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Jeff Nelson
Recent Comments
Nuts & Weight Gain: It's Worse Than We Thought
Hey Michael - many thanks!
I am glad to see you changed your conclusion on nuts from “90% of published studies suggest that nut consumption does NOT lead to weight gain” to “Nut consumption does not appear to lead to the expected weight gain.”
So you are agreeing that nuts cause weight gain, which has been the point of my articles, just not as much as the estimated amount of weight, as I've been also saying.
Regarding your updated video, I just looked at it and, to be honest, I am still seeing a number of problems, at least from how I understand these.
I am seeing you included studies I debunked in my first article, here:
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2012/07/cant-lose-the-weight-it-could-be-the-nuts.html
One thing a leading veg researcher we all know (from an org we all know and love) pointed out to me a few weeks ago is that you can't just take the conclusions as gospel that the nut-industry researchers present. They can adjust certainty to render weight gain "insignificant" -- when nearly everyone would consider that amount of weight gain very significant.
So for example in your new video, one of the studies I noticed you touted was this new one:
A randomized trial of the effects of an almond-enriched, hypocaloric diet in the treatment of obesity. Foster GD, Shantz KL, Vander Veur SS, Oliver TL, Lent MR, Virus A, Szapary PO, Rader DJ, Zemel BS, Gilden-Tsai A. Am J Clin Nutr. 2012 Jun 27.
You read the researchers conclusion that: There were no differences in weight loss or cardiovascular disease risk factor outcomes between groups at 18 months.”
But check out Table 2 in that study. You will see that the nut group was 5 pounds heaver than the non-nut group after 18 months. For many people, 5 pounds in 18 months is significant. And, after 10 years at that rate, the nut group would be 30 pounds heavier than the non-nut group, according to that study.
For most people, like Chef AJ, being 30 pounds heavier in 10 years from just adding nuts would be VERY significant! :)
This study also shows 18 months of nuts had no impact on cardiovascular disease risk factors for the nut-eaters. So that study you're promoting would seem to argue for not adding nuts since they cause an average of maybe 3 pounds weight gain a year without improving heart disease risk.
So in reality, doesn't that "latest" study say exactly the opposite of what you've been asserting about nuts? It shows that 18 months of added nuts did nothing to improve heart disease markers like cholesterol, but it did cause 5 pounds average weight gain.
And I think this is why the FDA finds these nut studies so weak. I put in my other article the fact that FDA gives a “C” grade to these claims about nuts, based on the same studies you're presenting. As you probably know, a “C” grade from FDA “represents a low level of comfort among qualified scientists that the claimed relationship is scientifically valid.”
In other words, scientists at FDA, who are much smarter than we are in evaluating studies since they do it for a living, have looked at this nut research and concluded that it's not very good evidence at all. (The research around walnuts is the only exception, but it still only gets a "B" grade.)
Frankly, I'm pretty sure I could find the same problems with most of the studies you've included in your new video, but I need to find the time I don't have right now to get into each one.
Yes, nuts lead to less weight gain than expected, based on mechanisms that have been known for years, but they still cause a net weight gain, unless allowances are made. I noticed you didn't spend any time on the studies showing explicitly that nuts cause weight gain. Was there a reason you omitted those?
Also, regarding the point you make about some subjects not gaining as much weight as expected, I believe you (and those researchers who did those studies) used an outdated model for predicting weight gain.
To predict weight gain, they used to use 3500 calories equals a pound. So, if you added 350 calories per day to your diet (about 2 ounces of nuts), they used to guess you would gain about 1 pound every 10 days or 35 lbs in a year.
However, the current model, which you should know about, says that this estimate is not true because as the body begins to gain weight, it makes adjustments and the original equation no longer applies. So, you need a dynamic equation, which changes as your weight changes. So, instead if gaining 35 lbs in a year, it takes more like 3 years.
All the nuts studies you're citing were done before they knew this so all the predictions should be off considerably.
