I posted about the Cubans’ Special Period back in 2013. This is a revisit of that post:

What if we could conduct a big experiment, put everyone in the country on a diet higher in carbohydrates, lots of fruits, vegetables, starches, and other plant foods, and lower in animal products, fat, and protein. Have them be more active. Have them eat less. Would they lose weight? Would it lower their risks for diabetes, heart disease, cancer?

Gary Taubes and others in the low-carb community may argue that it wouldn’t. In his book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” Taubes said:

“Any enforced decrease in intake will have to induce a compensatory decrease in expenditure – a slowing of the metabolism and/or a reduction in physical activity.”

“Neither eating less nor exercising more will lead to long-term weight loss, as the body naturally compensates.”

“Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior.”

“Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.”

A situation much like I described at the beginning of this post came to pass in Cuba in the early 1990s. The Soviet Union had just dissolved and Cuba was left without its major trading partner. It entered a time of economic hardship known as the Special Period.

“Manuel Franco describes the Special Period as “the first, and probably the only, natural experiment, born of unfortunate circumstances, where large effects on diabetes, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality have been related to sustained population-wide weight loss as a result of increased physical activity and reduced caloric intake”.

The people of the island by necessity adopted diets higher in fiber, fresh produce, and ultimately more vegan in character.”

The latest study by Franco continues to support this:

Population-Wide Weight Loss And Regain In Relation To Diabetes Burden And Cardiovascular Mortality In Cuba 1980-2010: Repeated Cross Sectional Surveys And Ecological Comparison Of Secular Trends, British Medical Journal, April 2013

His video abstract:

From his study:

“Severe shortages of food and gas resulted in a widespread decline in dietary energy intake and increase in energy expenditure (mainly through walking and cycling as alternatives to mechanised transportation). … The largest effect of this economic crisis occurred over a period of about five years [1991-95, the “special period”], resulting in an average weight loss of 4-5 kg [9-11 lb] across the adult population.”
…
“We found that a population-wide loss of 4-5 kg in weight in a relatively healthy population was accompanied by diabetes mortality falling by half and mortality from coronary heart disease falling by a third. Furthermore, a rebound in body weight was associated with an increased diabetes incidence and mortality.”

And:

“Overall diabetes incidence decreased by 53% from its peak in the pre-crisis years (1986) to its lowest point after the crisis (1996 and 1997). Subsequently, incidence rose by 140% from 1996 to 2009.”

In an accompanying editorial, Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston wrote that the findings:

“… add powerful evidence that a reduction in overweight and obesity would have major population-wide benefits. To achieve this is perhaps the major public health and societal challenge of the century.”

What were Cubans eating? From The Atlantic:

“It wasn’t only the amount of food that Cubans ate that changed, but also what they ate. They became virtual vegans overnight, as meat and dairy products all but vanished from the marketplace. … Protein consumption dropped by 40%.* People were forced to depend on what they could grow, catch, and pick for themselves – including lots of high-fiber fresh produce, and fruits, added to the increasingly hard-to-come-by staples of beans, corn, and rice.”

* “Diet composition in Cuba also changed during the study period. By 1993, carbohydrate, fat, and protein contributed 77 percent, 13 percent, and 10 percent of total energy, respectively, whereas in 1980 their respective contributions were 65 percent, 20 percent, and 15 percent. The primary sources of energy during the crisis were sugar cane and rice.”
– Impact of Energy Intake, Physical Activity, and Population-wide Weight Loss on Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes Mortality in Cuba, 1980–2005, American Journal of Epidemiology, 2007

________

The experience in Cuba challenges many of Gary Taubes’ claims:

• He says that when you eat less, you will be less physically active (“Any enforced decrease in intake will have to induce a compensatory decrease in expenditure – a slowing of the metabolism and/or a reduction in physical activity.”) Cubans ate less and were more physically active.
• He says eating less will not lead to weight loss. Cubans ate less and lost weight.
• He says exercising more will not lead to weight loss. Cubans exercised more and lost weight.
• He says eating more carbohydrates leads to weight gain, and “the fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.” Cubans ate more carbohydrates and lost weight.
• He says carbohydrates are responsible for diabetes and heart disease. Cubans ate more carbohydrates (mostly rice and sugar) and had much lower rates, as well as deaths from, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. They had higher rates, and deaths from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer when they ate fewer carbohydrates and more protein.

