Carmen wrote:

> Dana Carpender wrote:
>
>>Carmen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Krusty wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>"Carmen" > wrote...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Dietary protein is not essential. Dietary amino acids are essential.
>>>>>
>>>>>Please listen this time:
>>>>
>>>>Hahaha...fat chance. Guy's got carbohydrates for brains.
>>>>
>>>>Sadly, even though I'm really enjoying your casual bitchslapping, It appears
>>>>it's obviously falling on deaf ears.
>>>>
>>>>I suspect his ears are filled with red meat.
>>>
>>>
>>>Dana Carpender is a "she". She's been writing low carb cookbooks for
>>>quite some time, and is well known to low carbers. I haven't been
>>>trying to bitch slap her, just trying to get her to stop coming across
>>>as some sort of reformed substance abuser or cult follower. No joy
>>>thus far.
>>
>>What have I said that's cultish? I haven't said that no one should
>>grains. I haven't advocated zero carbs, or suggested that everyone
>>should eat the same way. I haven't said that no one should ever eat
>>grains. I haven't said that everyone needs to eat a low carb diet. I've
>>asserted that grains -- and concentrated carbs in general -- are
>>unnecessary foods, and that carbohydrate is inessential.
>>
>>I stand by that. If that bothers you, there's not much I can do about it.
>
>
> Dana, you started all this baloney by creating a strawman argumaent in
> the first place. *You* were the one who said this:
>
> "And yeah, since grains and beans in any quantity have only been part
> of
> the human diet for 10,000 of the 2 million or more years we've been
> around, it's really hard to see how they're essential."
>
> Nobody had said a thing to the contrary.

The media, the medical establishment, the USDA, all have told us
repeatedly that it's terribly important that we eat grains. In the face
of statements that a diet that sharply limits concentrated carbs is a
"scam" and those who eat this way are "idiots", I don't think the point
was off-topic.


>
> "Carbohydrate is inessential. In nutrition-speak, "essential" is
> defined as something
> the body cannot make for itself. Given protein and fat, the body is
> perfectly capable of making all the glucose it needs."
>
> I pointed out that protein could also be "inessential" given carbs and
> fat because the body can make all the protein it needs. Thus far
> you've just tap-danced unsucessfully around that one.

You're wrong. The body cannot make protein from carbs and fats. That
some foods that are high in carbohydrate also contain some protein
doesn't change that. The body cannot change carbohydrate or fat into
protein. It can, however, change the glycerol backbone of fats, and
proteins into carbohydrate.


>
> No proof of the claims' validity offered. There were however multiple
> instances offering your own experience as an exemplar. Not valid.
> People like you and I do not have normally functioning endocrine
> systems - that's why we have to resort to low carb long term, and
> probably what helps keep us on the straight and narrow. I know without
> it I'd probably still be sick as hell and still weigh twice what I do.

Me, too. But have you done any reading on the prevailance of "metabolic
syndrome", "Syndrome X", the explosive growth of type II diabetes? Have
you run a quick Pubmed search to see how many studies are turning up a
diet with a high glycemic load as a strong risk factor for the "diseases
of civilization?" Because I have. Given the number of people who
evidence an inability to tolerate a high glycemic load without obesity
and disease, I don't consider carb intolerance "abnormal." I also don't
think that everyone is carbohydrate intolerant, and I've never said so.
>
> The cultishness lies in the combination of dismissiveness for others'
> viewpoints as they pertain to food, the dead certainty that your way is
> The Way, and the dogged refusal to bow to reason when confronted with
> situations with clearcut parallels - such as the "protein is
> inessential" example. I used *your* rules to compose the argument,

They're not my rules. The definition of "essential" as pertains to
nutrition is clear-cut: That which *must* be derived from the diet,
because it cannot be created within the body. Again, that many
carbohydrate foods also contain protein does not mean that the body can
turn carbohydrate into protein -- the protein was there to begin with.
But the body absolutely *can* create carbohydrate from protein, and to a
lesser degree, from fat.

From the Encyclopedia Brittanica: Under most circumstances, there is no
absolute dietary requirement for carbohydrates—simple sugars, complex
carbohydrates such as starches, and the indigestible plant carbohydrates
known as dietary fibre.

And I repeat, from the Food and Nutrition Board:
"The lower limit of dietary carbohydrate compatible with life apparently
is zero, provided that adequate amounts of protein and fat are consumed."

That's the definition of "inessential" when speaking of nutrition.
Doesn't make me cultish, just makes me correct.

Dana