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This is something I’ve been pondering for a while.
You’d think Santa would be portrayed as thin and muscular since he has to run around on every roof top in the world, climb down and up millions of chimneys carrying heavy sacks of stuff, all accomplished in under 24 hours.
What Santa must achieve every year is a physical fitness feat that has no equal.
So, given Santa’s feats of aerobic and anaerobic prowess, why is jolly St. Nick portrayed as a porker? I have my ideas…
Way back when, everyone knew that carbs made you fat. Grandma knew it, doctors knew it, the whole world knew it. If you were packing on the LBS, you’d skip the strudel, nix the nog and avoid every other desert imaginable. They don’t call it a beer belly for nuthin’.
Think of how high Santa’s blood sugar and insulin levels must be after eating, I don’t know, 77 million cookies and 77 million glasses of milk (give or take a few million). And these days well-meaning moms and dads are probably serving Santa skim milk and Snackwells upping the sugar ante to levels that would put Hostess to shame.
We know obesity can be deadly, or should I say, the health complications that usually come along with obesity can be deadly and debilitating. So if we really love Santa, I propose we swap the evening milk and cookies we serve to him on Christmas Eve for steak and salad. Or maybe a little homemade jerky. After all, Santa needs his protein.
And if St. Nick gets any fatter, no one is going to get any presents even if they have been good little boys and girls!
Just sayin’…
I've been involved in exercise ever since I became a member of The Charles Atlas Club when I was 10 years old. In 1998, I founded and established Serious Strength on the Upper West Side of NYC. My clients include kids, seniors (and everyone in between), top CEOs, celebrities, bestselling authors, journalists and TV personalities.
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Gary Taubes: Why We Get Fat
Michael & MaryDan Eades M.D.: Protein Power Lifeplan
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Ha, Ha Fred!! How come people do not know anymore that carbs make you fat?? Also, there seems to be a “milk is bad” belief in the low carb community. What about raw milk? It’s a horse of a different color, so to speak. It is the only kind we drink. Thanks.
Probably a deeper question is why happy = fat. Think of the Buddha statues in China also. But as for Santa, I think it was all the free Coca Cola he got from taking part in their advertising program.
One word: Magic!
Maybe he tried to pack on “brown fat” to keep him warm while flying in his sleigh all over the world. Probably not a heater on that thing, plus the windchill and elevation… BRRRR!
LOL!
I hope everyone has a magical Holiday season!
In health,
Brandon Schultz, D.C.
Fred,
Stop with your anticarb rant, and pick up a nutrition book, not a pseudo-nutrition book based on Eades or Taubes but a legitmate nutritionbook from the likes of Alan Aragon or Nacny Clark. Nowhere in this book will say that carbs make a person put on fat. It is excessess calories. If you don’t understand this, then slap yourself silly until you do.
Tony
“Fred,
Stop with your anticarb rant, and pick up a nutrition book, not a pseudo-nutrition book based on Eades or Taubes but a legitmate nutritionbook from the likes of Alan Aragon or Nacny Clark.”
First of all I’m not anticarb. Vegetables are fine and so is seasonal fruit. I’m pro normal blood glucose and anti-grains for reasons I’ve discussed in other posts.
Alan Aragon has a good deal of valid things to say but for whatever reason doesn’t seem to comprehend the role of carbohydrates/insulin in fat storage/loss. He’s still stuck in the calories in/out paradigm. And if you think he knows more about nutrition than Dr. Eades, think again. I’d love to see that debate.
I don’t know Nancy Clark. A quick glance at her website reveals little.
“Nowhere in this book will say that carbs make a person put on fat. It is excessess calories. If you don’t understand this, then slap yourself silly until you do.”
What book are you referring to? Slapping myself silly will not change the fact that our bodies do not have calorie receptors. Different nutrients affect our bodies differently.
If you took two identical twins and fed them both the same total calories BUT one purely fat meat for a year and the other purely carbohydrates for a year, do you think they’d both react and look exactly the same?
Slap yourself silly if you think so.