Here is a paper about this:
http://www.vegsource.com/nuts/lancet_quantification.pdf
And here is a link to an online calculator for estimating weight gain:
http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/
In the paper above with the latest formula for estimating weight gain, they review how most weight studies end up with less than predicted weight gain, regardless of what they eat (nuts or otherwise) because of this flaw in the original equation.
So, i just ran a test on the simulator I linked to, starting with a 40 yr old active guy who is 5'8". He eats 2351 calories per day. If he added another 165 more calories per day (like one ounce of nuts) for a year, we used calculate him to gain about 17 lbs in a year based on the old formula. 165 calories per day x 365 days equals 60,225 calories. Divided by 3500 calories (per pound) = about 17 lbs.
However, the new calculator says he would only gain 10 lbs in the year.
The reason why his weight increase isn't as much as previously expected is that with each pound he gains, he is no longer the original person we did the original calculations on as he is now a little heavier and his body has made adjustments. And, as time passes and he gains more weight, it all changes again. So, all predicted weight gains based on the old formula are wrong, which includes the gains you (and the researchers in these studies) predict in your video.
Now it's well known that nuts don't put on as much weight as the *estimated* calories would suggest, and the mechanisms for this have also been well known for quite some time. But people still put on weight, when nuts added to the average diet, as I believe you now agree (and even if the nut industry calls the amount of weight gain "insignificant"), unless there is a compensation made.
I eat nuts and seeds, I like them. But I do not consider them in any way a "super food" which are required for optimal health. Need magnesium that nuts have? Lots more in greens, zucchini, you name it -- than nuts. Need cholesterol lowering? Don't settle for a measly 5%. Go on a diet like McDougall, Fuhrman, Barnard or Esselstyn, with or without the nuts (depending on your weight), and you'll do way better than the few points that may go down with nuts, if you're eating a terrible diet to start and the nuts are replacing saturated fatty foods.
I truly believe, like the FDA scientists, that the hype around nuts is a myth because the science is just not there. Now as I know you may strongly disagree, we need to come up with some kind of worthwhile bet and a manner to prove who's right. :)
Or maybe just agree to disagree...
Cheers,
Jeff
Posted by: 
replied to comment from Michael Greger MD
| August 26, 2012 10:14 AM
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Score: 8 (8 votes cast)
replied to comment from Michael Greger MD
| August 26, 2012 10:14 AM
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Score: 8 (8 votes cast)
Nuts & Weight Gain: It's Worse Than We Thought
I think you're mistaken, VegHead. I don't believe Dr. Greger say "nuts do NOT cause weight gain."
He did assert that previously. But he changed his video and now concludes that: "Nut consumption does not appear to lead to the expected weight gain."
That's a big difference, and if you look a little further up this discussion string, you will see he linked to his newer video with the newer conclusion.
So Dr. Greger agrees that nuts do cause weight gain, just not as much as he expected, based on estimated calorie counts of nuts.
But every study that has looked at adding nuts to diet has shown that nuts do always cause weight gain. I am not aware of any studies that show nuts do not cause weight gain. Can you find me just one?
Also, it's well established that cutting fat (which nuts contain a lot of) really does help you lose weight, e.g. --
http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Nutrition/Diet/fatty_foods_weight_loss_1211120654.html
I highly recommend the new talk on nuts by Jeff Novick MS RD, which he gave at our Expo in October. It's 2 hours long and Jeff goes through all the studies on nuts, including those Dr. Greger cites, and breaks it down.
Also, you really have to look at the quality of a study before deciding how strong or weak it is. For example, the Nurses Health Study is regularly cited by some, including Dr. Greger I believe, to support this claim or that. The Nurses Health Study, for example, shows that nuts, olive oil, and dairy products are all associated with reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and lower BMI.
Now using this same data, the dairy industry made claims in advertising that milk helped with weight loss. Well PCRM hates it when animal food manufacturers use junk science or very weak science to make unfounded nutrition claims. So PCRM sued the dairy industry. PCRM said the Nurses Health Study and other such association studies like it were extremely weak evidence and could in no way justify a conclusion about milk and weight loss.
