Cyclist0108

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45195474

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...135-X/fulltext

wolfchild

All diet studies have one very serious flaw to it, and that is, they don't take the persons background, lifestyle and habits into consideration...It's so easy to demonize foods such as meat, or certain carbs or fats and say that they cause cancer or heart attacks or obesity...But what about the persons lifestyle ??...Does that person exercise, do they have a lot of stress in their life, do they smoke or drink a lot of alcohol, do they have a hazardous job, what about their family genetic history ??..AFIK none of those studies ever take those other things into consideration...All diet studies are a bunch of crap and there is no single diet that can increase your lifespan. Your health is determined mostly by your genetics and the length of time you live on this planet is determined by powers and factors which are beyond your control.

Hondo Gravel

McBTC

That's why you always want to follow a tin of kippers with an ice cold IPA...

jsk

Actually pretty much all of these observational studies try to take this into consideration, they call it "adjusting for confounding factors". You can argue about how effective or not this approach is, but to say that they ignore it is just wrong.

Ball Bearing

Standard procedure when the evidence goes against personal bias.

AlmostTrick

Plenty of people I know (along with myself) have never limited carbs and never had a problem with our weight. The low carb fad seems, at the least misguided, and now maybe dangerous.

McBTC

True, true, an apple a day is bad for you but blueberries are great? Not sure Atkins really thought that one through... but then, it originally was the drinking man's diet.

Seattle Forrest

Yep. "Blue zones" are the epicenters of longevity and places where people eat a lot of carbs.

elcruxio

I tried to write a longer post but all I was trying to write can be summed up into this: It's quite difficult to be both vegan or vegetarian and also be low carb. I think it has been proven that vegetarian diet is one of the healthiest forms of diet. However eating enough protein can prove difficult since almost all plant matter that contains protein also contains carbs.

Then again low carb tends to be popular among those who like meat and it has also been shown that especially red meat raises cancer risk

GrainBrain

This!

I'm a firm believer in balance for most people. I follow what my stomach craves - veggies, meat or carbs. This combined with regular exercise has led to an effective feedback loop that hasn't required me to follow a specific diet plan.

I rode 1,004 miles in July, which towards the end started to challenge my haphazard nutrition plan. The biggest obstacle though was hydration. Listening to my stomach I really started to crave protein, and while I had been eating balanced meals I would also heavily depend on carbs towards the end for energy bursts while riding in the afternoon.

I really hate the idea of a "diet" of any kind for someone without any particular food constraint. Portion control is a good idea, eliminating refined sugars is a great idea. But if you want to lose weight I'm a firm believer in focusing on an exercise plan first, getting active first and leaving your current diet alone. Then, as you continue being active just naturally letting yourself eat. An exception to this for me is I have to stay away from carbs when I get done riding, at least for a few hours till the mindless chip eating urges pass

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Carbonfiberboy 

Also calling BS on this study, even though my dietary "beliefs" are in accordance with its conclusions. Still, it's an unscientific study, as are almost all nutritional epidemiological studies. There's an excellent article about this problem with dietary studies in JAMA. Here's a link if you can access it.

The Challenge of Reforming Nutritional Epidemiologic Research

: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...tm_term=082318

The article's conclusion is that these studies do not answer that question. I agree.

Seattle Forrest

For the anecdotal record:

My performance has been suffering on the bike lately. It takes me longer to get warmed up, I can't stay over my LTHR for more than a second, I can't take hills at race pace. I can go fast on flat ground just below my threshold, but I don't have any anaerobic to give. This is completely new to me. Also, for what it's worth, I've been struggling in the weight room. This has been going on for about a month, although I've barely been on the bike the last two weeks.

I've been keeping a food journal and it shows that I've been getting 20 to 30 % of my calories from carbohydrates lately. That's extremely low carb. I'd never do that intentionally, it's just a consequence of trying to eat a high protein diet and stay under a calorie goal - and, apparently, do it in an unhealthy way. I eat apples and oranges and berries and even some chocolate, so it wasn't obvious to me, but when you add everything up, I'm in the low carb group. And my performance is clearly suffering for it. I'm starting to eat more carbs to fix this.

Rollfast

The mortality rate is 100% regardless of any factor.

aclinjury

The reason why there are so many association studies and epidemiology studies and not randomized control trials is that it could be unethical to subject people to a diet that could end up killing their health, in say 10 years down the road. It's sort of like studying the effect of cocaine on the human brain. You can only "study" such thing when the patients stupidly took the drug. You cannot administered the coke because it would be unethical. But there is still value in studying patients who have taken the coke and possibly killed themselves. So if you're looking for a randomized controlled trial (RCT) study, the gold standard, then it's not gonna happen.

Having said that, there is the Seventh Day Adventist study out of Loma Linda University. Here's a large scale study on a group of religious people who share a lot of similarities because of their religion. They have similar lifestyle, and they don't smoke, don't drink, and have access to similar level of healthcare. Lifestyle, smoking, drinking, and access to healthcare, are THE dominant confounding factors in all epidemiology studies, and the Seventh Day Adventist study for the most part kept them out. Anyone interested in this study can google it for themselves.