Fred,
You are not being fair. First of all you stooped as low as one can get when you put down Santa. Then you keep debating Dr. Eades, a disciple and imitator of the late Dr. Atkins really offers nothing original. If you would just stop cherry picking studies which may offer support to the low cardb hypothesis you may be able to gather a larger audience. Why can’t you just be moderate and leave it at that without the need to demonize entire food groups. I have known no one who could actually sustain a low carb diet long term. Eventually they went back to their old ways or picked up moderate methods in maintainng their loss.
BTW, Nancy Clark is a world class sports nutritisonist and best selling author. She may not have an internet platform but her name is so well known that she doesn’t need a blog to sell herself or put down iconic childhood characters like Santa. I bet yu Alan Aragon knows Nancy Clark, maybe personally. And a debate between Aragon and Eades would be futile with no winners in the end because it is all just one big game.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
Tony
“You are not being fair. First of all you stooped as low as one can get when you put down Santa.”
Um, OK. I’ll apologize for next year. I got nice gifts this year so apparently he wasn’t that mad at me.
“Then you keep debating Dr. Eades, a disciple and imitator of the late Dr. Atkins really offers nothing original.”
Nothing? Really? Well, If you would actually read Atkins and Drs. Eades work you’d see some very specific differences in their approaches.
Aside from this, let’s not forget the concept of “Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants,” meaning, “One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past.” Google it. Learn a bit more about philosophy before you spout nonsense.
“If you would just stop cherry picking studies which may offer support to the low cardb hypothesis you may be able to gather a larger audience.”
Do you mean to say, would I stop citing valid studies that support a low carb approach to health? Why would I do that? The studies I cite are valid studies. Do me a small favor, show me a study, just one, that compares low carb to your “moderate” diet and finds in favor of the “moderate” approach.
“Why can’t you just be moderate and leave it at that without the need to demonize entire food groups.”
Sounds like you own stock in Monsanto or Frito-Lay/Pepsico. But to answer your question, I prefer to present the facts. And, once again, your anger is getting in the way of intellect. I am not demonizing a food group as I’ve already stated that most vegetables and fruits are healthful. Read that again before you create another strawman.
“I have known no one who could actually sustain a low carb diet long term. Eventually they went back to their old ways or picked up moderate methods in maintainng their loss.”
Even if were true that ALL low carbers revert back to eating addictive sugary foods, your point is what? Lot’s of ex-smokers go back to smoking. Many ex-drug addicts go back to using. Swirl this concept around in your mind for a while to aerate it. After a time, the full bodied logic of it should help you see that, true or not, your statement is entirely beside the point.
BTW, Nancy Clark is a world class sports nutritisonist and best selling author. She may not have an internet platform but her name is so well known that she doesn’t need a blog to sell herself or put down iconic childhood characters like Santa. I bet yu Alan Aragon knows Nancy Clark, maybe personally. And a debate between Aragon and Eades would be futile with no winners in the end because it is all just one big game.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
Nacny Clark ?!?
Amazingly enough she proudly apears on a Wheaties cereal box, and showcases it on her home page …
Well there you have it Tom. She’s a nutritional hack.
“BTW, Nancy Clark is a world class sports nutritisonist and best selling author.”
So what?
“She may not have an internet platform but her name is so well known that she doesn’t need a blog to sell herself or put down iconic childhood characters like Santa.”
I’m really holding in my laughter here.
“I bet yu Alan Aragon knows Nancy Clark, maybe personally. And a debate between Aragon and Eades would be futile with no winners in the end because it is all just one big game.”
If it is as you say all one big game, then why do you put such stock in Aragon and Clark?
“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”
Wake up to what specifically? Be a bit more cogent.
Lets start with Santa. In all probability,….The Character was created as fat during a period in history when only the wealthy could afford enough to eat to be be fat. Carb issues aside, both historically, and currently in Non-first world countries, people who rarely get enough to eat, don’t get fat until their bodies go into protein deprivation. Even then, they don’t accumulate body fat, they just get fluid bloat, giving them distended abdomens.
Next, let’s separate health vs weight loss. Low carb diets have indeed shown to be better in improving indicators of health in blood chemistry and metabolic markers, in both overweight and obese populations. The effects are even more pronounced in populations that are either T2 or insulin resistant.
