What She Says

Julia Belluz, Senior health correspondent and evidence enthusiast, wrote an article on Vox with the title “The keto diet, explained” except that nothing she wrote really explains anything right about the keto diet.

While I am not planning to write a full explanation here about the ketogenic diet (I am working on a book about that), I will set a few points she suggests straight.

• She says: ketosis is the same as the Atkins diet.
  • The ketogenic diet is not the same as the Atkins diet. It never was and never will be. That is why one is called the Atkins Diet and the other the Ketogenic Diet. The biggest difference is in the amount of protein consumed. Atkins: lot; Ketogenic: minimal.
• She says the ketogenic diet is a Silicon Valley obsession
  • The ketogenic diet is not a Silicon Valley obsession. This is one advancement for the better that Silicon Valley is a late-comer to and has absolutely nothing to do with!
• She says the ketogenic diet has been used for epilepsy for over a century
  • The ketogenic diet has been used for epilepsy for since 400 BC , not a century.
  • George F. Cahill, Jr. spent years evaluating the ketogenic diet, so if you want to really learn about it, read some of his work here and here
  • There is a graph in Cahill’s paper that shows that all babies are in ketosis at birth and remain so all through nursing, and then come in and out (metabolic flexibility) all through age 10, when they come and go in and out of ketosis dependent upon when and what they eat. Here is that graph, which is found in the second paper above titled “Fuel Metabolism in Starvation” that I copy-paste here for educational purposes:

Ketosis from birth to adult

So as you can see, ketosis is nothing new–it has been with us through all of human history. It may be new to Ms. Belluz, but it certainly is not new to humanity. In fact, a nursing mother’s milk at the start is extremely ketogenic, high fat low carbs and low protein. As the baby develops and the mother’s milk matures, it reaches 55.44% fat, 38.78% carbs, and 5.79% protein–these are percentages from calorie from the USDA nutritional table here. If that baby were to eat ~1000 Calories a day, she would consume ~62 gr fat, 14.5 gr protein and ~97 gr carbs. This person, on mom’s latest mature milk is on a LCHF (Low Carbs High Fat) diet!

• • She says that people in ketosis use supplements and butter in their coffee.
    • True ketosis doesn’t need ketone supplements or butter in coffee. Real ketosis is a metabolic change from the glucose-burning metabolism to a fat-burning one. Those who take supplements or eat coconut or MCT oils are capable to show ketone bodies in their urine or blood but by no means are they in ketosis. Putting butter into coffee is by no means necessary unless someone likes the taste. The goal is not to eat weird things but to get the body to burn its own fat. While at the start people need to eat more fat in order to start the fire so to speak, once they are in ketosis and solidly fat adapted, not eating fat at all will not take them out of ketosis–this is what intermittent fasting is all about. Nothing is eaten and body fat is used for energy.
  • She says people eat a slice or two of bread equivalent per day in carbs
    • In reality, people eat as little as zero to as much as 50 grams of carbs–it is very specific to the person. And 2 slices of bread can be more like 80+ carb grams… so no.. not keto at all
  • She says that people burn extra calories AND fat
    • Actually people never burn calories. They can only burn macornutrients, of which we have 3: carbs, fat, and protein. In keto the metabolic process is fat-burning but the body burns carbs as well as protein. The body doesn’t burn calories. We don’t eat calories. Calorie is a unit of measure and not food.
  • She says that the keto diets don’t help people lose extra weight on the long run
    • She obviously has not been part of any organization that would prescribe the ketogenic diet for weight loss, nor has she met those who have lost weight years ago and are still thin (and are still on the ketogenic diet because it is a great diet). She brings up one extremely faulty research paper as her proof that such is the case. Nope. That is not the case at all.
  • At the end she has a table of what a low-carb diet looks like versus baseline (SAD–Standard American Diet)
    

    Nutrition Comparison by Javier Zarracina/Vox

    • The biggest mistake with the table is that people on the ketogenic diet don’t snack and usually only eat once or at most twice a day. In addition, very few people on keto eat processed foods like Kielbasa

Conclusion

I have not found a single element of correct information in her article. If you wish to start the ketogenic diet for whatever reason, the one article to not consult for sure is the one on Vox. Seek medical support for any nutritional changes! If you take medicines, you may not be able to start the ketogenic diet!

Feel free to contact me for more information.

Comments are welcomed and moderated for appropriate content.

Angela