What If Low Carb Is Wrong? Does ASP Prove That Insulin Doesn’t Matter and That Its Calories That Really Count?

So there I was on the forums of t-nation.com answering questions about my recent interview piece with Gary Taubes when I started to wonder if this low-carb thing was legitimate after all.  “Have I been giving bad advice the whole time?  Should I just be telling people to ‘eat less and exercise more?’  But that’s never worked…  What I do now works like clock work… But all these posts keep telling me how ‘retarded’ me and Gary are…’”, I worried to myself.

What’s not authoritative and intimidating about being insulted over and over again by anonymous people on a forum?  If they can type it on a forum it must be well researched and true!  Right?

I did come to my thin-skinned senses eventually, BUT the folks on the t-nation forums did leave me with one question that I wasn’t entirely sure about:  Is ASP the overlooked flaw in low-carb dieting?

There were a lot of posts saying in effect: “What Tuabes and the rest of the low-carb community don’t like talking about is a little compound called acylation stimulating protein (ASP) which stores dietary fat in the fat cell with ZERO rise in insulin levels.”

I started doing some digging and found statements like these in peer reviewed research (I’m paraphrasing to make them readable and concise):

#1.  “ASP is far more powerful than insulin in stimulating the creation of new body-fat.” (1)

#2.  “ASP is released in response to an oral fat load.” (2)

Did I Get Served On A Forum?

I started really getting into ASP research at about 10pm on a Saturday night, and by the time I found the above statements in peer reviewed research I started sweating and my stomach was twisted up in knots.  I tried to let it go and hang out with my fiancé, but I just had to know – “What’s the deal with ASP!?  Is this something the debunks low-carb?”

So I spent the next 6 hours combing everything that I could get my hands on about ASP, and every time a paper made on of the above statements (#1 & 2 above) I noted the paper they cited.  (By the way, my biochemistry textbooks were no help at all.)  Pretty soon it became clear that those two statements were pretty much built off of two papers published in 1989:

•    Statement #1 above was pretty much built off of a paper titled “Purification and characterization of acylation stimulating protein”, but let’s call it “ASP trumps insulin” for this article.

•    Statement #2 above was built off of a paper titled “Metabolic response of acylation stimulating protein to an oral fat load,” but let’s call it “ASP is released in response to fat, not carbs.”

Does ASP Trump Insulin?

For the “ASP trumps insulin paper” the researchers grew fat cells in cultures (outside the body).  It is true the addition of ASP REALLY accelerated the creation of new fat (triglyceride) – it was faster than insulin.

HOWEVER, both the ASP and the no-ASP cultures had insulin and carbs added to them.  So the water is very muddy:

Could the ASP be a way in which insulin accelerates its activity?  Maybe the super deadly combo a high-fat and high sugar meal?  Maybe the only thing to learn from this study is that frosting is more fattening than candy?  Why not test ASP without insulin and carbs if your goal is to see what the difference between them is?

Or, for that matter, why not just test ASP in actual people instead of cultures? (1)

Is ASP Released In Response to Fat, Not Carbs?

For the “ASP is released in response to fat, not carbs.” The “lipid meal” or “oral fat load” that was used to induce the ASP response was cream + one tbsp table sugar (sucrose) + one tbsp nonfat dry milk.

That mixture is 25% carbs by weight!  So, that really doesn’t tell us anything at all.

Why not just have people drink olive oil or melted butter instead of cream plus a bunch of sugary stuff?

Take It Home Gary

I shared my research with Gary Taubes and he had this to say:

“Nice to know you’re suitably obsessed Josef.

“One thing to keep in mind in all this is the need to explain the observations, not just work with possible mechanisms that can’t explain anything. So one of the observations is weight loss on a high fat diet — the Atkins diet.

“So if ASP was good at sequestering dietary fat away in the fat tissue without carbs being needed, why would people lose weight when they ate an Atkins diet?

“Another observation we’re trying to understand, as I point out in lectures, is the obesity in poor populations eating low-fat, high carb diets. So there ASP would be irrelevant. Now if we had obesity in populations eating low-carb, high-fat diets, that would be telling and a reason to invoke ASP, but, as far as I know, no such populations exist.

“So maybe ASP plays a role in obesity in rats that are fed high fat diets, but we’re not all that interested in rats.”

