People who hear me rail against refined and processed carbohydrates won’t be too surprised to see me post this, but:
A study just published in the Archives of Internal Medicine (Arch Intern Med. 2010;170[7]:640-647) implicates white carbs in heart disease (in Italian women). White carbs are highly processed carbohydrates that are digested very quickly and cause spikes in your blood sugar.
In the study, women with the highest glycemic load had 2.24 times the risk of heart disease as women with the lowest glycemic load.
The study didn’t show such a correlation for men, but noted that it is probably not the highest of the risk factors for men.
I applaud the study’s results, which seem to prove exactly what we already know: that carbs without fiber are poison. However, in reading the results of the study I have a bone to pick with these people running the study.
First of all, I participated in several studies when I had my heart attack and the ones I hated and doubted the most were the ones where someone interviewed me about all the foods I ate. These sort of studies are nutritional surveys. People ask you what foods you ate in the last week, two weeks, month, and six months. They don’t do it by asking what you ate yesterday, measured in grams, then what you ate Monday, then Sunday, then Saturday, all the way back to six months ago. They also don’t give you a diary to fill out where you tell exactly what you ate. Instead they ask you if you can remember “how many times in the last week you ate chicken?” Then they repeat the question for beef, fish, fruits, candy, bread, eggs, cheese, milk, cream, and so on, which leaves out all the good stuff you might have eaten like avocadoes, celery, broccoli, nuts, spinach, and so on. Then they use this data to extrapolate where your calories come from, and analyze those results across all participants of the study to asses some sort of risk. It sounds good on paper, but this is the crappiest science I’ve ever heard of. I can’t remember exactly what I ate in the last two weeks. I ended up not remembering everything that I ate over the previous six months (who writes this sort of thing down?) and sort of said “yeah, I eat beef. I eat chicken. I eat cheese.” On one of the studies I made them copy the survey for me and the results I came up with were that when I tallied the servings of fruit, vegetables, chocolate, meat, and other things that I reported eating, I found that I consumed something like 8,600 calories a day, more than 80% of which was meat, cheese, and dairy. When I log precisely what I eat, my figures are substantially different. So, the dietary survey leaves out foods, especially important ones containing huge amounts of secret hidden trans fats like flour tortillas, cookies, biscuits, rolls, and doughnuts.
How can you trust a study where people report what they ate, unless you capture every ingredient eaten for 8 years (the length of this study) and its weight in grams, and then do an analysis? How accurate do you think their occasional nutritional questionnaires are? I know that Jennifer, the young woman who asked me the questions about nutrition, was scorching hot, and I didn’t want to admit to her that I’m addicted to Hostess Sno-Balls. But she didn’t ask about them, so there was no need. I estimate my survey answers were about 5% accurate, and I was trying to remember and do a good job.
So when you read that a study did a survey of what someone ate, be wary. I hate to be so suspicious of a study that’s so obviously correct in its conclusions, but this one proves absolutely nothing. Nice try though.