A new study shows that hi GI or low GI or the amounts of carbs don't matter, as long as the calories are low.



Read the full article here http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20070...than-food-type

I can't say that I am surprised.

That is what I always felt. Calories in v. calories out.

Makes sense to me. How I eat seems to matter for me, in terms of how hungry I am and whether I can stick to the diet, but the weight loss itself ultimately breaks down to calories.

This doesn't surprise me at all. A calorie is a calorie afterall.

The type of foods I eat though are important to me. If I eat lower GI foods, I tend to be less hungry and I tend not to have hypoglycemic episodes so that is a plus

Well, that's undoubtedly true if weight loss is your only goal. If good health and proper nutrition are important to you, however, the source of a calorie is undoubtedly important.

Right....but I still don't advocate the tootsie roll and coffee diet!
As BMM said, it's not JUST about weight loss. How you look and feel is just as important. I feel HORRIBLE eating high GI, processed foods no matter whether the caloriie level is the same or not. And I really believe for SOME people, it does matter. I never in my life was able to lose weight or maintain a loss until I gave up regular intake of high GI foods, no matter how calorie restricted.

Mel

Quote"
.....
April 9, 2007 -- If you're trying to lose weight, calories count more than the types of food in your diet, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-Tufts University study shows.

...."The present results suggest that a broad range of healthy diets can successfully promote weight loss," conclude Sai Krupa Das, PhD, and Susan B. Roberts, PhD, of the USDA's Human Nutrition Center on Aging at Tufts, and colleagues.
____________________

This is my problem with articles interpreting research findings "for the general public." Both of the above paragraphs summarize the results of the study, but the first paragraph (written by the journalist) could be used to support the snickers bar diet, while the second (which appears to be a direct quote from one of the researchers themselves) appears to reflect good common sense as most of us know it.

No doubt. Ask any woman with PCOS.

the opposite of a 'low gi' or 'low carb' diet isn't 'tootsi rolls and coffe'...

I think the implication is that in the realm of 'healthy, balanced' menus, the carb count doesn't matter as much as calories matter.

Totally makes sense.

All we really know from the research is that of the two diets compared, both worked equally well. That's it. We cannot generalize beyond the conditions tested in the study and don't know how any other diet would fare...

From my experience that's true, the calories are what is important, however, some foods (the usual suspects, pasta, bread, potatoes) are really REALLY easy for me to overeat -- and harder to moderate.

Especially around that TOM, sometimes I find it way easier to have no pasta than half a cup of it! There are definitely foods (like chips) that I can be totally indifferent to as long as I don't eat them -- but if I start eating them (expecially with cocktails) I can eat 10 servings EASY! Dunno if that is GI or just my own head (thinking of them as "red light" or "binge foods," but I figure if you're eating low calorie then the calories can't be empty calories or you don't have any room for the nutrition aspect of eating.

If you want to lose weight, but don't care at all about your health, then yes only calories are important. It's hardly smart, but you can't make people think clearly. It does annoy me though, that the "interpretation" of the results, is so far from what the reseach indicates.

IMO, there are plenty of studies on plenty of diets, and none of them have identified any one diet that was far superior than the others in rate of weight loss over an extended period of time.

Yes, I agree!

But let's say it was just calories that mattered (which was the generalized point of the article). If that was the case, then any "diet" of any kind of calories should 'work'. We could test that by, for instance, putting some people on a diet of ho-hos and see if it was as successful as the other diets. But they generally don't do that kind of comparison in research, at the very least for ethical reasons!!

So, I find the headline misleading ("Calories count more than food type"), because someone could read it and assume a diet of ho-hos was a go, and that isn't necessarily true at all!