----- Original Message -----

> On Mar 4, 2014, at 2:25 PM, Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> > I doubt I have all or many of the traits necessary to be adapted to
> > a high carb diet. What I've found, over the years, are a few
> > general principles that apply to my situation.
> >
> > 1. Calories matter. I can't simply eat as much as I might like of
> > anything and lose weight or maintain weight loss. Even on zero
> > carb, although I didn't gain much weight, I failed to lose weight
> > I needed to lose. The relation between calories and my weight is
> > certainly not linear, and I wouldn't claim that calories are the
> > whole story, but they are part of the story.

> Todd: You most probably answered this back in the day, but did you
> ever try a zero carb, limited protein regimen?
I may have; I don't really recall. I'm pretty sure I'd lose weight on such a plan. 

I've followed the "Whole Health Source" blog of Stephan Guyenet over the years. As many here know, Stephan's views have changed over the years. A turning point was his post http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-hypothesis-of-obesity.html in 2011, in which he attempted to weigh the evidence both for and against the carbohydrate theory. Since then, he has been very interested in the "food reward" theory, which in a nutshell is about how hyperpalatability of foods affects not only appetite and eating behavior, but fat metabolism too. The more palatable foods are, the more fattening they are, due to a whole cascade of effects in the body. It's partly "they taste good so we eat more" but it's not just that. 

This is a very interesting theory, in relation to paleo. For example, Jim, your zero carb, limited protein (ZCLP) diet is a very low-palatability diet. It is monotonous and, while a certain amount of fat makes foods more palatable, there is a point beyond which it is cloying and reduces palatability. By the same token, people have lost weight and improved many health markers by eating nothing but potatoes. The trick is to eat just the potatoes, without butter or other toppings to make them interesting. Obviously the potatoes are a carbohydrate bomb, but there's evidence that the diet works. Potatoes without toppings are monotonous and bland . 

My grandmother, a vegetarian for the last 50 years of her life, ate rice and beans just about every day: Uncle Ben's white rice and canned garbanzos. She put a little chopped onion in and served it with a pat of butter. She never put salt or pepper on it. When I visited, this is what I ate too. It was very bland, even with that pat of butter on it. She never gained weight and live to be 93. When I was in grad school, I started making rice and beans too, since it was cheap, but of course I "improved" it in various ways. I added stuff, such as chopped jalopenos, garlic, whatever I could think of. I turned it from a simple peasant food into something exotic, and of course I started to gain weight on it. 

On this list and on low-carb sites we often say that carbs are "addictive." Maybe we attribute that to the opioid peptides in gluten. But it's also true that in my lifetime the presentation of carbs has changed a lot. Restaurants seldom serve their cheap starches in a simple format anymore. They tart them up with carefully crafted sauces and toppings designed by "food scientists" to be hyperpalatable. When I was a kid, if we ate spaghetti at home, we had some crappy bland sauce from a jar or can with it; it was nothing special. Today the supermarket sauces available are in a whole different league. There are vodka sauces, arrabiata, diavolo, etc., and many of them are really good. The essence of the food reward theory is that we are often overstimulated by the foods we eat , and that's what's causing trouble. 

Part of the secret of paleo may be that, done right, it is a return to simplicity. Eat whole foods. Don't tart them up. If this is so--and I think there's still a lot we don't know--it may be that the things we argue about most on this list, such as which foods could have been eaten in which human habitats and when cooking started, may be less important than whether we are overstimulating ourselves with whatever we end up eating. Geoffrey Purcell will point out that cooking itself dramatically increases the palatability of most foods, and he will be correct. 

Well, I'm rambling. 

Todd