Is vitamin C/nutrition in general a scam?

The problem is the general public want a simple solution to every single problem or a simple explanation to something complicated. This is what annoys me when bloggers and “news” try to simplify and twist scientific findings for general public.

If the public wants something simple - then just adhere to a simple idea. Eat more natural food. Eat organic if you can afford. Eat balance. Eat healthier. Eat a variety of food. I know a lot of ridiculous people who would do crazy diet, only to go back to being much worse than themselves because they f*cked up their hormones and healthy gut.

Carbs themselves are not even evil. Carbs are one of the essential macronutrients. The problem is the public OVERCONSUME carbs (and unhealthy fats), which are the main ingredients of any fastfood chain or pre-packed microwavable meal. Because of this, the public goes to fad diet of cutting down carbs and going ‘keto’, which they think will solve everything. Unfortunately, that’s not always the right way. And going keto is not an excuse for the person to eat all unhealthy fats.

Indeed. However I don’t think they deliberately twist the facts in bad faith. Since 99% of journalists (and dieticians) have no background in chemistry or physics, they make up their own simplistic explanations so that they can get things straight in their own heads; they then pass on their Chinese Whispers version of the theory to the general public.

I suppose there’s a slightly bigger problem than that: a lot of the researchers have no background in dynamic systems theory, so they’re unaware of the mathematical models that adequately describe their observations on bodies eating high-this and low-that. Their explanations are therefore a lot more complicated (and wrong in some of the details) than they actually need to be.

Yup.

It takes a pretty specific combination of dietary mistakes to really mess yourself up. Stop pushing your body to the edge and it’ll sort itself out.

Carbs aren’t essential in any sense, but they’re definitely not evil. They’re just food. As you say, the problem comes when people eat nothing but carbs.

I disagree with you on the fat aspect, though. Fats aren’t evil either. They’re just food. If you reduce carbs then logically you must increase fat, because your body must burn one or t’other for fuel. The idea that there is such a thing as “unhealthy fats” came from the observation that people with metabolic syndrome have an excess of circulating triglycerides, mostly built from palmitic acid (a saturated fat); and coincidentally, of course, all those fats are packaged inside VLDL-C, hence the “cholesterol gives you heart disease” idea. It was not known all those years ago that palmitic acid is the usual endpoint of lipogenesis, and all that fat backed up with nowhere to go has actually been synthesized from excess carbs. People on low-carb high-fat diets have very low levels of circulating triglycerides (of any type) because there are plenty of subsystems that will accept them as fuel. In fact your body has a slight preference for burning saturated LCFAs (compared to unsaturated LCFAs), which presumably dovetails with the fact that your body synthesizes a saturated LCFA for medium-term energy storage.

I’m not trying to start a debate or spark a flame war, but could you point out some sources which demomstrate that carbs are an essential nutrient? I have read a lot about many different diets and nutrition and tried a lot of them (mainly for fun / experimentation / to see what works or doesn’t work for me, etc). Even most carb-loving nutritionists will agree that carbs are non-essential.

(Essential meaning: you would die without it.)

I should probably clarify on the ‘essentiality’, my error in using the word.

I should say, there is no need for one to avoid carbs, carbs can be digested and it’s primary source of energy of human body. If you do exercise - which you should, your body should easily break down carbs. Another thing is to make your life more liveable. Remember that when you accustom your body to avoiding specific group of food, you can develop allergies in the long run. This is what happens to long term vegetarians unable to eat meat. Why make your life miserable, unable to enjoy fries, rice, noodles - when your body CAN and able to digest them anyway.

The key thing here is to balance yourself. The ability to use both carbs and fats as fuel energy source, as oppose to solely relying on one source. If your body is metabolically flexibility, it makes your body able to tolerate occasional eating out and ‘lapse in diet’ okay.

This is why on my diet - I will have high carbs/low fat and low carbs/high fat meals.

Lot of people do carb cycling, they said it works better than keto in the long run.

All I can take away from these conversations about diet is that I’m very lucky I have had good eating and exercise habits from the beginning…thanks ma and pa!

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