eddie:

Thank you! More articles are coming.

Ash:

I'm sure that one of the reasons Ancel Keys got away with so much was because he had done quite a bit of solid work up to that point (e.g. the Minnesota Starvation Experiment).

js290:

Exactly. Paleo is the only null hypothesis that makes any sense. Everything else is, as you say, scientism -- inertia, politics, and/or religion dressed in a lab coat.

For instance, the fact that the anthropological community has, for the most part, attacked the Paleo movement is a damning indictment that protecting their intellectual turf is more important to them than advancing the state of human knowledge. Christina "Paleo is stupid but eat Paleo" Warinner is just the most irritating example.

Eric, Paul:

"Everything in moderation" is only a good strategy when you have no information.

Should we consume cyanide in moderation, when we know it's a poison? Should we moderate our consumption of grass-fed beef because we're worried about suffering a Twinkie deficiency?

I understand that people, at some point, throw up their hands and say "The experts don't know what they're talking about" -- but we all have to eat something! At some level, everyone falls back on a certain set of assumptions about what is healthy and what is unhealthy. Beans and whole-grain bread are healthy, red meat and butter are unhealthy. And so on. I hope this article will help change those unconscious assumptions.

ValerieD:

I'm usually foot at catching typos myself, but I missed that one. Good eye.
Re: the p-value, I assume it's far too small. Isn't the one for TG also too small?

Fred Wilkey:

That's a solid article debunking the standard myths about low-carbohydrate diets.

Moving to "The End Of Overeating": The problem with the Kessler hypothesis is that it fails trivially in the presence of the data. The prevalence of obesity took a massive and steep upturn starting in 1980. Yet there is no evidence that food suddenly became tasty in 1980, and much evidence to the contrary. "Low-fat" foods do not taste better than the original full-fat versions. French fries in canola oil do not taste better than French fries in tallow. Almost every currently popular junk food was popular before 1970 -- in many cases, before WWII. And so on.

I've spent a great deal of time researching hunger and the reward system: instead of rehashing my conclusions, I'll point you to my 2012 AHS presentation (video, text and slides), where I explore in detail the topics mentioned above, as well as summarizing the current state of scientific knowledge on hunger, satiation, satiety, and slippery concepts such as "palatability" and "reward". I hope you'll find it educational and useful!

Margaretrc:

Yes, I did a double-take when I saw Dr. Mozaffarian use the Skittles analogy!

Eric:

It is an indictment of our educational system that we don't graduate high school with any idea of how to feed ourselves. I don't even mean "nutrition", I mean "knowing how to physically prepare food".

Ro:

I agree that eating doesn't have to be complicated. I've been known to eat raw hamburger straight out of the package. However, it is a sublime pleasure to eat well-spiced and prepared food. And it is important to remember that pleasure is neither unhealthy nor fattening!

Chad:

First, Gr*show spams the same studies and comments everywhere, conveniently omitting those which show results he doesn't like (e.g. only the group with the highest SFA intake showed a reduction in CIMT).

Also, cherry-picked anecdotes prove nothing. If you mention Seth Roberts and Dr. Su, you also have to mention Wolfgang Lutz (died at 97), Buckminster Fuller (died at 88 -- and yes, he ate almost exclusively meat since his fifties), Art De Vany (76, still alive, and still able to kick your ass), Vilhjalmur Stefansson (died at 83)...

Furthermore, one might note that Barry Groves died at the average age of death for males in the USA -- and, unlike the average American, was a nationally competitive archer until about two years before his death. In contrast, the average American male only makes it to age 64 without suffering either heart disease, cancer, or diabetes, and loses basic mobility six years before dying. (Study linked from this article.)

Let's not even discuss potential p-values on a sample size of seven...

*** NOTE: NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. You are responsible for your own decisions. ***

Meanwhile, back to your numbers: while at TC of 350ish is certainly cause for concern, the fact that it didn't change much on an LCHF diet vs. a standard "healthy" diet means you probably can't do a great deal about it.

Most importantly, though, a standard "cholesterol test" doesn't actually measure LDL! It "imputes" it (read: guesses at it) based on a formula known as the Friedewald equation, so your measurements should all read "estimated LDL" instead of LDL:
LDL = TC - HDL - TG/5
The observant reader will note that, simply by reducing your triglycerides, your "LDL" (scare quotes intentional) will increase. In your case, your TG went down by 74, which increased your "LDL" by 15…almost half of the total increase! And the resulting 5% difference between the two "LDL" measurements is well within the margin of error of the test.

Then, a 12% variation in TC is also well within the margin of error of the test:

"In a recent survey, CAP sent a blood sample with a cholesterol level of 265 to 5,434 labs. Even after excluding about five percent of the results which were far off the target, the remaining results ranged from a low of 229 to a high of 312--as much as 18 percent off the target value, and a total difference of more than 80." (link)

"During a recent weekly lipid testing mania, my lab technician performed two (and occasionally three) tests on the same sample. Variations were as much as 10% between the test results, sometimes greater." (link)

So your TC and "LDL" are the same within the margin of error of the test…and your TG and HDL show a significant reduction in risk.

Note that unlike Jimmy Moore, I'm not confident that TC of 350 is harmless…but it's not clear you can do anything about it, so you may as well concentrate on the TG and HDL you apparently can do something about. I wonder if Gr*show would recommend you go back to your previous "healthy" diet -- which would leave TC and "LDL" essentially unchanged but dramatically worsen TG and HDL?

Basically, given your family history, odds are that you will die prematurely of heart disease. I'm very sorry about that. But from the data you've given me, it seems like going low-fat might harm more than help. (A final note: after you've been LCHF for a while, you may find you can tolerate carbs better, say 15-20% instead of <10%.) Frankly, the best thing you could do for your health at this point is to stop running tris and marathons, and stick to things that don't physically beat you up so much (e.g. cycling, swimming, weightlifting, etc.) Chronic long-distance running correlates with heart damage in multiple studies...

Thanks, everyone, for the support!

JS