I have a weird love-hate relationship with Consumer Reports . I trust what it says about cars, computers, and carbon-monoxide detectors. But, more often than not, I dismiss outright whatever it has to say about exercise, nutrition, or anything else that wanders into my areas of interest.
Sometimes I'm surprised and the advice is okay. Most often, though, the basic assumptions behind the magazine's ratings are flawed, from my point of view.
If CR is rating washing machines, it goes out and buys the washing machines and tests them with actual laundry. But it can't do that with diets, so it relies entirely on published research and the opinions of mainstream experts in the field.
The problem with the latter is that ... well, they're mainstream. Middle-of-the-road scientific opinion has been wrong about everything at some point, especially when it comes to weight loss.
And the problem with published science is that it's all over the board. You can find research backing up any nutritional approach you choose.
So when I got the new issue of CR yesterday, with its "Rating the Diets" cover feature, I was prepared to have some cheap laughs at the magazine's expense. But it's actually not bad.
The story has two sections of rating. First, they tackled seven bestselling diet books (i.e., nothing from my body of work (Related) ) based on "expert evaluation" and whether or not the diet adheres to the current U.S. dietary guidelines: 20 to 35 percent of calories from fat, 45 to 65 percent from carbs, 10 to 35 percent from protein, and sufficient fiber.
Right there, looking at those guidelines, you know the fix is in. A low-fat, minimal-protein diet can pass muster, even if there's little chance it would actually help anyone lose weight. But a low-carb diet is automatically marked down, even if almost every fitness practitioner in American has come around to the idea that cutting carbs is the best way to help clients lose weight.
As Eric Cressey (Related) says:
The highest-rated book is The Best Life Diet , by Oprah's trainer, Bob Greene. Since Simon & Schuster reportedly gave Greene an eight-figure advance (Related) , the least they should expect is that his book would kick some diet-book ass in Consumer Reports . His macronutrient breakdown is pretty conventional: 30 percent fat, 47 percent carbs, 23 percent protein. I'd be surprised if an actual weight-loss guru would use a diet like that on his actual clients, but it's pretty safe for a diet book that has to outsell the Bible just to break even.
The next three books on the list -- Eat, Drink, & Weigh Less ; You: On a Diet ; The Abs Diet -- finished close to a dead heat for second place. They're all pretty close to each other in macros as well. Abs Diet has a bit more protein (comically, CR 's reviewers "disliked [the book's] emphasis on whey supplements," as if protein shakes are some kind of impediment to their readers' health and waistlines) and a bit less fat. They're all between 45 and 49 percent carbs.
My favorite line in the article was this one about Eat, Drink, & Weigh Less : "Sample diet had 1,910 calories per day -- too many to allow most people to lose weight."
The average American (Related) consumes north of 2,700 calories per day. Cutting 800 calories a day will, indeed, "allow most people to lose weight." Maybe the experts CR consulted have spent too much time working with anorexics and not enough time shopping at Wal-Mart. Go where the average American waddles around, and you'll have a hard time finding people who wouldn't lose weight on 1,910 calories a day.
The bottom three books are South Beach Diet , Sonoma Diet , and Ultrametabolism , about which I have nothing interesting to say, except that in my next book I use Sonoma Diet as an example of setting calorie counts recklessly low. ( CR says it has 1,390 per day in its sample meal plan. South Beach is even lower, at 1,340.)
The second big component of the story is a review of popular diet plans -- a mix of books and commercial weight-loss programs and products -- based on scientific studies. Atkins finished last, as you can imagine, given the criteria of what constitutes a "healthy" diet. (Never mind that people who turn to Atkins are often those who were following a "healthy" diet while they were gaining all the weight they're now trying to lose.) The super-low-fat, low-protein, vegetarian Ornish diet finished second-last, which was gratifying. (It got marked down for being too low in fat.)
Finishing first is Barbara Rolls' Volumetrics , which may be the only plan that emerged from research. It usually works the other way -- someone invents a diet, sees that it works, and then tries to quantify the results in studies. But Rolls, I believe, started out with the research and then created a diet to implement the results.
