>Kelley wrote:
> > From the more balanced article, what strikes me is that these low carb
> > diets actually turn out to be relatively close to the very kind of diet
> > that the more balanced article recommended! 80-100 grams carbs (from
> > fruits, legumes, and vegetables not from refined flours and sugars) and
> > 60-80/60-80 grams of fats/proteins. voila! 40-30-30! amazing! so what
> > exactly is the beef? tallow? lactose? heh.
>
>40-30-30 refers to the calories from carbohydrate, protein, and
>fat. 80-100/60-80/60-80 grams of these would yield about
>320-400 kcal/240-320 kcal/540-720 kcal. Low calorie,
not at all for an inactive, 135 lb woman in her 30s. It would certainly be for someone who is active and needs about 1900 calories. A very active woman needs 2200 calories (and the grams of C-P-F go up accordingly to account for those needs. You need more protein when you're actively using your muscles, as well.
> yes
>(1080-1440 kcal) but closer to 30-20-50 than 40-30-30!
Thank you! I'd forgotten that fat is denser, so the article was recommending fewer grams of fat than I'd thought. I flubbed it and assumed that if it was 60-80 grams of protein, then it was 60-80 grams of fat. DUH on me! (The RDA recommends 65 grams of fat, at most or that it should comprise 30% or less of your diet. They recommend 300 grams of carbs for the average person.)
These dietary recommendations are meant to replace the USDA diet recommendations (the food pyramid). They are based on eating whole foods. That means that you should get your dietary fat primarily from meat, dairy, legumes, nuts, and seeds. So, the horrible meat eater would eat, say, 4 oz of salmon and 4 oz. of sliced beef from a pot roast. She'd get 60 grams of protein and 30 grams of fat. Fat isn't particularly tasty by itself--it needs to bind around protein or carbs--and I doubt these people are recommending that you chug back olive oil or drink heavy cream. Still, they would have to account for some fat used in cooking and condiments, as well as some fat included in vegetable, legumes, nut, and seed protein sources such as avocados, chick peas, lentils, almonds.
So, yep, I got the grams wrong, but that doesn't obviate the fact that the recommendations in question were shooting for the 40-30-30 ratio. The actual grams go up and down depending on the weight, age, gender, activity level of th eperson in question.
The RDA, which acknowledges that they don't have a solid basis for their recommendations, suggests a 50-25-25 ratio or 50-20-30 or there abouts, correct? (I don't know, I'm guessing, but given that Protein rec is 65 and fat is 65 gram that is supposed to come from carbs that looked about right.)
>I always thought that the only truly appealing thing
I'm curious as to what you think is at stake if someone's diet is different than yours? Is it really any of your concern that someone doesn't eat a 40, 60, 70% carb diet? If they are eating whole foods that taste good to them, rather than processed foods, then what's at stake?
>about the Adkins and other low-carb diets is that they got
>their adherents to eat their veggies.
In principle, the low fat recommendations did as well, right?