Weight loss vs fat loss gets a bit more tricky. A scale is not necessarily the best way to measure success/results . Under tightly controlled lab conditions, using fat mass loss as a measure, when protein is held constant, the results tend to show that fat loss is a results of caloric balance. In real life however, cutting carbs also leads to eating more protein, at least most of the time. Studies do show that increasing protein and fat while cutting carbs will lead to greater fat loss.
Kevin – Calories don’t really exist. The body doesn’t recognize calories. It recognized macronutrients. Different macronutrient ratios affect how the body secretes hormones.
Most studies comparing low carb to low fat with protein held constant also lower the carb intake for the low fat groups from baseline. So virtually all low fat arms in research studies are also lowered carb.
Calories don’t really exist, like kilograms don’t really exist, but what they measure does exist.
Fred, I mostly come here to see your examples of illogical and deceptive argument.
Illogical and deceptive arguments regarding what? Please be specific.
And who are you Alfie? It’s polite and gentlemanly to let an opponent know his adversaries particulars.
Fred, I just showed one. “Calories don’t exist” is as silly as saying “kilos don’t exist.” Then how do you measure the weight lost? Or lifted? (Pounds, I know, I know…)
What I meant was, to your body, calories are not “real.” The body doesn’t have calorie receptors. A calorie, or rather, a large calorie, approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. But this has nothing at all to do with what happens to food when it enters your body.
Again, you’re stretching to make a silly point. Kilos aren’t real, but the weight one lifts is, we just measure it with the made up denominations of kilos (or pounds). So what does this mean? Are you saying calories consumed have NO impact on your body – ever?
I think your low carb stance is generally a good orientation, but you arguments get silly, and sometimes worse.
Well Alfie, I can’t help it if you don’t understand the gist of the idea. Why you resort to ill-mannered behavior is a tell tale sign.
Your kilo analogy is not the same as what I am saying RE: calories. Better to say that when asked how much weight you are lifting, the device used (e.g., free weight, Nautilus machine, MedX machine, Universal machine, etc.) matters. So if I told you that I did 600 pounds in the chest press, this tells you nothing. You’d need to know the device I was using in order to make a judgment.
I did not say that calories consumed have no impact on the body. I said the body doesn’t have calorie receptors. The body understands fat, protein and carbohydrate – the mixture of which affects the body completely differently regardless of the total measured calories ingested. So when someone says fat gain is all about calories, they clearly have no understanding of how different macronuteirnts affect our body composition. FE: If we could somehow know that 2000 calories a day was my BMR, if I ate 200 extra cals of a food it does NOT follow I’d gain fat. I might gain muscle. I might gain nothing or I might gain fat. The caloric number a lone is meaningless.
Fred,
Is this Alfie guy the same guy who was after you a while ago on Dr. Davis’ blog?
I find it amusing that, given the questionable roots of the character “Santa”, that people are leaping up to defend an “iconic” character. He can defend himself, and if he chooses not to, then let’s just look at how funny all of this is.
It seems like the point is being missed, and I’ve grown weary of the people out there who defend caloric balance over understanding body reaction to calorie types.
Not all calories are created equal, and as carbs, proteins and fats are the building blocks to our diet, it’s important to understand which blocks get used for what.
Just because wood is hard, doesn’t mean it makes a good foundation as it doesn’t contain the compressive strength necessary to handle the load. Conversely, concrete is extremely brittle when faced with tensile strength and will fail if used to cover long spans without full support.
So too will carbs illicit an unwelcome reaction in your system when there is too much of it – and, as I understand it, LPL receptors will react to insulin levels.
We all have the same fundamental parts here – to use a car metaphor, we all have the same engine and drivetrain – we’re just geared and tuned differently thanks to darwinism.
The thing that really gets under my skin is that all of this is based on heart disease, and the focus is on keeping people out of the high risk zone. Just because you wear a size 28 pant does not mean you’re not at risk – your body is simply not showing the most obvious sign of risk – obesity. This is why I fully support Taubes efforts to start a proper nutrition testing facility which aims to answer questions the AMA has failed to do for the past half-century.
Well said Justin.