Responding to a criticism of the former with the latter is in fact moving goalposts.
And you still refuse to understand that those two things are fundamentally connected.
Grains are not healthy in large part precisely because they provide calories but zero necessary nutrients. It is not the only reason, but it is the main one. I am not "moving goalposts", I am trying to make you understand a complex problem which
you are trying to reduce to simple issues.
Do I have to bring out a picture book for you to understand that?
You keep making these rather dramatic and absolute claims, then hide behind citations several steps removed from them that thereby fail to support the point you have actually made. Show this, not abstracts stating trend lines vaguely in the same direction.
I cannot "show" that because it is personal experience. You on the other hand have shown absolutely nothing so far, you just keep repeating "but it cannot be so".
French fries differ from unprocessed potatoes in typically adding large amounts of fat in the frying, directly contradicting your underlying point that carbs are by far the worst calorie source. This is five times the effect, with the data on potatoes alone having a lower bound of a flat line at 1.0, or in other words no effect at all.
You either have not read the sentence you have quoted, or are flat out lying.
I will assume the former, so let me help you understand:
This meta-analysis support a significant positive association between high potatoes consumption and risk of T2D, especially the consumption of French fries.
...significant positive association between high potatoes consumption and risk of T2D, especially the consumption of French fries.
To help:
"significant positive association" - it means that there is in fact a link between X and Y
"between high potatoes consumption and risk of T2D" - link in question is one between high consumption of potatoes and significantly increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes
"especially" - even more so than; to a greater extent than other things being noted; it is a word used to single out one thing above others sharing the same characteristic
"the consumption of French Fries" - thing being singled out are the French Fries
In other words: high consumption of potatoes significantly increases risk of Type 2 diabetes, and consumption of French Fries is far worse than consumption of other types of potatoes.
Just because French Fries are
exceptionally bad doesn't mean that potatoes are
not bad. In other words, your quote actually supports
my point about carbs being bad. As for your point about fat in the French Fries, see my response to the quote below:
The thing that gives a solid counter-point is
this citation contradicting my assumption that starches are slow uptake, which
further undermines the value of the study you cited to the points you've made by noting a higher glycemic index, the value used for the turnaround to blood sugar, for boiled potatoes than french fries. Together, the two meta-analyses imply that
more diabetes occurrences came from the item with
less effect on blood sugar. Do tell how that works with your position revolving around abrupt blood sugar impact.
Additional absurdities include ice cream and soda having lower glycemic index values than most grains (though not corn, and barley is
very far down), and the reference pure glucose not having the 100 the index is
defined by but instead 103 plus or minus 3, meaning from 100 to 106. As well as fructose, of corn syrup infamy, being down at
15.
Yeah, because things are more complex than that. Glycemic index
alone is not of much use,
as you will have understood had you bothered to actually read what I have written throughout the thread. What also matters is nutrients that food provides, how satiating food is, as well as the portion size. Glycemic load is far better indication than glycemic index:
Although even it is not perfect, as you also need to consider satiety signals and so on. As I pointed out previously: grains are bad not just because of sugar, but because they provide no nutrients. And entire purpose of food is to provide nutrients to body, so if you don't have nutrients, you will be feeling hungry irrelevant of the glycemic load.
But if glycemic load is high you will be feeling hungry irrelevant of the nutrients as well. So you need to consider both.
Boiled potatoes and french fries are both bad because both raise blood sugar and are not very satiating - but French fries are
far worse than boiled potatoes because they had been fried in seed oils (only French Fries not necessarily fried in seed oils are ones you fry at home). And frying in seed oils has several mutually-reinforcing debilitating effects:
- Turns out that when you eat fat and carbs together, effect on organism is far worse than if you had eaten each of them separately because body does not distinguish very well - so when carbs kick off the insulin response, oil gets grabbed and stored alongside the carbs.
- Seed oils are inflammatory, and especially so when exposed to high temperatures. This means that not only do they bring in a load of carbs together with fat (meaning that body cannot handle said carbs as fat- and carb- pathways are different) but they also damage the organism at the same time. And inflammation is one of major causes of obesity (and then obesity causes further inflammation, and so on ad nauseum).
- Seed oils are in fact worse than sugar when it comes to obesity. But thing is, many of the factors that make seed oils so bad (linoleic acid specifically) are already present in the grains - so grain-based diet still has some and perhaps all of the results of eating seed oils.
- Oh, and about high temperatures? Production of seed oils involves exposing seeds to high temperatures, which means that your sunflower oil comes packaged already pre-oxidized. And if you fry something in it, that is already second-stage oxidization - compare to butter and olive oil which are 1) more resistant to heat damage and 2) not oxidized even before they had been bought.
- Then you have the fact that french fries are carbs. Yeah, so are potatoes. But difference is in preparation temperature. Potatoes are cooked, which is a temperature of 100-odd degrees Celsius (water won't get much warmer than that as it will evaporate). But french fries are fried, which is a temperature of 200 - 250 degrees Celsius. And this leads to formation of acrylamide, which is toxic and cancerogenic.
- Lastly, seed oils in fact stimulate hunger in a manner similar to what sugar and carbohydrates do. This is the exact opposite of the behavior of the, say, olive oils or animal fats, both of which are highly satiating.
You need to understand that everything we are talking about here
relates to each other. Nothing is black and white: food that may appear good based solely on blood sugar response can still be very bad if it doesn't fulfill other factors (primarily, nutrient availability), and the opposite.
That is why I had been, as you say, "moving goalposts". Assuming you are actually interested in honest debate, it would appear that you have a serious case of tunnel vision. But when it comes to diet, "A" is never "just A"; there is always a range of factors to consider. And frankly, forum debate is a very bad format for discussing such a complex topic. I know my writing can be scattered, but do try to follow, will you?
As for grains and wheat in particular? They check all the "bad" boxes. High in carbohydrates? Low in actual nutrients? Pro-inflammatory? Yeah, they've got
all the dietary sins covered.
Additional absurdities include ice cream and soda having lower glycemic index values than most grains (though not corn, and barley is very far down), and the reference pure glucose not having the 100 the index is defined by but instead 103 plus or minus 3, meaning from 100 to 106. As well as fructose, of corn syrup infamy, being down at 15.
See above. Ice cream and "soda" both have moderately to very high glycemic load.
Antinutrients are in fact irrelevant to the claim that carbohydrates themselves are poison. The foods being typically nutrient-poor is in fact irrelevant to the same claim. Your claim is "the substance class is actively bad", your evidence is "not in good enough foods", these are not logically equivalent positions as you have been insisting I treat them as.
They are not, because carbohydrate-rich foods are typically very rich in antinutrients as well. We are discussing food here, not chemistry. If I talk about "carbohydrates", that generally means "carbohydrate
foods", except where specifically (or through context) noted otherwise. And if carbs make you absorb antinutrients at a higher rate than you would otherwise, can you really claim carbs themselves are not poisonous?
Speaking if carbotoxicity, read this: