Carb FAIL

No more idiotic than the vitriol you post.

Men can, in fact, get breast cancer.

Yes. that is true, however the research he quoted was carried out on pre-menopausal women. I'm fairly certain that knowsley is not a woman, nor is he pre-menopausal.

And it would not seem plausible to you, that common dietary factors may connect the development of breast cancer in either pre-menopausal women, post menopausal women and also men!

That said, you'll find a plethora of oncological studies in major academic journals supporting a diet high in COMPLEX carbohydrates and low in animal fat and protein, for reducing development of various types of cancers, including breast cancer.

Additionally, studies confirm knowsley's position that traditional Asian diets are high carbohydrate while low in animal fat and protein.In fact, a worrying trend is the increased intake of meatfat and refined sugar in the contemporary Asian diet, which has implications for the deteriorating health of the population (including increased obesity, cancer etc), especially among low socioeconomic groups.

I could easily post a bunch of citations and references from peer reviewed articles sourced from well established academic periodicals.However I'm sure you're capable of looking yourself, if you have access to these journals (as I do).Even a glance at the databases provided on google scholar will confirm that Knowsley's argument is well supported.However ultimately I can't be bothered going to the effort of reposting information here for someone who's obviously happy with her own beliefs, and probably won't change her mind whatever data is put before her.

Thanks for that miri. I never said Asian diets were not high in carbs. I actually agreed with the first person who raised that particular bogey. What I did say was that they were low in sugar and wheat. That would have been easy for you to see if you'd been bothered to read. I agree, also that their diets are low in protein. One only has to look at the stature of Asians to realise that they do not get enough protein. We were talking about traditional diets and how they do not become obese like Westerners.

It is interesting that you raised the worrying trend of the increased meat fat and sugar in Asian diets. If you read very carefully you will see that I too put the blame of obesity firmly at the door of our high sugar diet. Combine sugar and fat and you have a recipe for a rapidly declining health in overall population.

Therefore, you are arguing my own points, quite successfully I would say.

Now, about the breast cancer thing. I have no problems with others going on vegetarian diets if it makes them happy to believe they are doing something positive about breast cancer. However, taking Linda McCartney as an example, it didn't help her one iota.

And, for your information, knowsley often points out that scientific research is deeply flawed, especially when it does not agree with his viewpoints while, ironically, using scientific research to back up his own arguments. You too can use as much science as you like but knowsley has taught me well and now any scientific research quoted is viewed by me with much suspicion. Ironic, yes!

I, personally, prefer real life. Steve Jobs and Linda McCartney were two high profile vegan and vegos, respectively and cancer was not a stranger to either. Dr Bernstein is a high profile type 1 diabetic on a low carb, moderate meat and fat diet (which is what I prefer) and knows no cancer. Dr Atkins did not have cancer when he died. The Royal family is very long lived and apart from the last King, who smoked like a chimney, cancer is also not known in that family and yet they are not vegetarians. I can look to all the people I know. Some have had cancer and others have not. Diet has been, for the most part, bog standard western high grains, meat and processed foods. What does that tell me! Well nothing really, only that life and cancer is a lottery and no amount of careful dieting will make a lick of difference so I may as well eat what makes me happy and works for my body and in my case that is meat, fat, fish, eggs, butter, animal fats and vegetables, fruit with small amounts of fermented grain bread, rice and even smaller amounts of processed table sugars with no artificial sweeteners, etc, etc.

Fair enough, I did misrepresent your position - looking back on the thread .But why then advocate a low carb diet, when surely what you have just outlined is a support for a balanced dietwith a moderate to high carb intake barring wheat and refined sugars!Rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner is hardly Atkins.

I'd like to tell a story here about three older adult males of my acquaintance. All had heart attacks in their late 40's. All have had heart operations. I do not know their diets before that time but I know their subsequent diets very very well. All eschew animal fats and keep other fats to a minimum. All believe wholeheartedly in margarine. All are on BP and statin type meds. Two are in their mid 70's. One in his late 60's. Two are overweight. One is a skinny fat. There seems to be no limitation on the amount of sugar they eat.

Now read on. If the recommended high carb diet, which they are all on, was so damn perfect how come they all:

1. Suffer from frequent recurrent angina attacks!
2. Two have since become type 2 diabetic to add to their misery!
3. One now has progressed to hardening of the carotid arteries and is on the waiting list for his first operation of two!
4. They all have low grade joint aches and pains and one has had to have his hands operated on because of crippling arthritic type disease!

