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A recent study supports the notion that an 'ancestral diet' focused around high-starch agricultural foods can cultivate leanness and metabolic health. John McDougall gave Christopher Gardner a hard time at the McDougall Advanced Study Weekend.  Dr. Gardner conducts high-profile randomized controlled trials (RCTs) at Stanford to compare the effectiveness of a variety of diets for weight loss, cardiovascular and metabolic health.  The "A to Z Study", in which Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN diets were pitted against one another for one year, is one of his best-known trials ( 1 ). Dr. McDougall asked a simple question: why haven't these trials evaluated the diet that has sustained the large majority of the world's population for the last several thousand years?  This is an agriculturalist or horticulturalist diet based around starchy foods such as grains, tubers, legumes, and plantains, and containing little fat or animal foods.  Researchers have studied a number...

For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Dr. John McDougall is a doctor and diet/health advocate who recommends a very low fat, high starch, whole food vegan diet to control weight and avoid chronic disease.  He's been at it for a long time, and he's a major figure in the "plant-based diet" community (i.e., a diet including little or no animal foods). Dr. McDougall invited me to participate in his 3-day Advanced Study Weekend retreat in Santa Rosa, CA.  My job was to give my talk on insulin and obesity, and participate in a panel discussion/debate with Dr. McDougall in which we sorted through issues related to low-carb, Paleo, and the health implications of eating animal foods.  I was glad to receive the invitation, because I don't see myself as a diet partisan, and I believe that my evidence-based information is applicable to a variety of diet styles.  I saw the Weekend as an opportunity to extend my thoughts to a new community, challenge myself, and m...

Chris Kresser has been a major figure in the ancestral health community for some time now.  It's funny to recall that I was actually one of his first readers, back in the early days of his blog when it was called The Healthy Skeptic and the audience was small.  Chris's readership rapidly eclipsed mine, and now he's in high demand for his ability to convey ideas clearly and offer practical solutions to important health concerns. He recently published a book titled Your Personal Paleo Code , which also happens to be a New York Times bestseller.  The primary goal of the book is to help you develop a diet and lifestyle that support health and well-being by starting from a generally healthy template and personalizing it to your needs.  Let's have a look. Introduction Kresser opens with the poignant story of his own health problems, which began with an infectious illness in Indonesia and several courses of antibiotic therapy.  After years of struggling with the resulting s...

A new review paper on dietary fatty acids and heart disease risk was just published by Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury and colleagues in the Annals of Internal Medicine-- one of the top medical journals ( 1 ).  The goal of the paper is to comprehensively review the studies evaluating the effect of dietary fatty acids on heart (coronary) disease.  The review covers observational and intervention studies pertaining to saturated, monounsaturated,  trans , omega-6 polyunsaturated, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats.  The paper is notable for its comprehensiveness (inclusion criteria were very lax). Here is a summary of the results: In observational studies that measured diet, only trans fat was related to cardiovascular risk.  Saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats were unrelated to risk. In observational studies that measured circulating concentrations of fatty acids, long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (DHA, DPA, EPA, AA) were associated with lower risk.  The dairy-fat-derived margar...

I'm happy to announce that we're releasing a free e-book titled Why do We Gain Fat, and How do We Lose it? An Introduction to the Science of Body Fat , by Dan Pardi and myself. This is a slimmed-down version of the longer, fully referenced e-book we offer as part of the Ideal Weight Program. In it, we provide a succinct overview of the science of body fat gain and loss, and the evidence base for our program.  It also contains a schematic that ties together the various concepts in visual form. You can download it from the Dan’s Plan site by following this link  to our program overview page. Ideal Weight Program 2.0 Upgrades Over the last year, Dan and I have been working hard to improve the Ideal Weight Program, both in response to user feedback and our own ideas for development.  Here are some of the new features we offer in 2014: Four-week meal plans and shopping lists for the FLASH diet and the Simple Food Diet, as requested by Ideal Weight Program users.  This is...

The Claim: We Overeat Because Our Diet is Low in Vitamins and Minerals We know that animals, including humans, seek certain properties of food.  Humans are naturally attracted to food that's high in fat, sugar, starch, and protein, and tend to be less enthusiastic about low-calorie foods that don't have these properties, like vegetables ( 1 ).  Think cookies vs. plain carrots. In certain cases, the human body is able to detect a nutritional need and take steps to correct it.  For example, people who are placed on a calorie-restricted diet become hungry and are motivated to make up for the calorie shortfall ( 2 ,  3 ).  People who are placed on a low-protein diet crave protein and eat more of it after the restriction is lifted ( 4 ).  Humans and many other animals also crave and seek salt, which supplies the essential minerals sodium and chlorine, although today most of us eat much more of it than we need to.  At certain times, we may crave something sweet or acidic, and pregnan...