PCRM won in court, and the dairy industry had to withdraw the marketing claims about dairy and weight loss, and toss out their commercials.
So if you cheer PCRM for beating dairy industry exaggerations based on very weak science, why would you applaud Dr. Greger when he uses the exact same weak science to make similar claims about nuts?
If you follow Dr. Greger's studies there, you would have to accept that milk is a wonderful health food, and that olive oil is just the thing to combat heart disease. But none of the veg MDs (other than Dr. Greger) advises that olive oil is good for your heart. Not Fuhrman, McDougall, Esselstyn, Barnard, Ornish -- they all contend olive oil is bad for your heart. And all of them, including Greger, give a thumbs down on dairy. So why is Dr. Greger using a study selectively? Agreeing with the data when it supports his beliefs, but rejecting the same data when it shows something he doesn't believe?
It's a serious question, and I do like Dr. Greger and respect a lot of his work, and look to promote what he is doing.
So that is my suggestion to you -- watch Jeff Novick's DVD so you can start to see that you can't take a study at face value, but have to go a little deeper to evaluate the quality of a study, and see whether it says what the authors of the study claim it shows (especially when those authors may have been paid by the food industry).
Colin Campbell PhD, famed researcher and author of The China Study, says of Jeff Novick:
"Jeff, your ability to probe and analyze the research literature is as good as anyone I know, inside or outside of the professional research community. You actually obtain the papers and critically review the tables and charts of the data, then see if the authors discussion of their own data is consistent. "
By the way, when is the last time you picked up a can of nuts and read a claim that nuts aid in weight loss? Never. That's cause the nut industry isn't allowed to make such a claim. If it were true that nuts caused weight loss, and the nut industry could back it up, don't you think it would be in nut commercials or at least on every package of nuts out there? But it's not. Think about it.
Association studies like the Nurses Health Study have large numbers of people fill out questionnaires about what they normally eat, then researchers come back many years later and check on the participants' health, and try to draw sweeping conclusions about the food the people said on their questionnaire years earlier they were eating, and the diseases they did or didn't get. At best you can get information about eating patterns from these kinds of studies, but not about a specific food, like nuts, dairy or olive oil.
Here's a short excerpt from Jeff Novick's recent 2-hour presentation on the actual science behind nuts and health claims, this section being about diabetes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvYq6WTm258
But there is much much more in the full talk. Don't be "super fooled" by super foods. :)
Novick pulls back the curtain on the studies and claims someuse to promote nuts, and it is massively convincing. Nuts are a good food, but they are way overhyped in some quarters, and when you look at the studies, you start to understand how it all works.
And here's where you can get Jeff's full 2-hour nuts talk from the Expo: https://secure2.vegsource.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=73&products_id=501
Posted by:
replied to comment from VegHead
| December 11, 2012 6:41 PM
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Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
replied to comment from VegHead
| December 11, 2012 6:41 PM
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Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Nuts & Weight Gain: It's Worse Than We Thought
VegHead - I love nuts too, and I do eat them, as well as seeds. Jeff Novick does too. Hey, I've seen Jeff eat peanut butter (once) with my daughters when we were filming! He must've been hungry! :)
Nuts are a good food, we can agree on that for sure. Novick recommends about an ounce a day, for people who wish to eat them, as he says in his talk.
Where I'm going to disagree with some others: I don't subscribe to the "superfood" mentality on nuts or just about any other food.
And nuts and avocados and other high-fat plant foods can definitely be a problem for vegans who are trying to bring their weight down.
Did AJ put her health at risk in some way when she gave up nuts and quickly lost 15 or 20 pounds as a direct result?
Definitely not, is my take.
But the nut people seem to disagree almost violently, and went apoplectic claiming she somehow made a huge mistake and was going to fall over and die any minute when she pushed away the nut jar.
That's all this has been, is push back against people pushing nuts based on very shaky, mostly nut-industry funded science.