Explain to me how 30+ years of a nice high carb, low fat, low protein diet has not given these people back the perfect health promised by your scientific research!

Ah. That is an excellent question. The reason for my advocacy lies in the typical Western diet. (the Oriental example was just a red herring). We do not eat rice for b/f, lunch and dinner. We eat bread or flour based products instead and these products are usually accompanied by high fat, high salt and high sugar intakes to make them palatable. I'd just ask you to think about what we eat.

Therefore my advocacy is more for those who have become obese, or even merely fat/tubby, on our Western diet. If anyone wants to learn standard Asian cuisine and begin eating that way, I would support them 100% but even with my knowledge, eating that way myself is not something I can sustain because I happen to love roasts, western style jus and rich butter sauces and the thought of eating soy sauce every single day doesn't do much for me at all, and I presume, for others as well. I love experimenting with the foods of different cultures and what do I do when I lust after a lovely salad when uncooked foods are not normal in Asian cuisine, etc, etc.

It is the diet that sits well with the Western psyche and low carb can be anything from 30 to 120grms of carbs a day, depending on your choice of diet. Fat keeps the hunger at bay, much better than any amount of bread or pasta can.

Is wheat really such a culprit!May I mention the traditional Italian diet - pasta, olive oil, very little meat!In recent years, certainly, obesity is emerging as a problem there with the introduction of not just Western institutions (Maccas, KFC etc) but Western behaviour around eating - so called fast food.Perhaps the issue is not so much what we are eating, but how we are eating.No more the family gathering at the table, dining and socialising for several hours over a slow cooked and lovingly prepared meal.

To be honest I've learnt the hard way, that following fad diets (such as Atkins) is a dangerous road.I can no longer enjoy eating - as I've forgotten how.Food is a chore, not a pleasurable part of my everyday.I guess that is my concern when I read threads like these - people obsessing over what they eat and losing sight of the delightful (yet secondary role) food plays in our social interactions.

Seriously you don't want to be like me - 36kgs and a mess.

Actually, I put a lot of faith in sound science. What I (amongst a plethora of others) find if that the "science" you quote, often from the books/websites you read IS deeply flawed. It's something you fail to grasp time and time again.

First let me dispute that a lower carb diet is a fad. We have been eating this way for millenia. The high wheat and sugar diet is the fad as it has only been around for a very short time.

To address your other query - "Is wheat really such a culprit". Yes, especially when it is combined with high fat and sugar. I asked you to think about the western diets but I see you haven't so here goes. A typical western obeseity forming diet:

B/f - Toast with margarine, tea or coffee with sugar and maybe a bowl of sugary wheat or corn based cereal with low fat milk and extra sugar.

M/t and A/t- Biscuit/muffin, tea or coffee with sugar and milk

Lunch - Sandwich or three with margarine and a slither of filling, tea/coffee with sugar & milk and maybe a biscuit or slice of cake. Or Meat pie, maccas, etc with coke or sugared tea/coffee

Pre-dinner snack - You choose - crackers, cheese, potato chips, slice of bread and margarine, left over slice cake, biscuit, alcohol, Indian crunchie things, etc.

Dinner - Mostly a choice of several things: A staple - potato with butter or margarine, rice or pasta. Protein - vegetable fish or animal or none at all. Vegetable - read recipes and you'll see that most people think potato is a vegetable and maybe one other plant.

After dinner - tea/coffee and biscuit.

Why is this diet a problem! Well it is almost entirely made up of high starch foods with a high proportion of both sugar and wheat. Sugary foods are eaten with gusto and are usually extras to what I have outlined.

Take away the sugar and take away the wheat and you can begin to both lose weight and gain back your health. Unfermented wheat also affects homeostasis with a huge increase in auto-immune disease currently occurring.

Asian style diet -

b/f - rice and fermented pickles
lunch - rice, vegetables and meat with all the fat still intact
dinner - rice, vegetables, protein (from the sea, the land, rivers, out of chooks, fermented soy, etc) and maybe a dumpling or noodles in place of the rice.

Sure, they do make some sweet and sour dishes but no cakes, biscuits, toast, bread, etc, just mostly good, wholesome food made from primary produce.