So, Cubans ate less, ate more of a vegan diet, and were more physically active … and their rates of chronic disease dropped precipitously. I think there’s a lesson there.

Related:
Modest Population-Wide Weight Loss Could Result In Dramatic Reductions In The Burden Of Type 2 Diabetes And Cardiovascular Disease, News release from BMJ, April 2013
How Cubans’ Health Improved When Their Economy Collapsed, The Atlantic, 18 April 2013

I feel bad for people who believe this study. It promotes a low-carb diet for “reversing” diabetes:

A Novel Intervention Including Individualized Nutritional Recommendations Reduces Hemoglobin A1c Level, Medication Use, and Weight in Type 2 Diabetes, JMIR Diabetes, January-June 2017

A lot of people are latching on to it, as evidenced by the traction of these tweets by low-carb “diet doctors”:

First of all, it appears in an “eHealth publication.” That’s suspicious. If it truly reverses diabetes, if it’s helpful and not harmful, why not get it published in a more mainstream respected diabetes publication, like Diabetes Care? Dr. Barnard’s famous study, A Low-Fat Vegan Diet Improves Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in a Randomized Clinical Trial in Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes, was published in Diabetes Care.

The diet they’re promoting is high in protein, “targeted to a level of 1.5 g per kg body weight.” That’s almost twice the RDA of 0.8 g/kg. And since it’s a low-carb diet (actually very low-carb, less than 30 grams of carb a day, so little that it forces the body to generate ketones for energy), that protein isn’t coming from plants, like whole grains and beans, because they supply too much carb. It’s coming from animal food. And since it’s a high-fat diet, it’s coming from fatty animal food. It’s also very low in fiber.

This diet – high animal protein, low fiber, high fat, high saturated fat – is a recipe for poor health. The World Health Organization says that meat causes cancer:

• Red meat was classified as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans
• Processed meat was classified as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans

Lots of meat also increases your renal acid load, which is hard on the kidneys. It draws calcium and other minerals from bone to buffer acids entering bloodstream, so it’s hard on the skeleton. It contributes to systemic inflammation. It has a high pesticide load, since pesticides bioaccumulate in fatty animal flesh. It promotes irregularity. It requires supplements for plant-based nutrients that are missing, like vitamin C and B-vitamins.

All these problems I’ve written about over the years. Yes, it may help you lose weight, but you mortgage your health doing so. Don’t be fooled.

Thanks to Melinda.

A new study in JAMA found that nearly half of the deaths in the US due to cardiometabolic diseases (such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes) were diet-related.

Researchers looked at 10 foods and found that low intakes of vegetables, fruits, and nuts/seeds; and high intakes of red meat, processed meats, sodium, and sweetened beverages were associated with these premature deaths.

There’s a lot of info in this study, lots of demographic breakdown, but high consumption of processed meat stands out as particularly risky for heart disease and diabetes, especially for men. (They didn’t look at cancer deaths, but processed meat has a strong link to cancer in the published literature, especially colon cancer). Low consumption of fruits and vegetables, as well as high sodium, stood out as risky for stroke.

The study:
Association Between Dietary Factors and Mortality From Heart Disease, Stroke, and Type 2 Diabetes in the United States, Journal of the American Medical Association, 7 March 2017

Here’s Dr. Barnard discussing the study:

 
I liked the comparison he drew between processed meat and tobacco. At one time in this country, in the 1950s, close to half the population smoked. Now, less than 20% smoke. He says that even though many people eat processed meat today – bacon, sausage, hot dogs, ham, deli meats – that number may decline as we come to understand its harmful effects. Do you think?