Glucagon is a hormone that plays an important role in blood glucose control.  Like insulin, it's secreted by the pancreas, though it's secreted by a different cell population than insulin (alpha vs. beta cells).  In some ways, glucagon opposes insulin.  However, the role of glucagon in metabolism is frequently misunderstood in diet-health circles. The liver normally stores glucose in the form of glycogen and releases it into the bloodstream as needed.  It can also manufacture glucose from glycerol, lactate, and certain amino acids.  Glucagon's main job is to keep blood glucose from dipping too low by making sure the liver releases enough glucose.  There are a few situations where this is particularly important: Read more »

By now, most of you have probably heard about the recent study on the "Mediterranean diet" ( 1 ), a diet that was designed by diet-heart researchers and is based loosely on the traditional diet of Crete and certain other Mediterranean regions.  The popular press has been enthusiastically reporting this trial as long-awaited proof that the Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of cardiovascular events-- by a full 30 percent over a 4.8-year period.  I wish I could share their enthusiasm for the study. Read more »

In this post, I'll follow up on the last post with a discussion two more important factors that can affect energy homeostasis and therefore our food intake and propensity to gain fat: age and menopause . Age Although it often isn't the case in non-industrial cultures, in affluent nations most people gain fat with age.  This fat gain continues until old age, when many people once again lose fat.  This is probably related to a number of factors, three of which I'll discuss.  The first is that we tend to become less physically active with age.  The second, related factor is that we lose lean mass with age, and so energy expenditure declines. Read more »

In the first post, I explained that all voluntary actions are driven by a central action selection system in the mesolimbic area (the reward system).  This is the part of you that makes the decision to act, or not to act.  This system determines your overall motivation to obtain food, based on a variety of internal and external factors, for example hunger, the effort required to obtain food, and the sensory qualities of food/drink.  These factors are recognized and processed by a number of specialized 'modules' in the brain, and forwarded to the reward system where the decision to eat, or not to eat, is made.  Researchers divide food intake into two categories: 1) eating from a true energy need by the body (homeostatic eating), e.g. hunger, and 2) eating for other reasons (non-homeostatic eating), e.g. eating for social reasons or because the food tastes really good. In the second post of the series, we explored how the brain regulates food intake on a meal-to meal basis based ...

In the last post, I explained that eating behavior is determined by a variety of factors, including hunger and a number of others that I'll gradually explore as we make our way through the series.  These factors are recognized by specialized brain 'modules' and forwarded to a central action selection system in the mesolimbic area (the reward system), which determines if they are collectively sufficient cause for action.  If so, they're forwarded to brain systems that directly drive the physical movements involved in seeking and consuming food (motor systems). The term 'homeostasis' is important in biology.  Homeostasis is a process that attempts to keep a particular factor within a certain stable range.  The thermostat in your house is an example of a homeostatic system.  It reacts to upward or downward changes in a manner that keeps temperature in a comfortable range.  The human body also contains a thermostat that keeps internal temperature close to 98.6 F.  M...

As with all voluntary movements, eating food is an expression of activity in the brain.  The brain integrates various inputs from around the body, and outside the body, and decides whether or not to execute the goal-directed behaviors of food seeking and consumption.  Research has uncovered a lot about how this process works, and in this series I'll give a simplified overview of what scientists have learned about how, and why, the brain decides to eat. The Gatekeeper of Voluntary Behaviors Read more »

I often receive requests from people asking for my overall perspective on fat loss and health.  I share my opinions here, but they're scattered throughout hundreds of posts, there's a lot I haven't had a chance to write about, and I rarely give practical recommendations.  However, I knew I'd eventually put everything together into a cohesive fat loss program-- it was only a matter of finding the right opportunity. That opportunity presented itself in 2011 when I met Dan Pardi, a researcher whose work focuses on sleep and food intake, and the CEO of a company called Dan's Plan .  I was immediately impressed by Dan because he stood out as someone with a high level of expertise in sleep and physical activity, as well as someone who has successfully lost a substantial amount of fat and kept it off for several years. Dan and his team had developed a set of unique and engaging tools for tracking weight, sleep, and physical activity to help people maintain daily mindfulnes...