There's a thread about this article in the Weight Loss News/Current Events section and a rather interesting discussion you might want to read.

Thank you Christine!

Great article! Soooo true...Eating one apple is so much better than eating three french fries, even if the three french fries have less calories.

It is only "better" in that it "may" fill you up more (not necessarily, though, since the issue of satisfaction comes into play, and an apple will not satisfy me if I want a French fry) and it contains more vitamins. I don't really buy the idea of "good" foods and "bad" foods in terms of weight loss. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I think that mentality is one reason that many in our society have a skewed perception about food. For years, if I ate food like cheesecake, cookies, etc., I did so with guilt---as if I was getting away with something. That mentality only caused me to be a closet eater, which led to more weight gain. Don't get me wrong: I DO care what I put into my body, and I think it DOES affect health. But I'm talking about weight loss only now. I think about the traditional French way of eating that emphasized delicious, high fat foods but small portions. It worked for them for years (although now that they're more Americanized, that country's population is dealing with a weight problem, too).

The theory of good food vs. bad food has been disproven time and time again (most recently with the nutrition professor who ate Twinkies for a month and lost a substantial amount of weight because he calorie counted). I would need to see more than just that one study to be convinced that calories don't matter as much to weight loss as the type of food one eats. Most evidence I've read, my own experiences, and the experiences of everyone I know contradict this.

Very fascinating, though, for those of us who know about healthy eating (which is most of us here - or we wouldn't be here), probably not much of this was really all that surprising. I didn't see them mention beans/legume, but I'm guessing it's in the category of whole grains.

The Nurse's Study is something I've heard of before. I think that one of the doctors of the study (Walter Willett, I think his name is) published several books about it. They're not diet books per se, but they do redefine the food pyramid based on the study's findings and give suggestions on how to live a healthier life (including exercise, drinking water, etc, so it's not just focused on food).

It's interesting to me to read about the fact that the study found that fat not only didn't make the participants gain weight, but helped them to lose weight (I'm talking good fats here, of course). For the past few years, I've been reading up a lot on very low fat vegan diets (like McDougall) and the readings have totally demonized fats (sort of like the low carb books demonized all carbs). I've recently gone back to eating some good fats (mainly because the bottoms of my feet are so dry and cracked and peeling, it's become painful for me to walk), replacing the carbs I had with them (so I'm not eating more calories, just a different balance of them). So far I'm feeling pretty good with it.

Tam

Good fat is on my menu everyday--for the same reasons. We need fat in our diet to process other foods. I can tell whenever I am accidentally served fat free salad dressing--I have serious issues digesting and a day later? (TMI) Terrible results. The French get it right when they eat fat w/veggies & fruit!

I totally agree with this. Nutrition matters and all, but quantity is a lot more important as far as weight loss is concerned. Regarding the original article, I think it makes the mistake of mixing up correlation and causation. Saying that people who ate french fries gained weight doesn't mean necessarily that the french fries MADE them gain weight. Maybe the sort of person who eats french fries is the sort of person who eats a LOT of everything, and that's why they gained weight, not because the fries were inherently detrimental. There was nothing in the study that said anything about the reasons - just the sort of activities that generally went together.

Yes! I realize that it is very difficult to actually prove causation. However, if enough evidence is offered, one can infer causation. Perhaps the article didn't provide enough details, but I didn't see enough evidence (or any evidence, for that matter) to prove a cause-effect relationship.