Researcher Dr. David Ludwig Takes On Childhood Obesity With Low-Glycemic Load Approach

Filed under: Podcast — @ September 21, 2010

In Episode 403 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore,” we hear from researcher and author Dr. David Ludwig as he shares more about his work on childhood obesity and disease. He’s the author of the book Ending The Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/ Fake Food World and does regular research on juvenile diabetes and obesity at the prestigious Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

He’s also an associate professor of pediatrics in the Department of Endocrinology at Harvard University. Listen to Dr. Ludwig discuss why he became interested in childhood obesity and disease as his primary focus, his Optimal Weight For Life (OWL) program, what his low-glycemic load diet looks like, why he’s not convinced a very low-carb diet like Atkins is good for weight loss but not necessarily over the long-term, his forthcoming study comparing a very low-carb diet vs. a very low-fat diet vs. a low-glycemic load diet, why he believes very low-carb diets are difficult to maintain, what’s wrong with the carbohydrates consumed by most people today compared with the carbohydrates consumed by our grandparents, why an apple and a Coca-Cola are similar in sugar but different in the way they are metabolized, the role of calories in his nutritional philosophy, why your metabolic rate does not slow down on a low-glycemic diet, his research on fatty liver disease, the way foie gras is made by force-feeding geese carbohydrates, the role of saturated fat in a healthy lifestyle, the difference in the particle size of the LDL cholesterol, his reaction to the recent animal-based low-carb diet worse than a plant-based low-carb diet study, whether the saturated fats in grass-fed meats are better than processed and grain-fed meats, why low-glycemic carbohydrates are preferred over processed carbohydrates, why it is next to impossible to gain weight from just eating dietary fat, how our body adapts to real food regardless of its macronutrient makeup, his concerns with a heavy focus on meat as the basis of your diet, and where he falls on the spectrum between Dr. Robert Lustig putting the focus on fructose vs. Gary Taubes putting the focus on carbohydrates.