82 replies to this topic

[Chris_T_Malta]

Hi All!

 

I have received my more recent lipid panel results and I am concerned that my LDL-C is too high whilst my HDL-C is too low (values in mg/dl)

 

Trig: 79.72

LDLC: 111.76

HDL: 32.48

 

I have 1 or 2 eggs a day for breakfast. Could THAT be the reason my LDLC is so high?

 

I was planning to increase the intake of healthy saturated fats (such as butter from grass-fed cows). Would that lead to a further spike in the LDLC?

 

 

 

 

[drew_ab]

A plant based diet (vegan or not, your choice) will lower your LDL drastically. 

[misterE]

I agree with the above post, but in particular: fat and sugar. Saturated-fat will elevate LDL and if you consume too much simple-sugar, your body will synthesize saturated-fat from the excess, which will also increase LDL. Starch (complex-carbohydrate) doesn't raise LDL and consuming fiber will lower LDL. Fiber is only found in plant-food.

Edited by misterE, 03 June 2015 - 09:59 PM.

[timar]

For once, I agree with misterE, except for the part on starch, which in fact does negatively affect the LDL/HDL ratio (the most important measure), by lowering HDL and increasing VLDL. Most importantly, starch and simple sugars may shift the lipoproteins towards a more atherogenic profile, increasing the relative amount of small, dense (B-type) LDL particles. However, this effect is only observed with a high glycemic load, e.g. refined starches and sugars consumed within a dietary pattern low in fiber (e.g. the Western diet). Whole grains don't seem to have any of those negative effects (actually quite the opposite) on cholesterol and triglycerides, nor does white rice in Asian diets high in fiber and phytonutrients from fruits and vegetables.

 

The dietary cholesterol in one or two eggs a day should have a neglibible effect on cholesterol for most people, but it doesn't help to lower it either. Your LDL level is quite good and nothing to be overly concerned about, particularly if you don't have any existing risk factors for heart disease. It is the HDL you should be more worried about. Ways to increase your HDL are physical exercise (the more, the better), substituting monounsaturated (e.g. olive and canola oil) for saturated fats,  avoiding refined starches and sugars and - believe it or not - moderate alcohol consumption (e.g. one glass of wine a day). Increasing your intake of fiber and phytochemicals from whole plant foods will not only help to increase your HDL but also to lower your LDL. Whole grains (e.g. rolled, cracked but not milled to flour) and nuts are particularly effective in impoving the LDL/HDL ratio as they do not only provide unsaturated fats but also LDL-lowering fiber and phytosterols.

 

Having a bowl of oatmeal or muesli with nuts and berries for breakfast instead of the eggs on most days of the week should make a notable difference.

 

One more thing: Please don't fall for the "healthy saturated fat" hype purported by the ones like Taubes and Teicholz and parts of the Paleo and Low Carb communities. Saturated fat per se is not healthy. Most saturated fat (C14-18:0) is in fact proinflammatory and raises LDL cholesterol - that's what the vast majority of scientific evidence shows. There are compounds in some solid fats (e.g. pastured dairy and coconut oil) that seem to have beneficial effects, but contrary to what many people claim, we don't really know whether those beneficial effects outweight the negative effects of the high levels of long-chain saturated fatty acids in those fats. If they do, it would most likely be the case at moderate intake only. While it is probably OK to enjoy some pastured butter and virgin coconut oil from time to time, they should not be considered health foods and are actually more likely to raise your LDL/HDL ratio than to improve it.

Edited by timar, 11 June 2015 - 11:41 AM.

[sthira]

^^ Great post, Timar. How do you think adding daily half & half dairy to coffee affects HDL and overall nutrition health in general?

Edited by sthira, 11 June 2015 - 11:53 AM.

[aza]

Interesting thread, i never thought stearic acid was bad due to its supposedly negligible effects on cholesterol

http://www.nel.gov/e...mmary_id=250134

but it is interesting to see that it may increase inflammation.