Carbonfiberboy 

Slightly amusing that you wanted to make the study (studies) slightly less accessible by not including links, which I do here:
https://publichealth.llu.edu/adventi...c-publications
Note that they are all published by Loma Linda, an Adventist organization, not in peer-reviewed journals.

IF you read the JAMA article I posted, you'd realize that the problem with epidemiological dietary studies is not so much that they are not RCTs, but rather that so many of them are done and analysed by researchers who are committed to proving their conclusions. This Loma Linda study is an exemplar of study analysis bias. Adventists want badly to prove the benefits of their religion and these studies were done for that purpose.

If you want to read a more balanced analysis of the study data, read a study of the same data published in a peer-reviewed journal such as JAMA: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/

There have been a number of studies which seem to show a relationship between red meat intake and all-cause mortality. However, a low or zero red meat intake is not necessarily indicative of a vegetarian or low or high fat diet. Of course other things related to the Adventist religion are confounding factors as well.

aclinjury

I think this study is "ok", but there is some question about food source, specifically at the extreme end of carbohydrate feeding. Do people who tend to eat carbs at the extreme end also eat refined carbs too, which would indicate it's a question of bad diet (because eating refined and processed carbs is never a good thing). We need to study people who eat whole un-refined carbs.

aclinjury

first of all, so what if they want to show the benefits of their religions? And what would those benefits be in the context of food? They have members from meat eaters all the way to vegans. If you have an issue with their scientific methods, then state so.
And I find it slightly amusing that you'd slight their studies by saying that they're non-peer-reviewed, but yet your original complaints is that all these nutritional studies (in peer review journals) are all wrong. So what'll it be? You can't cherry pick when to use peer reviews to support your stance and then blast them later when they don't.
And furthermore, you seem to trust peer reviews too easily. There are plenty of industry-funded studies that make their way into peer review journals, plenty of industry supported gun for hire diet doctors preaching the high fat diet. It's a bit of a joke to see see studies funded by the Atkins foundation make their way into these journals (because we all know what the conclusion of an Atkins Foundation or meat industry study is going to say; can't disappoint the hands that feed you the research funds eh). Makes one wonders if these journals are all that much better off than populist magazines.

CliffordK

I refuse to believe in a fatalistic view of the world. When one is conceived, one receives a "born on date" and a "die on date".

Yes, genetics play a role, but lifestyle also plays a huge role, and that includes diet and exercise.

There have been plenty of studies posted here about exercise and cycling having life prolonging effects, even when factoring risk of accident and injury or death.

Some chronic conditions like Type 1 Diabetes may just be bad luck. On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that other conditions such as Type 2 Diabetes can be mostly prevented with diet and exercise.

Heart Conditions... Yep, diet and exercise.

Cancer? Well, that may be complex, but there are several environmental related cancers including smoking and tobacco related lung, mouth, throat, and bladder cancers. HPV cervical and throat cancers. Others? There is also growing evidence that diet and exercise may also impact cancer risk.

As noted in the blurb above, the high/low carb risk may be related to what else is used to replace those carbs... in fact, replacing the carbs with meat and animal fats is bad... not a big surprise to many.

CliffordK

Oh, I suppose, also when looking at stuff like exercise... Is there a fundamental difference between those people who ride 10,000 miles a year, and those who haven't been on a bike for 50 years (if ever)?

In reality, the biggest difference is actually getting out there and onto the bicycle. And, keeping at it.

McBTC

True, true... the latest is that we need at least 30 minutes of some quality exercise a day so striking out in the wild every 3rd day on a road bike for an hour or so or, over 30 miles as conditioning and inclinations permit) probably is a bonus. After that, if you're not gaining weight, what you eat pretty much takes care of itself but, on the conservative side, it may be prudent to adopt Jean Mayer's admonition of, moderation in all things--e.g., don't get all your calories from chicken wings and craft beer.

awesomeame

I think as long as you don't eat much junkfood and ride your bike 10hrs a week, you'll be fine.

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a2254...healthy-aging/

I alternate between low carb and high carb myself, but not with any specific plan. If I need carbs I eat carbs.

Matt

McBTC

Low carb diet is bad-? Not sure how this squares with chicken soup broth being medicinal although, eating nothing but meat probably is bad but no more so than drinking too much carrot juice. That's what is really in question-- how much is too much?


https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/...-chicken-soup/

Sojodave

This study has already been proven false. I eat less than 20 carbs a day and I've lost 50 lbs, lowered my cholesterol and my blood sugar to normal range. I've done long distance rides on low carb. I rode 140 miles in June and kept low carb. Everyone on the ride kept telling me, dude, you've got to carb up or your going to bonk. I did fine without carbs.

Cyclist0108

Be sure to write the editors of The Lancet and report your anecdotal findings and refutation.