Do I want you to be 36kg! No. That preserve belongs to tiny Asian women who are very petite and whose tiny bone structure was formed from conception by eating very little protein. Even the smallest of film stars would be dragged into hospital and force feed once their weight dropped below 43kg.

I did mention how wheat forms a major part of the traditional Mediterranian diet.Until recently populations in this region have been among the healthiest in the world.The French also had a reasonable amount of wheat in their diet.The difference between these specific European culturesand this rather ambiguous "Western" diet (to which you keep referring) was not the presence of wheat but the fact that a culture developed that celebrated food and its social functions.

Sure, if you cut carbs out of your diet you'll lose weight.I did.

Am I healthy! Absolutely not.

Not so. Actually the belief that the Mediterranean diet was healthy came from Ancel Keys 7 Countries Study. Unfortunately he skewed the results to fit his paradigm (another research failure). He actually studied 22 countries but left out those that didn't fit his theory.

His Mediterranean part of the study covered 2 countries. One was included because it fitted. The other was excluded because it didn't. You believe in a lie.

Pockets of peoples in the Mediterranean may be perfectly healthy but mostly they have the same health statistics as the rest of the Western world.

Diet is, I agree, a very subjective thing. Mostly, the wheat in the French diet was, until quite recently, consumed in the form of fermented grains. French baguettes are still made from fermented flour and is still the most popular bread item. Remember I did mention fermented grains as being more healthy (than non-fermented).

And once again you mention another country and quote their cuisine - French. You have agreed that fat and high meat diet is the cause of a scourge on health and yet the French, whom you think of as very healthy, eat a lot of animal fat and meat!

So please explain. Is the French diet (high in animal fat, protein and fermented wheat) healthy! If so, how does that correlate with your statement, ".a diet high in COMPLEX carbohydrates and low in animal fat and protein, for reducing development of various types of cancers, including breast cancer."

Diet is a complex thing. I am not interested in advising people to eat either a French, Mediterranean, Chinese or any other sort of diet because that is not what we eat here. If anyone wants to follow those regimens I doubt they would care one iota whether I concur or not.

I am merely telling people what has worked for me, what has given me the most rewards in terms of health outcomes with the parameters of the foods that are freely available and which are most usually cooked within the NZ dietary boundaries.

And why not! NZ women have gotten fat eating food they have obtained in NZ. Therefore one can only show how to improve by demonstrating that NZ food can also help them.

Fyi, Italian diets do not just include pasta. Their cuisine is vast and eating just one tiny part of that cuisine, is not the same as eating the full range of foodstuffs that comes out of regional Italian domestic kitchens. I agree that these people celebrate food and delight in consuming fresh, unprocessed (where possible) foods over the trash that fills the bellies of most NZers, eaten as a solitary experience, at speed.

I cannot comment on your health. If you are unhealthy due to low carb then by all means, you are free to share that knowledge but no need to use my posts as your springboard. I don't use yours or make my entry into a thread by arguing with you.

Miri - I lived in Italy for a year and pasta - while eaten daily is (as is rice in Asia) one of many dishes. So you do not just eat pasta (like we do here in NZ - even pasta on toast!), you actually eat very little in the way of carbs in Italy despite pizza, pasta and of course bread at every meal, simply because you also eat heaps of salads, veges, meat and fish.

buzzy110 often seems perplexed that she rubs many people up the wrong way.I'd invite her to re-read her last paragraph.

miri_s, clearly a well-read and intelligent poster attempts to engage with buzzy110 in a non-confrontational dialogue, but after a short skirmish with her buzzy110 dismisses miri_s with veiled contempt and obviously prefers to continue with her own monologues.

Such a waste of an opportunity.

Uli, I have also lived in Italy - and have Italian grandparents.Pasta was simply an example - but we had a lot of carbs.Of course I realise the Italian diet is more varied than just pasta, but wheat is a staple part of the diet, however you look at it.

I have never heard of the Ancel and his 7 countries - I garnered my information concerning the benefit of Mediterranean style diets from the British Medical Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association,Circulation (a journal specialising in Cardiovascular health).Research since 2005, undertaken by the institutes strongly indicates that increased longevity and adversely decreased riskof stroke, coronary disease, obesity result from following this diet.

However, I believe that adhering to any "style" of diet for the sake of following a diet, is ridiculous.If you're modelling your life around an eating regime then things are out of kilter.