Nuts aren't bad foods, they're good. But they aren't required for nutritional excellence and great health. The Okinawans are some of the longest living people on the planet, and nuts had nothing to do with it. Sweet potatoes did, but even though sweet potatoes are a great food in a lot of ways, once again you can have a very healthy diet even if you don't eat very many of them, just like nuts. Your overall dietary pattern is what matters, not any individual food or particular tea or special ingredient. That kind of stuff is just an interesting distraction.
Now here's a piece of advice that CAN really save your health, from Dr. McDougall: http://bit.ly/W6y0r9
Cheers.
Posted by:
replied to comment from VegHead
| December 12, 2012 11:52 AM
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replied to comment from VegHead
| December 12, 2012 11:52 AM
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Thanks, Steve. I am not at all surprised. Jeff Novick often talks about the standard hierarchy of evidence established by WHO, NIH, and used in evidence-based medicine. If Jack and Ginny don't like the evidence out there for a low-fat, whole food plant based diet, that is fine. But to dispute it, they have to use better evidence not lesser evidence, and they have both been consistently unable to do that.
Ginny and Jack like to talk about "possible danger" of the McDougall and Esselstyn-type diets, but they have never come up with anything concrete to back up their opinions. The reality is these AR dietitians want people to switch from an unhealthy, fatty animal diet to an unhealthy, fatty vegan diet. That is a strategic decision they have made, and they state that strategy publicly in articles, like the article of Matt's at the start of this article.
I think they're wrong and they end up shooting themselves in the foot for what they want to do. Although they are dietitians, it seems they care most about animals rather than people, and they believe that since "healthy" food won't be appealing enough, they don't want to go there.
And this could help explain why a lot of ethical vegans end up going back to meat-eating; their main dietary sources are dietitians like Jack and Ginny, who provide poor advice -- like the advice you note Jack talks about, based on whacky sources, like a blog comment or email from a stranger on the internet.
At least Jack is more intellectually honest and admits, when pressed, that he was actually speaking out of his ass when he was criticizing the low-fat diet.
Messina and Jack have no real clinical experience, unlike the plant-based dietitians working to improve health. Jack should have known, for example, that low libido is a known side effect of anorexia or extreme calorie restriction, and has nothing to do with low fat, see:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19260036
And
http://www.raderprograms.com/affected-groups/men-eating-disorders.html
Now I am not saying that these people who posted comments on Jack's blog had eating disorders, I have no way of knowing. But loss or lack of libido is a common sign in those who overly restrict their calories. And that can obviously happen if you're on an Atkins fat-/protein-heavy diet, so it's not the fat.
Jack doesn't say he had them provide a week's worth of food journal so he could evaluate their diets, calculate their calories and understand what might be going on. That may well have shown that if these people had simply added in more calories, they would have been fine, rather than it being anything to do with low-fat.
In any event, taking a couple of isolated anecdotal stories and using that to develop his diet and health recommendations . . . obviously that's worthless.
This is what happens when someone has a bias, an agenda champion a certain diet. Rather than trying to understand why Novick, McDougall, Esselstyn and son, Fuhrman, Pritikin, True North, Ornish and the rest are having such huge success and so many people are thriving, Jack doesn't want to consider low-fat and is focusing on blog comments from strangers on the internet to develop recommendations for his readers.
For all Jack knows, these comments or emails could be from anti-vegan trolls just messing with him. If this represents how recommendations are developed by AR dietitians... No wonder so many are giving up and going back to meat.
I think Matt actually does harm to animals, by trying to convince other activists NOT to give health information to people. He has this ridiculous article advancing his theory that telling people to go plant-based for health reasons causes more chickens to die. And for evidence of this, he offers...nothing but speculation. Matt helps sew the seeds of the destruction of his own work, by trying to convince activists to stay away from learning about and telling others about health info.
I'm sorry but the AR dietitians are completely out of their depth when it comes to plant-based diets and health.
Embracing both health and the animal suffering argument is a win-win for the animals AND people. As Dr. McDougall likes to say: by solving the 2-legged problem (people's health), we automatically solve the 4-legged problem (getting people off animals).