# www.radianthealth.org
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/www-radianthealth-org/56061
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 27, 2001, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/www-radianthealth-org/56061 "2001-02-27T15:26:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@DataMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataMike)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2001, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/www-radianthealth-org/56061/1 "2001-02-27T15:26:33Z")
Hi everyone,
My friend and I have been discussing the nutrition advice posted on [http://www.radianthealth.org](http://www.radianthealth.org).
My friend believes that they may be onto something as his grandparents diet was similar to that on the site, and they both lived to be over 100. I, however, maintain that the advice is nothing but the latest diet scam appealing to those trying to rationalize eating high fat diets.
I particularly have a problem with the following line:
“The body will quickly adapt to a minimized carbohydrate diet and begin to manufacture the glucose it needs from the protein you eat and your own stored body fat.”
Is this even possible?
Also:
“your body can’t make more body fat from protein like steak and cheese because these foods contain little sugar (carbohydrates)”
I believe this to be a gross misrepresentation. Kinda like saying “your body needs sugars (carbohydrates) to produce fat, so don’t eat any sugars”.
Thanks everyone!
Michael
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### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2001, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/www-radianthealth-org/56061/2 "2001-02-27T16:22:16Z")
Eh, Mike, your link gives me a “Page Not Found”.
1. If this is the “high protein” diet, it’s nothing new. Do a Google search. [http://www.google.com](http://www.google.com)
Yes, your body can derive energy from ingested protein and stored fat, it doesn’t NEED carbs and sugars to get energy and keep you on your feet. It’s just easier for your body. Also, if your body is earmarking all the ingested protein for energy needs, it’s not using any of it for tissue building and repair.
1. Your body CAN make fat and store it from a high-protein, low-carb diet. Anytime your caloric intake is greater than your energy needs, your body converts the excess to fat. However, as I said, usually on a high-protein low-carb diet your body is using virtually all of the protein-derived calories just to keep you walking around. So there usually isn’t any left over for fat deposit.
You’d have to be eating a humongous amount of protein every day to get fat on it, but it’s perfectly possible. Look at the diet of previous centuries. In the 18th and 19th centuries, middle and upper-class people ate meals that were virtually all protein, hardly any carbs (usually a little bread) and no fruits or veg at all. And yes, there were fat people in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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### Author:  [@DataMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataMike)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2001, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/www-radianthealth-org/56061/3 "2001-02-27T16:28:21Z")
The address is correct [http://www.radianthealth.org](http://www.radianthealth.org) it’s just that I put a period after it and the period got added to the URL.
Thanks!
Michael
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### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2001, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/www-radianthealth-org/56061/4 "2001-02-27T17:19:42Z")
Well, okay, I just spent some time browsing their website. To answer the question your OP didn’t ask, “Yeah, IMO this is just another diet scam.”
The dead giveaway? You have to order the book and use their “secret herbal essence” to get results.
The click-through for the “science” of this, has no science, just more advertising copy. The click-through for “nutritional information” has no nutritional information", just a plug for the book and Mike’s quote.
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> your body can’t make more body fat from protein like steak and cheese because these foods contain little sugar (carbohydrates).
And this perfectly fascinating illogical little squib.
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> Haven’t you wondered why you haven’t been able to lose weight and feel healthy on a high-carbohydrate diet? As Stryer’s Biochemistry, 4th edition, the “gold standard” of medical biochemistry textbooks, says, adipose (fat) cells need sugar (glucose) for the synthesis of tricylglycerols (excess body fat). Translated to everyday language, it means creation of extra body fat REQUIRES sugar (carbohydrates).
Um–huh?? Someone else explicate this fallacy, I’m getting a headache. :rolleyes:
Here’s the click-through for “cholesterol”.
[http://www.radianthealth.org/high\_cholesterol\_info.html](http://www.radianthealth.org/high_cholesterol_info.html)
It’s a fascinating jumble of the usual snake oil salesman’s hype, facts, factoids, and outright lies.
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> For more than 30 years, it’s been known that dietary cholesterol doesn’t significantly influence the body’s blood cholesterol.
Um–huh?? We knew this back in 1970?
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> Your own body churns out 3-4,000 milligrams of cholesterol each day no matter how much or how little cholesterol you eat
I don’t have time to check this–is it true? I know the body produces cholesterol, but do their numbers check out?
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> Cholesterol is essential in our body chemistry.
Undoubtedly true.
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> In fact, without a lot of it, we would quickly die.
Well, it’s true that you need cholesterol, but–“a lot of it”? I doubt that.
And then they finish up with the usual, “Hey, look at the Eskimos…”
And as if all this isn’t insulting enough, their much-ballyhooed “the program that’s based on Nobel Prize-winning science, not opinion!” turns out to be nothing but irrelevant quotes from Nobel prize-winning scientists, like this from the cholesterol page.
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> Nobel Prize-winning scientist Richard Feynman once said that, if scientists have a theory, they “must put down all the facts that disagree with it as well as those that agree with it.”
What in the world does that have to do with weight loss? Answer–nothing.
Sheesh. :rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@Akatsukami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akatsukami)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2001, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/www-radianthealth-org/56061/5 "2001-02-27T17:53:38Z")
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> > [@](#):
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> > **For more than 30 years, it’s been known that dietary cholesterol doesn’t significantly influence the body’s blood cholesterol.**
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> Um–huh?? We knew this back in 1970?
Yes, I’ve read it in textbooks of that vintage.
Note that “known” is not taken to be equivalent to “was an element of popular culture” here.
And, of course, we should differentiate here (if not on bottles of cooking oil) between cholesterol, cholesterol precursors, and dietary influences on the body’s _need_ for (and production of) cholesterol.
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> > \*\*
> > Your own body churns out 3-4,000 milligrams of cholesterol each day no matter how much or how little cholesterol you eat\*\*
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> I don’t have time to check this–is it true? I know the body produces cholesterol, but do their numbers check out?
A [gross overestimate](http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/mom/cholesterol/default.html). A gram (and, of course, 1 gram=1,000 milligrams) is more like it.
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> > **In fact, without a lot of it, we would quickly die.**
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> Well, it’s true that you need cholesterol, but–“a lot of it”? I doubt that.
Oh, yes. So much, in fact, that your body is not willing to trust your diet (you might turn vegan or do something else stupid :rolleyes: ), but manufactures it itself.