At some point we will know the mechanics behind all this, but at the moment it's just an exercise arguing about the causes when every day there is new evidence that says a LCHF diet helps prevent and/or relieve many of the health problems we're all facing.
Robb Wolf commented on a recent podcast during which he interview Dr. David Perlmutter MD, author of Grain Brain. Perlmutter says if we dramatically reduced carbohydrate intake we will reduce greatly the risks of dementia, ADHD, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression, etc.
Wolf said,
"...there will be people who will get wrapped around the axle of what we’re describing is the mechanism here. You know, is it just carbs, is it just insulin spiking or is it hyper-palatable foods that cause people to over consume total calories and then that leads into like some mitochondrial dysfunction? But at the end of the day, I think the thing that people really need to understand and this is where I’ve tried to keep a foot and I guess in both camps, both looking at things from a calorie based standpoint and also from a hormonal based standpoint, is when we start seeing things head south. When see that A1c head in an unfavorable direction when fructosamine starts increasing, when we see systemic inflammatory factors, when we start seeing you know, even the very, very early beginnings of cognitive decline then regardless of what the mechanism of causation is, our fix is a low carb diet."
My personal guidance on eating is to try and eat as if the wonders of civilization did not exist. If I suddenly found myself in a world without stores, machinery, fertilizer, etc. - how would I eat? The answer is I would eat lots of greens, vegetable, fruits, nuts when they were in season locally, and meat and fish as I could catch it. No grains. And that means no pizza, no bread, no cookies, no soda, no pasta etc. The modern diet is what is making everyone so sick. I don't know why, and can only speculate or report what others claim are the mechanics behind the problem. But it is the modern diet full of grains, carbs, sugars, etc., and so I don't eat that stuff anymore (Okay, about once a month I eat pizza or hamburger and drink a couple of beers.)
Argue the science all you want, but I think that's a fool's quest. My dinner companion this evening was a lovely young woman who is a researcher in a top medical school who is backing away from her PhD and getting out of science and academia. Why? In her words, "Science in this county is garbage. Politics, money and incompetence have ruined it. I don't want to have anything to do with it."