 

However, i wonder how this works in the context of high quality whole food.

For example, pastured meat contains far more omega 3, k2, coq10 and cla among other things. I have also heard that glycine is anti-inflammatory.

Oh well, only way to tell for sure is to get my own inflammation markers checked :]

 

 

[Dolph]

I think Timar's paragraph about starch needs a little bit of relativation. There are literally billions of people in the world living on diets almost exclusively made up of starch from white rice who have excellent lipid profiles and don't suffer cardiovascular disease. It's important to consider the impact of general overnutrition in this context! Pouring ****loads of starch + sugar over a liver that is already fully glycogen repleted may not be such a good idea and lead to increased VLDL production. Many people in the US and western europe just have lost any intuitive feeling about what is enough and what is physiologically normal when it comes to food and eating habits.

[baard]

I have registered to respond to this thread.

 

Notions I want to respond to:

 

• HDL/LDL ratio is really most important.

Sure there is some statistical evidence and probably some other lines of evidence for this, but some would disagree and would focus more on LDL itself or non-HDL-C. It seems that pretty much all of the medical therapies we have of lowering LDL-c gives some benefit. And there doesn't seem to be any randomized controlled trials substantiating clinical relevance of changing the ratio instead of either total cholesterol or LDL.

• HDL levels are important

HDL is surely associated with less risk, but all the clinical evidence where one tries to raise HDL has failed. (See the review article HDL and cardiovascular disease in The Lancet)  HDL is associated with reverse cholesterol transport, but part of HDL can also act atherogenic, and genetically higher levels of HDL is *not* associated with better outcomes.

 

Personally I think LDL-C or Non-HDL is more relevant targets to decrease your risk. I follow the McDougall diet and have a very low LDL-c and total cholesterol, an ok LDL/HDL ratio and not too high triglycerides.

 

I am no expert and probably less knowledgeable than many here, but I thought I should offer correction/revision to some of the important points being discussed.

Edited by baard, 12 June 2015 - 11:08 AM.

[Dolph]

I agree wholeheartedly.

[misterE]

I think Timar's paragraph about starch needs a little bit of relativation. There are literally billions of people in the world living on diets almost exclusively made up of starch from white rice who have excellent lipid profiles and don't suffer cardiovascular disease. It's important to consider the impact of general overnutrition in this context! Pouring ****loads of starch + sugar over a liver that is already fully glycogen repleted may not be such a good idea and lead to increased VLDL production. Many people in the US and western europe just have lost any intuitive feeling about what is enough and what is physiologically normal when it comes to food and eating habits.

 

Agree 100%. Sugar is more damaging than starch because you can eat an endless amount of sugar, saturating liver glycogen capacity, leading to increased de novo lipogenesis. Try overeating white-rice or baked potatoes, it isn't going to happen. Now try overeating oats or barley!

 

I can suck down over 2000 calories in juice in about 2 hours, yet I would be lucky to consume 2000 calories of white-rice in an entire day! Huge difference.

 

Also, a lot of the VLDL production is also caused by an influx of FFAs entering the liver from increased lipolysis (body-fat breakdown). The way to lower lipolysis is to eat carbohydrates or drink alcohol. Diabetics who are resistant to the anti-lipolysis effects of insulin, are undergoing chronic lipolysis and releasing huge amounts of FFAs into their bloodstream, which travels to the liver, only to be re-esterified and packaged into VLDL in the hopes of making it back to the adipocyte, without insulinogenic stimulation (as in diabetes), the lipoprotein-lipase enzymes are not activated and the VLDL accumulates in the blood.

Edited by misterE, 12 June 2015 - 03:08 PM.

[timar]

^^ Great post, Timar. How do you think adding daily half & half dairy to coffee affects HDL and overall nutrition health in general?

 

I have no idea what you mean by "half & half dairy". I don't think that adding some milk to your coffee will have any negative effect, but if you mean mixing one part milk with one part coffee (caffé latte) that would amount to a lot of milk. I'd consider using low-fat milk in that case.

