholesterol is manufactured by the liver.

By all means, display your "credible evidence" to the contrary.

[noondip]

> meat and dairy don't HAVE meaningful amounts of transfat

In fact, they absolutely do. It's no doubt hydrogenated oils found in processed snack foods add trans fat as well, hence my emphasis on whole plant foods.

> The major dietary sources of trans fats listed in decreasing order. Processed foods and oils provide approximately 80 percent of trans fats in the diet, compared to 20 percent that occur naturally in food from animal sources

> #1 Cakes, cookies, crackers, pies, bread, etc.

> #2 Animal products

> #3 Margarine

http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/ch...

> there is NO proven link at all between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol

Surely you jest?

> Serum cholesterol concentration is clearly increased by added dietary cholesterol but the magnitude of predicted change is modulated by baseline dietary cholesterol.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1534437

Or do you suppose this is all just a grand conspiracy by the fruit and vegetable industries?

[DrScump]

">>there is NO proven link at all between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol > >Surely you jest?

Here's a clear example of your intellectual dishonesty. You specifically cut out the "absent carbs" term when quoting me and then rattled off studies that specifically did not control for carb consumption.

[voidlogic]

>there is NO proven link at all between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol absent carbs

I would change "NO proven link" to "only a weakly correlated link (assuming the patient is not a member of the 8-15% of the population estimated to have a mutation related to improper cholesterol homeostasis)"

:D