I was initially enthusiastic about a book entitled Grain Brain, which I discussed with David Wray, Carl Knoch, and my brother, Lee. Now, I am alarmed and I am posting on my timeline my latest contribution to that discussion thread. I read Grain Brain with great anticipation because David Perlmutters first book impressed me. The further I got into Grain Brain, the more unsettled I became. The books trajectory went from the dubious to the preposterous. Im into my third reading of this book and conclude it is a very unscientific and dangerous book. Perlmutter says a few worthwhile things. Yes, insulin resistance is bad and it is the precursor to countless maladies. Yes, refined sugar and flour spike your insulin and you would be better off without them. But then he continues with a narrative borne of conjecture and careless study. He peppers his book with research citations, ultimately giving it a gloss of apparent scientific authority. However, he leaves out a citation just when you most want validation of a claim. For example, he says man before the agricultural revolution got 70% of his calories from fat. That is preposterous. Do you know what you would have to eat to get that much fat? It isnt even possible. I can only infer (since he doesnt say anywhere in the whole book) that he gets this idea from the pop belief in the Paleo Diet. Now, that comes from Loren Cordains book of the same name, but it isnt a scientific fact. He made it up! But now people believe that the so-called Paleo Diet is how people really ate in the Paleolithic Eric. No one knows any such thing! Perlmutter also cites bad science. He uses a study comparing high and low serum cholesterol. However, while the high level is indeed high, 240, the level considered low, 200, is not at all low. Mine is 130. Thats low. There are a lot of studies that are designed poorly and dont look at significant differences. Perlmutters biased selection of dubious research helps him to support a feeble, indefensible narrative. He hasnt debunked anything. I continue to be curious about his conclusions about gluten. He is way off-base, though, about carbohydrates and the threat of insulin resistance. This is just bad science. Yes, simple carbohydrates spike your insulin. However, the insulin response to complex carbohydrates in whole foods is utterly different. And what are you doing if you cut those out along with the simple carbohydrates? You are eating the Atkins diet all over again, just rebranded. Or the Zone, or the Paleo, which all are but slight variations of the same eating style, and known to kill you a thousand different ways as it killed Atkins himself. But youll certainly lose weight doing it, although it has been demonstrated that the weight loss benefits of low carbohydrate dieting tend to be short lived, and of course there is also the calamitous side effect of destroying your health. While reading Grain Brain, I kept wishing I could hear from T. Colin Campbell, whom I trust and who is an actual research scientist, which Perlmutter is not. And, voila, Campbell just published a book on this very topic just weeks ago. It is called The Low-Carb Fraud. It is illuminating and it convinces me of Perlmutters poverty of authority. amazon/The-Low-Carb-Fraud-Colin-Campbell/dp/1940363098
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:47:59 +0000
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