 

Interesting thread, i never thought stearic acid was bad due to its supposedly negligible effects on cholesterol

http://www.nel.gov/e...mmary_id=250134

but it is interesting to see that it may increase inflammation.

 

However, i wonder how this works in the context of high quality whole food.

For example, pastured meat contains far more omega 3, k2, coq10 and cla among other things. I have also heard that glycine is anti-inflammatory.

Oh well, only way to tell for sure is to get my own inflammation markers checked :]

 

I also believe that high-quality, organic & pastured animal products are a healthier choice - they certainly are a more humane choice. But to be clear: contrary to all the grass-fed-WAPF-Paleo hype, there is little substantial evidence to support these claims. Yes, there is a little more of certain nutrients, a better omega-6/3 ratio and a little less saturated fat in grass fed beef and dairy, but if you put the absolute amounts in a larger dietary context, I don't think they are particularly significant. For example, the oil your are cooking your beef in will have a much greater impact on the overal dietary omega-6/3 datio than whether the steer was grass-fed or from the feedlot. Moreover, even the arguments concerning the omega-6/3 ratio are largely speculative and supported by limited evidence only. Hence the arguments in favor of the health-benefits of grass-fed animal products are often speculations mounting on speculations. These speculations could turn out to be true, but we should call them for what they are and not confuse them with solid evidence to base dietary recommendations on.

 

I think Timar's paragraph about starch needs a little bit of relativation. There are literally billions of people in the world living on diets almost exclusively made up of starch from white rice who have excellent lipid profiles and don't suffer cardiovascular disease. It's important to consider the impact of general overnutrition in this context! Pouring ****loads of starch + sugar over a liver that is already fully glycogen repleted may not be such a good idea and lead to increased VLDL production. Many people in the US and western europe just have lost any intuitive feeling about what is enough and what is physiologically normal when it comes to food and eating habits.

 

I absolutely agree. Maybe I should have put more emphasis on the second part of the paragraph, so just to clarify: when mentioning the glycemic load I meant the overall glecemic load of the diet, which obviously depends not only on the GL of a particular food but also on its absolute caloric amount and the dietary pattern. A constant high-glycemic (over)load typical of Western dietary patterns is indeed associated with unfavorable alterations to the lipoprotein profile and to metabolic syndrome.

 

The higher the overall glycemic load and the more insulinogenic (animal) protein and fructose, the more detrimental refined starches will become.

 

McDougall probably got it right: Healthy Asian dietary patterns high in white rice are also high in fruits and vegetables and low in animal protein. Epidemiological evidence from China suggests that as soon as substantial amounts of animal protein are introduced into those dietary patterns, the white rice starts to become a problem.

 

However, if you don't want to deprive yourself of animal food and follow a vegan, starch-based diet, the Mediterranean dietary pattern is a sensible alternative. It is higher in fat and animal food, but lower in high-GI carbohydrates. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you have to restrict animal food or sugar and high-GI carbs.

 

That's why very low carb, Paleo diets often work as well in normalizing lipoprotein profiles as high carb vegan diets when people get on them from the SAD.

 

I'll comment on the LDL/HDL debate later. Suffice to say that I think there is abundant evidence to suggest that HDL is a useful biomarker, irrespective of whether its negative association with CVD is causal (which has indeed been put into question by the niacin RCTs and some Mendelian randomization studies) or not - or, what I suspect, partially causal.

Edited by timar, 13 June 2015 - 10:32 AM.

[aza]

Thats fair enough timar. All i meant to say was that foods are more than their isolated parts and its hard to tell their effect by only looking at one aspect, when other things in it may partially negate it.