Coincidentally, one of Rolls' studies (Related) was in the news today:
They served lunch to 60 normal-weight men and women once a week for five weeks. For four of those weeks, the lunch menu started with a low-calorie, broth-based vegetable soup. All of the soups were homemade and contained the same ingredients, though some soups were pureed and others contained vegetable chunks.
Fifteen minutes after the soup was served, participants were served cheese tortellini with tomato sauce. For comparison, no soup was served during one of the five lunches.
The bottom line: Participants consumed 20 percent fewer calories when they started their meals with soup.
That's a pretty good summation of Rolls' research findings: When people eat foods with lower "energy density" -- a category that includes soup and other foods that take up more space per calorie than what we typically eat -- they end up eating less overall.
The idea makes sense, although I should note that Penn State seems to be the only lab that's pursuing it aggressively. Rolls is a serious and respected scientist, but I'd be more comfortable with her theories if other labs were showing the same enthusiasm for the concept.
But even if the ideas behind liquefied nutrition are completely solid, I have to wonder about the practicality. Canned soups are astoundingly high in sodium. Restaurant soups could be high in whatever the chef thinks will make them taste better. And who has time to prepare homemade soup more than once a week?
Other than that, hey, it's the best weight-loss plan since this one (Related) .
Thursday/Friday blog meat
The New York Times has a feature on interval training (Related) . Bottom line: It works! Curiously, the reporter uses this study (Related) as an endorsement of the concept. The women in the study did 60-minute workouts in which they pedaled hard for 4 minutes and rested for 2 before repeating. How many people can jump into that kind of program? I'm going to guess the percentage of the population who'd lose weight on 1,910 calories a day is somewhat bigger than the group that could do 60-minute interval workouts.
The Yankees found the perfect scapegoat (Related) for their disappointing start, and fired their recently hired director of performance enhancement. (Seriously, that was his title.) The Yanks have had four serious hamstring injuries already this season, which I'll admit is bizarre. What's unknown is exactly how the new trainer was responsible for those injuries:
Miller's program included machines and other exercises some of the players were not familiar with. He did provide equipment when it was requested by the players, but there are reports that he was unpopular in the clubhouse.
Another account I read said that the trainer had taken the leg-extension machine out of the team's weight room. I know a lot of people who'd be amused by the notion that a shortage of leg extensions caused an epidemic of hamstring injuries.
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soup study
i find this part of soup study rather interesting:
"Fifteen minutes after the soup was served, participants were served cheese tortellini with tomato sauce."
interesting because of the fifteen minutes between the soup and the main meal. is it possible that the 15 minute wait time between the soup and the meal also helped give the stomach time to signal to the brain that there's food in there and we're not as hunger as we were 15 minutes ago therefore resulting in less caloreis consumed as the study showed?
when i go to restaurants, you order a soup or a salad before dinner and i can't even think of a particular time where i wait 15 minutes between my salad and the main meal. i'd guess it's about 5 minute after getting my salad that i get my main meal, which you then somewhat blow off the salad or soup in order to eat the main meal while it's still hot.
may not be a variable in there but, something to think about.
byLBF (Related) onFri May 04, 2007 at 08:09:30 AM EST (Related)
Good point
That's why I'll be more comfortable with the energy-density theory of weight loss when more researchers start finding similar benefits.
I have no training in scientific research or statistical analysis, so when I look at studies (and in this case I just read the news report) something has to be pretty obviously wrong with the methodology before I'll be able to pick it out.
One great example is strength-training studies that "prove" one set per exercise is equal to three sets. I remember one particular study that got a lot of attention. They compared a circuit of 8 or so exercises, IIRC, and had the study subjects do one circuit or three circuits. The guys doing three circuits got the one benefit you'd expect (they were a little leaner), but it wasn't statistically significant. Strength and hypertrophy changes weren't significantly different.
That somehow proved that no one needs to do more than one set per exercise ... but no one thought to ask the most obvious question: If you were trying to increase strength and muscle mass, would you do three circuits of 8 or so exercises? Or would you do straight sets with lower reps and heavier weights?
I guess I know just enough about research to understand how easy it is to set up a study to get the results you want.
byLou Schuler (Related) onFri May 04, 2007 at 10:03:40 AM EST (Related)
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