Trying to get my blog set up on new servers. In the mean time, enjoy Ed Yong’s piece on the real Paleo diet:

Neanderthal Dental Plaque Shows What a Paleo Diet Really Looks Like: Some Ate Woolly Rhinos, Some Were Vegetarians, The Atlantic, 8 March 2017

“When people talk about the Paleo diet, that’s not paleo, that’s just non-carb,” Weyrich says. “The true paleo diet is eating whatever’s out there in the environment.”

“We need to revamp the view of Neanderthals as these meat-eating, club-toting cavemen,” adds Weyrich. “They had a very good understanding of what foods were available to them.”

They appeared to use plants medicinally too:

One of the El Sidron Neanderthals even seemed to be self-medicating with edible plants. One of his teeth had an abscess, and his plaque contained a parasite that causes diarrhea. But the plaque also contained Penicillium, the mould that produces the antibiotic penicillin, and poplar bark, a natural source of the aspirin-like painkiller, salicylic acid.

I was reading the comments of our new Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson last night, where he said, “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.”

Which elicited this response from actor and film producer Samuel L. Jackson:

OK!! Ben Carson….I can’t! Immigrants ? In the bottom of SLAVE SHIPS??!! MUTHAFUKKA PLEASE!!!#dickheadedtom

— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) March 6, 2017

Samuel L. Jackson in 2016 promoting “Legend of Tarzan.”

Which had me looking up Jackson’s bio, where it said:

In August 2013, he started a vegan diet for health reasons, explaining that he is “just trying to live forever”, and attributes a 40 lb weight loss to his new diet.

Two comments. One, slaves did not work for less, they worked for nothing. Slaves were distinct from immigrants not least of which because they were owned; immigrants were free. Slaves, in fact, were counted as three-fifths of a person for election purposes.

Two, vegan diets are high-carb diets. Low-carb enthusiasts claim you cannot lose weight on a high-carb diet, that carbohydrates make you fat. Which, as you know, is false.

Here’s Dr. Greger talking about fiber:

I pulled out that chart he included from this study…
Studying the Human Gut Microbiota in the Trans-Omics Era – Focus on Metagenomics and Metabonomics, Current Pharmaceutical Design, 2009

… that shows our fiber intake from Paleolithic times to present:

Greger: “We’ve been eating 100 grams of fiber every day for millions of years.” That’s a lot! I can’t imagine eating that much fiber. I think I do better than that 12-18 grams of most Americans though, because everything I eat is a plant. Only plants provide fiber.

I had to share this with you. It’s an excerpt from the book, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. The first paragraph sets it up, the second … you’ll see.

[Jean] Boal has a reputation as one of the most rigorous and critical cephalopod researchers. She is known for her meticulous experimental designs, and her insistence that “cognition” or “thought” in these animals should be hypothesized only when experimental results cannot be explained in any simpler way. But like many researchers she has a few tales of behaviors that are baffling in what they seem to show about the innder lives of these animals. One of these has stayed in her mind for over a decade.

Octopuses love to eat crabs, but in the lab they are often fed on thawed-out frozen shrimp or squid. It takes octopuses a while to get used to these second-rate foods, but eventually they do. One day Boal was walking down a row of tanks, feeding each octopus a piece of thawed squid as she passed. On reaching the end of the row, she walked back the way she’d come. The octopus in the first tank, though, seemed to be waiting for her. It had not eaten its squid, but instead was holding it conspicuously. As Boal stood there, the octopus made its way slowly across the tank toward the outflow pipe, watching her all the way. When it reached the outflow pipe, still watching her, it dumped the scrap of squid down the drain.

Here’s another story I happened upon: Inky The Octopus Makes An Amazing Escape, 14 April 2016

Inky the octopus swimming in a tank at the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier, New Zealand. (AP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Inky the octopus waited until it was dark and the staff had gone home from the National Aquarium of New Zealand before making his move.

He squeezed and pushed his way through a tiny gap in the mesh at the top of his tank and slithered 2 metres to the floor. Then he made a beeline across the room to a drain hole.

With a body the size of a rugby ball, Inky managed to stretch out and squeeze into the hole. From there, he shimmied down the 50-meter pipe until he was back in the Pacific Ocean.