My objection to both David Ludwig and Gary Taubes in this conversation here, is that they hem and haw and dip and dodge around the whole subject of carbohydrates, grains, populations like Japan which have processed grains as their staple, and basically don’t really reach any scientific conclusion at all.
Yet they sell books which sound at first like they are very conclusive and definitive. But they are clearly not. They cherry pick results. And they don’t know what’s going any more than anybody else does.
Is added sugar bad? Probably so. Almost certainly so. But are carbohydrates themselves bad? There doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that. And in their conversation they don’t seem to really know either.
From May to September I lost 40 pounds on Starch Solution, and even though I was eating mostly starches and carbohydrates and no animal fat at all, my HbA1c blood sugar dropped from 8.6 to 6.1. And my appetite was largely controlled.
When I tried David Ludwig’s “Always Hungry?” plan over several months, I gained weight and my blood sugar did not drop at all. And my appetite was never controlled.
Unfortunately since September, hunger returned, and I’ve regained 30 of the 40 pounds I lost on Starch Solution. While it controlled my hunger at first, gradually the starches started triggering more hunger urges. So in that respect it does seem that the high glycemic carbs can be hunger triggers. Even if not at first, it starts happening eventually.
Or maybe it’s just a rebound effect, which seems to occur in over 80% of people who lose weight.
Nobody seems to know. And I don’t think Taubes and Ludwig seem to know in this conversation either.