 

[Chris_T_Malta]

For once, I agree with misterE, except for the part on starch, which in fact does negatively affect the LDL/HDL ratio (the most important measure), by lowering HDL and increasing VLDL. Most importantly, starch and simple sugars may shift the lipoproteins towards a more atherogenic profile, increasing the relative amount of small, dense (B-type) LDL particles. However, this effect is only observed with a high glycemic load, e.g. refined starches and sugars consumed within a dietary pattern low in fiber (e.g. the Western diet). Whole grains don't seem to have any of those negative effects (actually quite the opposite) on cholesterol and triglycerides, nor does white rice in Asian diets high in fiber and phytonutrients from fruits and vegetables.

 

The dietary cholesterol in one or two eggs a day should have a neglibible effect on cholesterol for most people, but it doesn't help to lower it either. Your LDL level is quite good and nothing to be overly concerned about, particularly if you don't have any existing risk factors for heart disease. It is the HDL you should be more worried about. Ways to increase your HDL are physical exercise (the more, the better), substituting monounsaturated (e.g. olive and canola oil) for saturated fats,  avoiding refined starches and sugars and - believe it or not - moderate alcohol consumption (e.g. one glass of wine a day). Increasing your intake of fiber and phytochemicals from whole plant foods will not only help to increase your HDL but also to lower your LDL. Whole grains (e.g. rolled, cracked but not milled to flour) and nuts are particularly effective in impoving the LDL/HDL ratio as they do not only provide unsaturated fats but also LDL-lowering fiber and phytosterols.

 

Having a bowl of oatmeal or muesli with nuts and berries for breakfast instead of the eggs on most days of the week should make a notable difference.

 

One more thing: Please don't fall for the "healthy saturated fat" hype purported by the ones like Taubes and Teicholz and parts of the Paleo and Low Carb communities. Saturated fat per se is not healthy. Most saturated fat (C14-18:0) is in fact proinflammatory and raises LDL cholesterol - that's what the vast majority of scientific evidence shows. There are compounds in some solid fats (e.g. pastured dairy and coconut oil) that seem to have beneficial effects, but contrary to what many people claim, we don't really know whether those beneficial effects outweight the negative effects of the high levels of long-chain saturated fatty acids in those fats. If they do, it would most likely be the case at moderate intake only. While it is probably OK to enjoy some pastured butter and virgin coconut oil from time to time, they should not be considered health foods and are actually more likely to raise your LDL/HDL ratio than to improve it.

 

Hi Timar,

 

Many thanks for your reply.

 

I asked this question cause the LDL-C went up in the period when I switched from a bread-based breakfast to one with vegetables, 2 eggs and tuna/salmon (more paleo compatible sort of). It might have been a coincidence and the higher LDL-C is caused by something else.

 

I train at medium intensity regularly (weight lifting and cycling). I used to use a lot of extra virgin olive oil, which now I have replaced with coconut oil and I eat a good amount of vegetables daily. In this 1.5 month, I gradually shifted my diet to be lower in carbs and focused on lower-GI carbs such as brown rice, increasing my intake of meat (or fish) and fat (kerry gold butter, coconut oil, bacon!). I am nowhere close to anything low-carb/ketosis. 

 

I plan to make a new lipid-test and see what happens. If my LDL-C goes up again, I'll have to rethink whether I want to proceed on this road.

 

One question please regarding the GI of foods:

 

If I eat say GI60 pasta with ingredients that are low in GI, would the overall GI be lower? Ie. Is the blood sugar spike affected by the combo of foods you eat? Ie Is it better to eat pasta on its own and would eating pasta with olives, tomatoes etc lower it's sugar spike load?

 

As regards to this McDougall, any links? I think this is particularly concerning cause usually most dishes here in Malta are a combination of high GI foods (breads with meat, pasta with rabbit meat etc).

[Dolph]

 

I asked this question cause the LDL-C went up in the period when I switched from a bread-based breakfast to one with vegetables, 2 eggs and tuna/salmon (more paleo compatible sort of). It might have been a coincidence and the higher LDL-C is caused by something else.

