logictortured.com Blog

There are three types of people in the world…

… those who think the glass is half-empty, those who think the glass is half-full, and those who realize that “half-empty” and “half-full” mean the same thing.

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This is why Christian schools suck!

Of course this could be a joke or a scam. Here’s the school’s website.

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Eating Fat Will Not Make You Fat/Give You a Heart Attack

I’m not posting this to offer my readers medical advice. I’m certainly not a medical professional of any sort. I’m posting this here so I don’t have to constantly rewrite this when I’m discussing this topic on various forums. Now I can simply link to this post to get my point across.

I’m referring mostly about the forums at the Consumerist. A site I generally love but the editors there have an anti-fat mindset. Every time a restaurant comes out with a new ridiculous food item, introduced for the sole purpose of getting bloggers and the media outraged about it, so the restaurant can get some free publicity, the editors at the Consumerist will decry its fat content.

KFC’s new Double Down sandwich is a good example. It’s a ridiculous sandwich. The intent to release it clearly was to get a bunch of free publicity. And the Consumerist was more than willing to help. Searching for the Double Down on the Consumerist on Google brings up article after article. “Is the KFC Double Down the Worstest Food Ever?” “The KFC Double Down: What A Restaurant Does When It Gets Desperate.” And of course, “KFC’s Bacon Sandwich On Fried Chicken “Bread” Starts Killing People Nationwide April 12.” That’s only three but there are plenty more. The Consumerist is simply obsessed with such promotions and always does its part to give tons of free publicity.

In the comments I’ll point out that despite the claims of the Consumerist editors, eating fat does not make you fat. And eating fat does not give you a heart attack. Time and time again I’ll get into these discussions and they’re tiring me out. Like I said, with this posting I can simply link to it and be done with it.

Eating Fat Does Not Make You Fat:

It certainly makes sense that eating fat makes you fat. We are what we eat, right? So obviously eating fat makes you fat.

But I’ll say it again, eating fat does not make you fat.

If you eat 2000 calories a day without any fat, you won’t lose any weight unless you exercise a lot. And I’m not not talking about 8 minutes abs. I’m talking about at least an hour of high intensity exercise per day. And even then you’d only lose a little bit. Because of the substantial amount of carbs you’d have to consume to eat 2000 calories per day, your body would not be able to burn off any substantial quantity of stored fat.

However, if you only ate 2000 calories of protein and fat per day, without hardly any carbs, you’d quickly lose weight. Because your body would not have any carbs, your body would be forced to burn stored fat. Depending on your weight, you’d probably lose about 5 pounds per week.

I’m not making the above comparison because I think someone should deprive themselves of carbs to lose weight. Once again, I have no medical training so I have no opinion on what you should do to lose weight. The point of the comparison is merely to show that eating fat does not make you fat. Clearly if eating fat made you fat, then eating large amounts of fat would make you really fat. But the opposite occurs. You actually lose weight. Why? Once again, eating fat, in and of itself, does not make you fat.

You can read more about this here. In a nutshell, the fat/blubber/love handles in your body is stored energy. Your body will not use its stored energy if your body has carbohydrates to use as energy. Thus the only way you can get rid of your fat, is to eliminate any carbs from your system first.

That’s why you may have heard that you have to continuously exercise 20, 40 or even 60 minutes before you can start burning fat. That’s because your body has to burn off its usable carbs before it can start burning off its stored fat.

I know what some of you are thinking. I’m an Atkin’s zealot. If that’s how you want to label me, that’s fine. But that label does not invalidate or falsify anything I’ve said before. Even if I’m a zealot (which I’m not) it’s a simple fact that your body will not burn fat when it has carbs to burn first.

And I’ll point out that a low carb/high fat/protein diet was not invented by Dr. Atkins. Way back in 1825 Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote a book where he stated that people who wanted to lose weight could stop eating starches and carbs such as breads, rice, and potatoes.

And it’s a simple fact that wrestlers, boxers, body builders, and other athletes who are obsessive about their weight have used low carb high fat/protein diets well before Dr. Atkins was ever born.