Epilogue – Falling Asleep At A Wedding

My obsessive researching kept me up ‘till 4am, but I had to be up at 8am to workout, shower and be at a friend’s wedding the next day.  I couldn’t put off my workout and sleep in because I had deadlines to meet that night.  So, while everyone else was watching the cake cutting and dancing, I passed out, face down on the table.  Even though I woke with drool on my cheek I felt a lot better.

Josef Brandenburg is an award winning Washington, DC weight loss expert and author of The Body You Want.  He specializes in helping normal, busy people create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  You can pick up a FREE copy of his new CD “Why ‘Eat Less and Exercise More’ is The Worst Advice Ever” right here.

References

#1.  J Biol Chem vol. 264, Jan 5, 1989, p.426-430

#2. J lipid res vol 30, 1989 p. 1727-1733

What Do Hitler and Dieticians Have In Common? Lose a lot of fat fast without being hungry.

You’ve heard it said over and over again by well-meaning dieticians, “ a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.  To lose weight you just need to eat fewer of them.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a fat, carb or protein.”

Adolph Hitler said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”  That all calories are created equal is one of those lies.  It turns out that there really isn’t much research to support that theory.

WILL YOU STARVE SO THAT THEY WILL BE BETTER FED?

Near the end of WWII Ancel Keys started a starvation study to see how best to help the people in the decimated parts of Europe after the war was over.  For the first 12 weeks the 36 young men were really well fed – about 3,200 kcal/day, 3 huge meals per day with multiple courses, lots of protein and definitely dessert.

Things changed completely for the second 12 weeks.  At this point his volunteers were fed a diet based on what people in war ravaged Easter Europe would be eating – cabbage, bread, peas, and extremely small quantities of meat (so small that most of the participants were unaware that there was any meat at all in their diet).  This worked out to be just under 1,600 kcal/day.

The men (all participants were men) were NOT happy.  They were always hungry, had no energy, miserable, developed numerous health and psychological problems, and thought about food constantly.  (Does that sound like you on your last diet?) (1)

The Monkey Wrench

In the late 1960’s John Yudkin at the University of London was having remarkable success using low-carb diets for weight loss.  To silence his critics he decided to do a formal study of his clinic’s clients.

These are the instructions he gave them:

“The subjects were asked to take between 10 and 20 oz milk daily (about 300-600 ml), and as much meat, fish, eggs, cheese, butter, margarine, cream and leafy vegetables as they wished. The amount of carbohydrate in other food was listed in “units” with each unit consisting of 5 g carbohydrate; the subjects were told to limit these foods to not more than 10 units (or 50 g) carbohydrate daily.”

It turns out that these people VOLUNTARILY ended up eating LESS than Ancel Key’s folks in terms of calories, but had NONE of the emotional or physiological problems.  In fact they all had MORE energy, and were NEVER hungry.

Ancel Key’s people had to be held against their will in locked bunkers to comply with the 1,570 kcal/day diet.  Yudkin’s people WILLINGLY and AUTOMATICALLY ate 1,560 kcal/day and felt BETTER. (2)

What’s The Difference?

Key’s Semi-Starvation         Yudkin’s Low Carb
100g protein                         83g protein
30g fat                                105g fat
225g carb                            67g carb
1570 kcal                              1560 kcal

One was a low fat diet, and one was a low carb diet.

How many ways can I say it?  I’m not even touching on the studies where the low carb groups ate MORE – a lots more – than their low fat counter parts and dropped 75-100% more fat.

I’m about to graduate from one of the top Dietetic program in the US – UMD.  Yes, I’m 6 years “late”;-).  Every semester is exactly the same.  They repeat over and over again the dogma: “for weight loss eat as little fat as possible, and a high carb diet.  All that matters is eating fewer calories and nothing else.”

But they repeat this without EVER offering up a single reference, and never actually investigating the so-called science that supports this idea.

Lucky for me (and you) I’ve stayed busy getting my real education outside of school – at least 4 seminars per year, 50 books, and I’m always in touch with experts in the real world who are getting results that people will actually pay money for, not parroting inane theories just because that’s what everyone else thinks.

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and an award winning personal trainer in Washington DC that was nominated several times for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine.  Oh, and check out his new web-site washingtondcpersonaltrainer.com

References

1.  Tucker, Todd. The Great Starvation Experiment: Ancel Keys and the Men Who Starved for Science.  University of Minn. Press. 2008

2.  Yudkin, John.  The Low Carbohydrate Diet in the Treatment of Obesity.  Postgraduate Medical Journal. May; 51(5):151-54