Buzzy, I'm sorry if you believed I was attacking you.I thought we were simply discussing the pros and cons of a low-carb diet.No you have not used my posts as a springboard to argue with me - mainly because I have never posted here before.However I see you do argue with quite a few on this board!That said, I welcome debate and enjoy having my views tested.As you seem to prefer not to be challenged, Buzzy, I'll leave it at that.

Thanks for a great read.Well debated.But really when it comes down to it, eat what you feel comfortable eating.If it works for you carry on, if it doesn't change things.Miri you say you have tried low-carb.Did you include lots of saturated fat in your diet!I believe many people are so scared of fat that they don't include it in their diet.It is very healing and sustaining.I tend to look at what our ancestors ate successfully for thousands of years rather than look to research which is funded by the likes of margarine companies etc.It makes complete sense to me to go back to being a 'cavewomen' in my diet and for me that feels good.However miri I also know from experience that just a change in diet is sometimes not enough.Sometimes things need tweaked - adding in supplements or special superfoods for a while to right the imbalance caused by modern foods.So maybe that's something you need to look into as well.

You should read about Ancel Keys and the huge influence he had in forming the basis of the diets so keenly recommended by the Council you are talking about.

I have no problem being challenged and I think I debated very well with you. When you say, "If you're modelling your life around an eating regime then things are out of kilter." what does that mean! You promoted this, "a diet high in COMPLEX carbohydrates and low in animal fat and protein" and supported the vegetarian research. Are both diets NOT eating regimens then!

I do not think that eating a sparing, but highly satiating healthy diet of the freshest possible primary produce, much the same as your ancestors, is extreme, nor is it out of kilter. Eating a diet that consists of many small meals composed almost entirely of wheat or grain, sugar, starch and processed foods, all washed down with caffeine based sugary drinks and low fat dairy, is a diet that is severely out of kilter imo. Yet that is the diet that your medical experts are promoting.

Remember my three older men! Their diet now, more or less, conforms to the recommended "diet high in complex carbohydrates and low in animal fat and protein" and even with a preference for skinless chicken when not eating pasta, yet rather than getting all healthy and hearty, their health is deteriorating. The carotid artery one could die at any minute and if the diabetics do not keep up their diabetic meds, their lives are on the line. How is the diet saving them from obesity, heart and coronary disease and stroke. How has is helped them to throw away the BP and statin meds!

I simply said that a diet high in complex carbs and low in animal fat in protein has been shown, by certain well established Universities, to decrease the risk in cancer.You partially quoted me.I never said I advocated following such a regime - you can look at the evidence for yourself and do what you like with it.

Nor did I reference a single "Council" but mentioned 3 independent sources which had produced research recently, each of which indicates that a Mediterranean diet has certain health benefits.There are in fact many more sources, but I chose 3 reputable journals rather than fossicking through more specious sources.

These Inot "my" experts.They are simply academics who have studied at universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Yale , Harvard.You can choose to accept their findings or not.Perhaps though, you may one day like to consider that you don't have to choose a theory and stick to it dogmatically - there are plenty of other ideas out there to consider, if you open your mind a little.

Ever heard of hereditary conditions!Some things cannot be escaped, despite our best efforts to prevent the onset of such conditions.

vmax is correct. We all have to follow our own dictates toward health and I only give my experiences. You might like to give yours and then let others make up their own minds. I do not mind if no one believes me. I don't mind if everyone, down to the last man standing, wants to eat another type of diet, or no diet at all. I just know that they cannot say they didn't know of another way.

I ate the "high in complex carbohydrate" way once upon a time and if you think your dabbling in low carb left you unhealthy, you should have seen what the other way did for me. You wouldn't want to have walked a mile in my shoes. I also tried vegetarianism and I ended up at my doctors, barely able to stay awake for 2 hours at a time and getting jabbed with all sorts of things and being sternly told to eat more meat, especially red meat. So that didn't prove a stunning health success either.

Now, I have been eating this way for a whileand I am brilliantly happy with what I have achieved. Also my husband is reaping the benefits. Not for him the title of "old gouty" enjoyed by the DH of another "complex carbohydrate" promoter in here.

I think we're on agreement here at least.Good on you for getting the results you were seeking :-)

Astounding!buzzy110 and I agree on something.Be amazed.

I hope this means that she will stop scoffing at vegetarians who, from the testimony on these messageboards, are successfully living a life of optimal health - some after many years, and well into that time of life when there might well be an onset of the disorders of old age.but there are none.