Why Calories Do Not Count – Part I

You all know who Yao Ming is.  Yao is HUGE – 7’6” and 310lbs.  To get that big Yao definitely had to overeat, overeat and overeat some more.

Here is the important question:  Did he grow that much because he overate, or did he overeat because he was growing that much? (this is NOT semantics)

Ask any obesity researcher, “could you become Yao’s size if you just ate as much as he did?”

They will answer, “No, it was the growth hormone in his body that made him grow that big.”

Ask that same obesity researcher what happened to this 300 pound man:

And you will get a very different response, “he eats too much and exercises too little and he kept it up for a very long time.”

Yao is 310 pounds and he DEFINITELY overate.

The chubby umpire is 300+ pounds and he definitely overate.

But we blame Yao’s overeating on his growth hormone, and the chubby umpire’s overeating on his willpower – in other words he has a character defect that made him grow.

Let’ sum this up:

•    Vertical growth is under the control of hormones (growth hormone)
•    Horizontal growth (fat cells) grow as a result of a character defect (you have no will power, and you eat too much and move too little)

Does that make any sense?

Does that sound like I am contradicting my previous post “Do Fat People Really Eat More?”.  Stay tuned and I will explain.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 fat-loss expert for busy people.  He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here.

What’s Up With Red Meat? (More Crap “Science”)

It seems like one of the media’s most cherished pastimes is to run around promoting crap science as some kind of new breakthrough.  It really doesn’t look like anyone reporting on this stuff can take 5min to ask themselves thing like, “does this even make any sense? Is this even well done science?” before they go around blabbering about new “facts.”

Case in point, there is a new study out claiming to prove that “eating red meat increases the chances of dying prematurely.”  This is another piece of junk science.  The authors should be ashamed of themselves for the claims that they are making, but instead they are on CNN.

Major Issues That I See:

#1. NO CAUSE AND EFFECT WHATSOEVER: If you read the interviews of people associated with this study they say thing like, “This is a slam-dunk to say that, ‘Yes, indeed, if people want to be healthy and live longer, consume less red and processed meat’ ” as Barry M. Popkin did.  In other words they are saying that this study establishes a cause and effect – eating red meat causes bad stuff.

REALLY!?

In science there is this rule that says, association (especially with low quality data) is NOT causation.  Here’s an ice cream metaphor:

In the summer ice cream consumption goes up.  In the summer time murder also goes up.  So there IS a positive association between ice cream consumption and murder to be sure.  However, do you think that it makes any sense to go around claiming that ice cream causes the murder rate to go up in the summer time?

This is EXACTLY what the authors of this study did, and they are on CNN.

If you want to establish cause and effect then you need to do an intervention study – you need to intervene in people’s lives and see what happens.  In the ice cream scenario you would need to feed people extra ice cream and see if they then go on shooting sprees.  BUT, you actually have to do that research BEFORE you go around claiming that ice cream is a killer and recommending that people avoid ice cream and the people who eat it.

In the case of red meat and mortality, then you need to take a bunch of people and intervene in their diets and see what happens before you can go around making cause and effect claims

Oh, and we’ve  done the intervention studies MANY times.  We’ve had people eat less saturated fat and cholesterol and MORTALITY GOES UP, not down!

#2. Relying on memory: This study used something called a “food frequency questionnaire” (FFQ) to determine people’s intake of red meat.  We worked with FFQ’s in my nutrition classes last semester at UMD.  They suck!

Here’s why:  An FFQ is a VERY long (so boring) questionnaire about what you eat, how often and in what quantities over the past 6-12 MONTHS!  I am in my late 20′s and pay more attention to what I eat on a daily basis than almost anyone I know, and I could not answer the questions on the FFQ accurately.  (The people in this study were between 50 and 71.)  On most of the questions of my FFQ I was just guessing – I have no idea how many ounces of cantaloupe I ate per week over the past 12 months.  The questions are completely ridiculous.

I don’t know how the researchers could take the info from a bunch of FFQ’s seriously – its just 545,000 guesses.

Consider this another installment of “don’t trust the media to check scientific facts for you!”

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 fat-loss expert for busy people.  He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here.

Really Good News!!!

I don’t know if you all remember that study from a week or two ago that claimed to have solved the “low-carb vs. low-fat debate”, but I was incensed with the fact that it was a horrible piece of “research” and nobody in the media actually took the 15min to read the “study.”

After many, many hours, press releases, submissions, phone calls, etc.  I had some real, meaningful success in getting an alternative point of view out there in two major publications (in addition to many smaller ones):

Here is the full text of what was in the Post:

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