 

I literally guarantee you this was NOT coincidence. About 1/3 of people are actually hyperresponders to dietary cholesterol and when your LDL did rise significantly after adding eggs you may(!) well be one of them!

 

I train at medium intensity regularly (weight lifting and cycling). I used to use a lot of extra virgin olive oil, which now I have replaced with coconut oil and I eat a good amount of vegetables daily. In this 1.5 month, I gradually shifted my diet to be lower in carbs and focused on lower-GI carbs such as brown rice, increasing my intake of meat (or fish) and fat (kerry gold butter, coconut oil, bacon!). I am nowhere close to anything low-carb/ketosis. 

 

You add coconut oil (the most atherogenic fat that exists...) and butter and are surprised your LDL is rising? Really? Let's put it mildly and say this might not be such a great idea...

 

 

Edited by Dolph, 13 June 2015 - 04:54 PM.

[Chris_T_Malta]

 

 

I asked this question cause the LDL-C went up in the period when I switched from a bread-based breakfast to one with vegetables, 2 eggs and tuna/salmon (more paleo compatible sort of). It might have been a coincidence and the higher LDL-C is caused by something else.

 

I literally guarantee you this was NOT coincidence. About 1/3 of people are actually hyperresponders to dietary cholesterol and when your LDL did rise significantly after adding eggs you may(!) well be one of them!

 

I train at medium intensity regularly (weight lifting and cycling). I used to use a lot of extra virgin olive oil, which now I have replaced with coconut oil and I eat a good amount of vegetables daily. In this 1.5 month, I gradually shifted my diet to be lower in carbs and focused on lower-GI carbs such as brown rice, increasing my intake of meat (or fish) and fat (kerry gold butter, coconut oil, bacon!). I am nowhere close to anything low-carb/ketosis. 

 

You add coconut oil (the most atherogenic fat that exists...) and butter and are surprised your LDL is rising? Really? Let's put it mildly and say this might not be such a great idea...

 

 

 

That's why I want to take a 2nd test. If my LDL-C go even higher, than it's clearly I am doing the opposite of what I should be doing.

 

I might have bought in too much of the theories presented in books like Brain Grain. Maybe Paleo is good for weight loss but not for heart health.

[Chris_T_Malta]

Found this study which totally confirms what is being said in this thread:

 

http://digitalcommon...76&context=ijes

 

Unfortunately, the study didn't feature a control group and the consumption of the subjects was not monitored in anyway.

 

Still, my major doubt revolves around the differences between the initial stage and once the body gets adapted to all this fat intake. Didn't find a study that compares new HF diet subjects with ones who have been fat-adapted. Maybe the initial increases in LDL-C, TG etc gradually go down as the body fat-adapts? This might explain why long-term paleo-guys claim their lipid profile is very healthy.

[misterE]

 

 

 

McDougall probably got it right: Healthy Asian dietary patterns high in white rice are also high in fruits and vegetables and low in animal protein. Epidemiological evidence from China suggests that as soon as substantial amounts of animal protein are introduced into those dietary patterns, the white rice starts to become a problem.

 

 

 

Hey timar, have you ever heard of Walter Kempner and the rice-diet? Probably the most effective and healing diet ever; consisted of white-rice, fruit, juice, and table-sugar( you know all those horrifying high-GI/GL carbs!!)... completely reversed metabolic-syndrome and well published back in the 1940s and 1950s. I would really love to hear your response on this.

 

 

Edited by misterE, 14 June 2015 - 05:57 AM.

[misterE]

The real problem I see nowadays, is the high linoleic-acid (LA) intake in industrial countries. Insulin stimulates desaturates enzymes (which can be good or bad considering your fatty-acid profile), so if you consume a diet consisting mostly of LA combined with insulinogenic carbohydrates (sugar, flour, beans, potatoes, milk) you are going to accelerate the conversion of linoleic-acid into arachidonic-acid (AA), which is inflammatory, and causes a release of cortisol (which is an anti-inflammatory hormone). However cortisol is a catabolic glucocorticoid, and it causes elevated blood-sugar and elevated free-fatty-acids, which basically causes heart-disease and diabetes! Plenty of studies to prove this by the way...

