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There's a common assumption here that because some source is a "study", presumably from a professional journal, then what the author(s) conclude from the study is reliable. Nothing could be further from the truth. The medical literature relating to the area of diet & health is an especially fine example of poorly done, designed, or interpreted studies reaching publication. There is also a long history of researchers becoming obsessed with a particular hypothesis, who then become unable to objectively consider alternative explanations, no matter the quality of data supporting the alternatives. It's not an easy read for many, but consider picking up a copy of Good Calories, Bad Calories. It gives a painstakingly thorough rundown of how the conventional view of what we think we know (the conventional view) about diet and health came to be. It's definitely not a story of relentlessly good science rising to the top--quite the opposite.
If you search that title at amazon, you should also see a number of related books also highly worth reading, many more oriented to the lay reader. There are also more focussed works zeroing in on the understanding of cholesterol, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc, that might be of particular interest.
Another book to consider is Denise Minger's Death by Food Pyrimid. Minger, by the way, is a former vegan forced out of that way of eating by resultant health problems.
Bottom line: No, the current body of data do not support the idea that red meat, or lots of meat in general, is bad for you.
No, saturated fats (primarily animal in origin) are not shown in reliable data to be harmful, but rather appear to be either neutral or beneficial.
No, dietary cholesterol is not harmful. Cholesterol is essential to life and good health, but cholesterol you consume is mostly irrelevant to cholesterol levels as measured in serum.
No, the best data have never shown plant fibers to be essential to health, nor even vegetable intake. In some (many?) people, fiber, and especially insoluble fiber as found in grain husks, actually causes chronic constipation--this happens to me.
There's so much more, but it requires some time and effort to find books such as those, give them a fair reading, and it sure doesn't hurt to look into the primary literature as well. You can then begin to get some idea of what goes into a well-designed and interpreted study, and what sorts of things constitute flaws in studies that render them unreliable for drawing conclusions.
Good Calories, Bad Calories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000UZNSC2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apan_NZEW09W7NXD0Y6MBV0JZ
You aren't being insulted. You are being called factual descriptor as ignorant.
ig·no·rant [ˈiɡnərənt] ADJECTIVE lacking knowledge
This book/author changed things for me.
>"The present study showed that reducing dietary carbohydrate energy content from 55 to 30 %, while iso-energetically increasing fat and protein contents, significantly reduced postprandial glucose excursion."
> Looking up every word in that sentence would probably be too arduous,...
You are asking for help with "deep diving", but parsing that one sentence is a bit much? Really, there's nothing much to it other than plainly descriptive science-speak. Translation: reducing carbohydrate content and replacing it with the same ("iso") calorie content of protein & fat reduced blood sugar increase after the meal ("postprandial"). A few moments googling would clear up word definitions. Good science writing is both concise and clearly descriptive. Part of your deep diving is necessarily going to require making an effort to understand some of the terminology specific to whatever science discipline you want to read into. If you're reasonably literate, then most of the time you can figure out a sentence, such as the one you quoted, just by reading it carefully.
If you want to get some idea about interpreting a study, or figuring out its design or interpretation quality, you might find it helpful to start reading through blog posts such as those of Michael R. Eades, M.D. and Tom Naughton (among many others now). Be sure to explore the archived posts. Back when I was actively following several blogs those two would often dissect studies parroting some aspect of the mainstream advice relative to diet & health.
If you want to understand the historical basis of mainstream, conventional dietary recommendations, then Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories and Nina Teicholz's The Big Fat Surprise are two essential additions to your library. The first is more demanding reading, but excellent; the second more oriented toward lay readers.
Fat and protein.
Go to the store and buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Gary-Taubes-ebook/dp/B000UZNSC2
There may be a different one for the UK market.
I'm currently reading this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Science-Carbohydrate-Living-ebook/dp/B005CVV2AE/ref=pd_sim_351_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1364FCDWECVMM01T7KF3
My girlfriend just lost 35 pounds on the diet, and I have a six pack too. It works, and all you do is watch the types of energy you eat. Once you understand the science and why we get fat, you will change everything.
Good luck.
That clinicians often observe overweight individuals who eat sparingly goes all the way back to the 19th century. This book gives a good overview of the relevant observations.
As for the opposite, thin people who gorge themselves and put on little or no weight, one need only look at the Vermond Prison experiments in 1976. Subjects would eat up to 10,000 calories a day and those that were naturally thin would put on less weight than anticipate, and they would lose the weight much more quickly once the overeating stopped.
You're not wrong saying you can't get more energy than you start with. You are wrong in assuming this has anything to do with the loss of adipose tissue in the body. A starving person will lose weight as his body breaks down fat a muscle for energy. The error your making is assuming that calories in and out are independent variables and can be controlled by an individual at will.
Sort of. In short, eating the wrong type of calories throws the hormonal balance of the body out of whack, causing the body to store too much body fat.
Eating 200 calories worth of steak and salad, for example: No problem. Having 200 calories of Mountain Dew: Big problem.
Check out Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.
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