And yes I realize Dr. Atkins died. At the ripe age of 72 he died. I find it simply amazing that people actually argue that because one person died, an entire diet must be wrong or bad for you. Would anyone think that, merely because Lance Armstrong got cancer, that bicycling professionally will give you cancer? Or merely because Madonna was born in Saginaw Michigan, that anyone born from Saginaw will grow up to be a slutty whore. (Well, that last one might be true.)

If you feel that one person’s death is valid evidence that a particular diet is dangerous or does not work… that’s your right to believe such nonsense. But it’s still nonsense.

I personally think Dr. Atkins was nutty, nutty like a fox. First he made millions selling books and giving speeches regarding a topic that Dr. Gott was able to explain simply as his “No Flour, No Sugar” diet. I don’t think Dr. Atkins was a charlatan, but he definitely knew how to get money out of people.

He also took the low carb/high fat-protein diet and turned it into a Scientology type cult. His zero-sum approach to the topic turned off a lot of people.

So, in summary, eating fat does not make you fat. Consuming more calories than your body can burn off makes you fat. Your body will not burn stored fat until it eliminates carbs first. Got it? Good….

But eating fat will give you a heart attack, right?:

After finally convincing people that eating fat does not make you fat they’ll argue, “But eating fat is unhealthy. It’ll give you a heart attack.”

However, not only is there no evidence to support that argument…

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet reduces the risk of getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet has no effect.

The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.

…there is actually evidence which supports the opposite:

A 2006 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, based on data collected from 82,802 women, found that the subjects who consumed the highest percentage of their daily calories from fat (including saturated fat) did not experience an increased risk of developing heart disease later in life. In fact, women who ate the highest amounts of vegetable fat—from foods like olive oil and nuts—had lower risks of heart disease than women on low-fat diets.

I’ll conclude with a great summary of the issue from the same Slate article:

Thirty years ago, America declared war against fat. The inaugural edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published in 1980 and subsequently updated every five years, advised people to steer clear of “too much fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol,” because of purported ties between fat intake and heart disease. The message has remained essentially the same ever since, with current guidelines recommending that Americans consume less than 10 percent of their daily calories from saturated fat.

But heart disease continues to devastate the country, and, as you may have noticed, we certainly haven’t gotten any thinner. Ultimately, that’s because fat should never have been our enemy. The big question is whether the 2010 Dietary Guidelines, due out at the end of the year, will finally announce retreat.

The foundation for the “fat is bad” mantra comes from the following logic: Since saturated fat is known to increase blood levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, and people with high LDL cholesterol are more likely to develop heart disease, saturated fat must increase heart disease risk. If A equals B and B equals C, then A must equal C.

Well, no. With this extrapolation, scientists and policymakers made a grave miscalculation: They assumed that all LDL cholesterol is the same and that all of it is bad. A spate of recent research is now overturning this fallacy and raising major questions about the wisdom of avoiding fat, especially considering that the food Americans have been replacing fat with—processed carbohydrates—could be far worse for heart health.

Why Aren’t Vegans Fat?:

Of course someone will glance at everything above and argue, “But you must be wrong, because Vegans don’t eat much fat and they don’t get fat.”

First, I never said not eating fat makes you fat. You get fat from consuming more calories than your body can burn off. The question is: Do you want to burn off the carbs you just consumed or the fat your body has stored?

Second, Vegans can be fat, very fricken fat:

Update: Jan 3, 2011:

“Fat is not the problem,” says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases.”

“The country’s big low-fat message backfired,” says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. “The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.”

“Carbohydrates are a metabolic bully,” Phinney says. “They cut in front of fat as a fuel source and insist on being burned first. What isn’t burned gets stored as fat, and doesn’t come out of storage as long as carbs are available. And in the average American diet, they always are.”

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Sweatshops in China?

Apparently there are sweatshops in China. Who knew?

Maybe one day the workers in China will get together and form a national union to ensure workers’ rights. Maybe through their collective efforts they could make a workers’ paradise. Heck, maybe they could turn the entire country into some sort of commune where everyone has to do their fair share and they all benefit from the profits.

I wonder if that could ever work. It’s amazing that no people have ever tried it.