 

Of course if you eat "animal -protein" you are consuming pre-made arachidonic-acid, which is inflammatory. Believe it or not, but most our premade arachidonic-acid comes from egg-yolks, turkey-flesh, chicken-flesh, pig-flesh, organs meats, and farmed fish (which are fed soybean and corn-meal). Cows, goats, sheep and deer are immune to the AA accumulation because they are ruminant creatures (but never the less, these creature still contain premade AA, just not as much as poultry, organ meats, farmed fish and egg-yolks). I think this is why the Jewish people are forbidden to eat meat from non-ruminant animals. The ancients somehow knew that the AA in "un-kosher" meat ; pigs, poultry and their eggs were unsafe to eat and caused harm to the body and mind!

 

If you look at Americans dietary records since1909, you will see that soybean oil consumption has taken on an exponential-curve and chicken has become our meat of choice, instead of beef, which was basically our only source of meat back in 1909. And yet Americans ate plenty of insulinogenic carbohydrates in1909! Put the GI/GL to rest already; it means noting in regards to health or diabetes... if you doubt me, then please research the works of Walter Kempner, Nathan Pritkin, Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, John McDougal, Walter Kempner, Neal Barnard and James Barnard and plenty others: I can provide references if need be...  

 

Edited by misterE, 14 June 2015 - 06:14 AM.

[Chris_T_Malta]

 

 

 

I asked this question cause the LDL-C went up in the period when I switched from a bread-based breakfast to one with vegetables, 2 eggs and tuna/salmon (more paleo compatible sort of). It might have been a coincidence and the higher LDL-C is caused by something else.

 

I literally guarantee you this was NOT coincidence. About 1/3 of people are actually hyperresponders to dietary cholesterol and when your LDL did rise significantly after adding eggs you may(!) well be one of them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Dolph,

 

You referred to a group of people who are hyper-responders to dietary cholesterol. Are you referring to those with Apolipoprotein E?

 

I have spent some hours researching the subect & found a post by Davide Palmer on this website: http://wholehealthso...t-increase.html

 

Basically this poster brings our attention to the fact that studies might be contradictory because out of the 3 genotype groups, E4 reacts differently from E2/3.

 

Found this study: http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/11726725

 

I have loaded my Promethease Report (based on 23andme test) to try to establish what Apo genotype.

 

IF I understood correctly mine is rs241448(C;C).

 

This is the text from Promethease:

 

2.14x increased risk for Alzheimer's

...more...

(hide)

While the ApoE4 allele (rs429358©) is widely accepted as the predominant genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, there are likely to be numerous other factors, both genetic and environmental, associated to lesser degrees with susceptibility to the disease. Genes influencing the immune system, and in particular susceptibility to viral infections such as herpes, may be among such factors. This SNP, located in the TAP2 gene and thus implicated in the activation of HIV and HSV-1 viruses, is seen more commonly in ~300 Alzheimer patients than in the same number of controls. The risk allele is rs241448©. The odds ratio is reported to be 2.14 (CI: 1.02-2.55) for rsrs241448(C;C) homozygotes, and 1.51 (CI: 0.80-1.93) for rsrs241448(C;T) heterozygotes, compared with rsrs241448(T;T) homozygot...

 

 

[Chris_T_Malta]

Found this:

 

Approximately 25% of the population has one allele (called apoE4) that does not recycle LDL very well and subsequently results in higher LDL in the bloodstream. In addition, it is associated with a 2 to 3­fold increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease for multiple reasons. People with two alleles of the ApoE4 gene fare even worse. I am currently researching ApoE biology in the brain and in the vascular system and writing a paper for publication. I will be covering this topic in depth in a future video/article. Reference

 

http://www.foundmyfi...trigenomics.pdf

 

It's by Dr. Rhonda Patrick

[Chris_T_Malta]

 

 

 

 

McDougall probably got it right: Healthy Asian dietary patterns high in white rice are also high in fruits and vegetables and low in animal protein. Epidemiological evidence from China suggests that as soon as substantial amounts of animal protein are introduced into those dietary patterns, the white rice starts to become a problem.

