whatisitgoodfor said:
That's pretty impressive. You actually EAT sulfa drugs, penicillin derivatives etc.
I was referring to FOOD allergies, not other types of allergies. Food allergies typically come about due to over exposure, as opposed to other allergies which frequently are due to non-typical personal biochemistry.
Come on now, as a bio major you should know there's no difference between ingestion, inhalation, and injection as long as stuff gets into your blood stream to be attacked by IgG and the other immunoglobulins.
Some allergies are genetic (my allergies to sulfa drugs, for example), and some may be caused by over-exposure (my allergy to smoke, for another). But then, I've been allergic to eggs my entire life - my first one sent me to the hospital for anaphylactic shock. A friend of mine is allergic to chocolate - again, all her life. In fact, by your reasoning, people on the Atkins diet should
develop allergies to proteins, since they're over-exposing themselves to them.
Sorry, but your argument just doesn't hold water.
I'm not sure what the exact numbers are (they weren't published in the study I was looking at) but before we start arguing over what percent equates to a fad diet, I want to see what percentage of Americans ever actually managed to follow a low-fat diet. However, my personal feelings on it are that if 15% of people are following a major life change (which eliminating the basis of your diet would qualify for IMO) then it really isn't a fad anymore.
No, of course numbers weren't published. I've read plenty of these "studies" before too, both for and against, and most of them are utter crap. Again, as a student, presumably reading plenty of studies, you should know what constitutes a good study versus a bad one. Give me the reference for a study that shows a high degree of proof for (or against, as I said in my original post) the Atkins diet, and I'll go look it up and read it and respond.
As for the definition of "fad" - if 50% of people change, that's a major cultural event. 15% isn't enough to be nothing, and isn't enough to be long lasting. Hence, fad. Explain why, if this existed for 50 years, that it's only become really well known in the last five or ten.
Excuse for not getting into the chemical details. While those are the actual molecules that your body uses for energy, they are charged (converted from a low energy form to a high energy form) using blood sugar. So in essence, the amount of readily available energy can be approximated by the amount of free blood sugar.
Yes.
I'm also kind of curious as to why your bodily functions would care in any way how much energy was wasted in getting the blood sugar ready for glycolysis?
Well, glycolysis doesn't care. But if you spend energy converting protein and fat into glucose (or really, the two molecules derived from glucose used) that's less net energy gained from the consumption of said molecule. Glucose is very easily converted into the two molecules necessary. Fats and proteins need more work. Hence, more energy burned, less gained.
While it is true that your body does waste a lot of energy in converting storage media (fat, glycogen, and to some extent protein) into glucose ready for glycolysis, this is simply the "Caloric Advantage" that Dr. Atkins refers to in his book. This is what allows a person on a low-carb diet to eat 2000 calories a day and lose weight faster than a person on a low-fat diet eating 1200 calories a day. (if you want the citation information for that information, I can get it to you, but I don't keep it at work.)
I'm sure Dr. Atkins and his followers cite that many times. I don't doubt that it's correct too. After all, I did just argue that it was.
This "Caloric Advantage" is the dietary equivalent of forcing your body into a mode of starvation. Pretending it's anything else is just naive.
Now, maybe if Dr. Atkins told his clients to do something novel like, say, exercise and eat
balanced meals, I'd have more respect for him. The Atkins diet does nothing but take advantage of people who want to lose weight but don't want to work at doing it. A
real lifestyle change would be to actually start exercising and start treating your body right.
Anyway, you are refering to blood borne carbohydrates, which your body does need. I was actually talking about dietary carbs, which your body most assuredly does not need. (I am conceding though, that I should have explicitly stated where I was refering to dietary and where to blood carbs.)
And I'll concede that no,
technically you don't need dietary carbs.
The 10k years that have passed since humans have lived that lifestyle are pretty insignificant on an evolutionary time scale. Of course that 10k years only applies to people descended from Mesopetamians (sp?). Other cultures have even shorter time scales all the way to Native Americans who have only been living with agriculture on a large scale for less than 500 years.
But the body's primary mode of conversion is dietary carbs first,
then fats (which excess carbs are converted into), and
lastly protein. Explain that away with evolutionary theory.
As to the species of bacteria living in our guts, they freqently change. Considering that babys are born without any significant cultures in their gut, I somehow doubt that it would be too much effort to obtain the correct pro-biotics in our guts.
Given, I don't believe it would be difficult either.
I'm not sure what "functional changes to facial muscular and skeletal structure" you are referring to. The muscular and skeletal differences between races of humans today are as great as the differences in muscular and skeletal differences between humans today and humans 10k years ago. In short, there haven't been any significant biological changes to humans in the last 10k years.
Right, but you're arguing 10 million years. Ten million years ago there were significant differences in skeletal structure. Past Australopithicines even, since it's believed we evolved from the gracile forms, and not the robust, where these differences are more pronounced.
And for the record, H. sapiens has been around in its relatively present form for at least 25k years, and it's suspected they may have even been around longer. Agriculture, on the other hand, has only been around for around 10k. So, it's readily obvious from an evolutionary standpoint that agriculture is not the cause of H. sapiens changes to dental structure and facial musculature which would select against meat eating in general. I can go into these changes in more detail if you'd like, but I don't particularly think it's necessary.
BTW, you're right about the degree. I've still got about 18 hours left to go for my undergrad in BioE. (If you're actually curious, I'm doing research into bioelectrics.)
For one, congratulations! 
For two, it's nice to actually be able to debate something with someone in my general field of study (my degree is in biochemistry).