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My Blog is not doing FANTASTIC!

According to Robert X. Cringely the Third*:

If you want to figure how many people read a column from the number of comments, try multiplying by at least 1000.

Thus, since I sometimes get one comment per post, that means I must be getting at least 1000 readers per day! Wow! That’s fricken awesome!

Just in case Cringely the Third is wrong, ’cause maybe I’m getting more than a thousand readers each day… you’d better vote in my poll below so I can get a more accurate estimate. Thanks!

Update – April 14, 2010:

Well, the results of the poll are in and they’re not good:

Using Cringley the Third Logic, since one person voted “yes,”, that means a thousand people read my blog. That’s good, right?

However, and this is the unfortunate part, one person voted that he does not read it. Thus, using the same patented Cringley the Third Logic, there are actually a thousand people who do not read my blog.

Subtracting the thousand that don’t read it from the thousand who do, and I’m left with no readers. Shit, this sucks.

* His real name is actually Mark C. Stephens and he’s the third person to write under the Cringely name

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AC/DC does not mean bisexual

I have weird pet peeves when it comes to language. For example, the use of “pre-sliced cheese” really bugs me. I’m forced to wonder: what is the difference between pre-sliced and sliced cheese? They’re both sliced, right, so why use the “pre” prefix? To me it’s just another pointless hypercorrection. (Yeah, I realize that “pointless hypercorrection” is redundant, shut the fuck up!)

Another bit of slang that bugs me is the use of “AC/DC” to refer to bisexual people. Obviously the purpose of using “AC/DC” is that the person goes both ways. But alternating current already goes both ways. The current alternates back and forth. While, on the other hand, direct current only goes one way.

So why add DC to AC? A person who goes both ways and only one way is a contradiction. He or she could not possibly exist.

To summarize. An AC would be a bisexual person, a DC would be a straight person, and a DC with reversed polarity would be a gay person. Got it? Good!

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Courtroom Conversations

Judge: We’re going to have a hearing on Tuesday the 20th at nine in the morning.

Attorney: What time was that, your honor?

Judge: Nine in the morning.

Attorney: Is that A.M.?

Judge: Yes.

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When Tech turns Disney

Ed Felten has summed up exactly what’s wrong with the iPad in just a few paragraphs. Brilliant!

To me, the iPad is Disneyland.

I like Disneyland. It’s clean, safe, and efficient. There are lots of entertaining things to do. Kids can drive cars; adults can wear goofy hats with impunity. There’s a parade every afternoon, and an underground medical center in case you get sick.

All of this is possible because of central planning. Every restaurant and store on Disneyland’s Main Street is approved in advance by Disney. Every employee is vetted by Disney. Disneyland wouldn’t be Disneyland without central planning….

There’s a reason the restaurants in Disneyland are bland and stodgy. It’s not just that centralized decision processes like Disney’s have trouble coping with creative, nimble, and edgy ideas. It’s also that customers know who’s in charge, so any bad dining experience will be blamed on Disney, making Disney wary of culinary innovation. In Disneyland the trains run on time, but they take you to a station just like the one you left.

I like living in a place where anybody can open a restaurant or store. I like living in a place where anybody can open a bookstore and sell whatever books they want. Here in New Jersey, the trains don’t always run on time, but they take you to lots of interesting places.

To me, even if the iPad was an open platform, exactly how are men supposed to carry it? Does Steve Jobs really want us all carrying satchels? Fat old guys like me don’t look good as metasexuals.

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Everyone has something to bitch about

Daily Mail – 8th April 2010:

Hundreds of Carlsberg workers have gone on strike for a second day after a ‘beer ban’ was imposed by bosses.

Up to 800 employees walked out of the firm’s Copenhagen factory in protest over its decision to allow drinking only at lunchtime.

Jens Bekke, a spokesman for Carlsberg, the world’s fourth-biggest brewer, said: ‘There has been free beer, water and soft drinks everywhere. Yesterday, beers were removed from all refrigerators.

‘The only place that you can get a beer in future is in the canteen, at lunch.’

Wow! Fricken wow!

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Great quote from Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

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