 

 

 

Hey timar, have you ever heard of Walter Kempner and the rice-diet? Probably the most effective and healing diet ever; consisted of white-rice, fruit, juice, and table-sugar( you know all those horrifying high-GI/GL carbs!!)... completely reversed metabolic-syndrome and well published back in the 1940s and 1950s. I would really love to hear your response on this.

 

 

 

So you're saying that in terms of healthy diets, both "low-carb" and "high-carb" can be effective as long as you don't eat mixed dishes? Any studies about this? If that's the case, nutrition is far more complex than we think.

 

This would also explain why both camps (low-carb and high-carb) seem to have their claims backed up by studies.

[Dolph]

I personally don't know a single lowcarber with a really great lipid profile. It's unphysiologic and no documented human culture ever did eat that way, also not in "paleo" times, as far as science is able to tell. That is enough for me to come to conclusions.

[aribadabar]

 

IF I understood correctly mine is rs241448(C;C).

 

This is the text from Promethease:

 

2.14x increased risk for Alzheimer's

 

 

If you indeed have the rs241448(C;C) SNP this means you are Apo E4/E4 - the worst possible combination for lipid metabolism and the highest risk for AD.

 

I would say that you should forget about saturated fat-rich foods and move to mostly plant-based, preferably vegan, diet, supplemented with good amounts of instant release Niacin (vitamin B3) if you want to minimize your risk of developing CVD and/or AD down the road.

 

See reports from other E4/4 bearers for more information:

http://www.longecity...mr-lipoprofile/

http://www.longecity...-no-medication/

[aza]

They probably did dolph, but only seasonally or in certain locations. out of curiosity, below what carb range do you refer to as low carb? Also, i dont really see a need to go vegan if your dont want to (for health reasons anyways), but i did try to figure out the minimum amount of meat for health (imo) a while back . It wasnt zero, but it was low. Hopefully you find your own solution :]

 

Edited by aza, 14 June 2015 - 04:16 PM.

[Dolph]

[...] below what carb range do you refer to as low carb?

 

That's of course a bit arbitrary, but generally I would say that everything below ~40% of daily calories from carbs would be considerd by me(!) to be definitely "low carb", with higher percentages also possible, depending on different factors such as total amount of calories. Although I'm pretty sure others would differ.

[aza]

ah, alright. I prefer 20% to 40% carbs, which i consider medium. But to each their own, eh? :]

[Dolph]

Sure, it's a matter of perspective in the end! I for myself prefer high carb diets and everything below a pretty high carb percentage seems to be "low carb" to me. That's what I meant with arbitrary.

 

Although 20% based on an average diet of 2000kcals would mean only ~100 grams of carbs. I couldn't think of anyone not considering to call this low carb? Hmmm... 

[aza]

Thats what i consider to be to top range of low carb. if only the definitions were written in stone :]

[misterE]

I personally don't know a single lowcarber with a really great lipid profile.

 

Right. Look at Robert Atkins, when he died he was autopsied and found to have extensive atherosclerosis. Nathan Pritikin was autopsied and was found to have clean arteries,  

[misterE]

what carb range do you refer to as low carb?

 

I would think anything below 60%. I personally try to eat 70% carbohydrate or more, of course this is mostly starch, but I do also consume sugar sometimes. And fructose isn't all bad either, most fructose goes to replenishing liver glycogen, after the liver glycogen is full, only then will you synthesize saturated and monounsaturated-fats (which according to my beliefs and research, and the "healthy" fats, as long as they don't cause lipotoxicity).