I try to periodically challenge myself with different points of view so I actually watched most of this (I feel like I deserve Hazardous Duty pay)...I watched a little of the beginning and almost all of the second half. A few comments:
On the positive side, I think there are some people who can thrive on an ultra-low fat diet, however the presenter's constant (generally invalid) attacks on low-carb diets and obvious lack of familiarity with the mechanisms by which they work completely undermine his credibility. Specifically, every point on the slide that is showing at minute 42 is wrong with two possible partial exceptions. Those are that in some people LDL cholesterol will rise and fasting glucose will rise in some people as well, however both of those have been widely discussed in the low-carb community and are unlikely to be issues for most people. He does not mention that HDL typically rises significantly. The rest of the points are either wrong, or the large cadre of successful low-carb-friendly doctors are just completely lying (which would likely be reported online by their patients if it was true.) Low carbohydrate tolerance is kind of meaningless since there is no reason for most people to eat a high number of carbs, as in above about 150 grams per day, if that. His statement that low-carbs diets don't work in the long run is totally counter to the experience of most people who have tried them, including me. For many people they are the only diets that work long-term.
Here is a quick list of points he never addresses in the parts I watched:
- If you want to shift your body toward fat burning, which is one of the major strengths of low-carb high fat, what mechanism does this on a low fat diet? It seems to work for some people, but he never addresses it.
- Does his diet resolve irrational hunger? This is one of the major strengths of low-carb. Crickets.
- What about the numerous contradictory populations and studies? All those healthy Italians eating lots of Olive oil? No mention.
- For an active healthy person eating between 2000-3000 calories per day, the bulk of the calories in this diet is going to come from starch and grains, both of which are notorious for aggravating chronically elevated insulin, so its hard to see how such a diet would reduce the sugar load in the body and reduce overall insulin load. Increasing insulin generally worsens insulin resistance, not helps it.
- What he's recommending is directionally similar to the ADA diet, which is consistently reported to be far inferior to a well-formulated low-carb diet. The bulk of the calories by definition come from starches and grains (and avocados, which I agree with) which will be a problem for many people. No explanation.
- Something I like about the low-carbers is that the quality of the science related to specific mechanisms is far better that other diet approaches, and this is very evident here since he doesn't seem to be aware (or is intentionally ignoring ) many of the mechanisms in play.
- For many people, removing vegetable oil alone is a very good thing, however most low-carbers are already paleo compliant
- He criticizes Dr. Bernstein, however the good doctor has a thriving practice with many positive testimonials so his approach is clearly working for many people. Not acknowledging that is very unprofessional.
- No single approach works for everyone, however no discussion of who the high-starch approach won't work for.
The really sad thing about this video is not that the diet he's recommending is necessarily bad for everyone (it will likely work well for some people), but mis-representing lower carb diets either due to blatant lying, mis-representing studies, ignoring data, or just sloppiness and making bad assumptions will discourage many people who can't see through the problems with his talk from at least researching and trying a lowish-carb diet which might work very well for them. I could go on and on but that should be enough.
