Gary Taubes about ketosis

Science magazine's correspondent Gary Taubes, who in 2001 won the Science in
Society Journalism Award from his article

The Soft Science of Dietary Fat
Gary Taubes
Science, Vol 291, Number 5513, Mar 30, 2001 pp. 2536-2545
Winner of the 2001 Science in Society Journalism Award http://www.jacquigingras.com/pdf/The%20Soft%20Science% 20of%20Dietary%20Fat.pdf
http://nasw.org/mem-maint/awards/The%20soft% 20science.pdf http://www.countcarbs.com/research/ softscience_part1.htm
http://timinvermont.com/fat.htm

writes in his last year's article

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
By Gary Taubes
New York Times Magazine, July 7, 2002 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp? ID=1726
http://www.countcarbs.com/research/whatif.htm http://atkins.com/Archive/2003/1/20-542932.html
http://www.karlloren.com/diet/p116.htm

about ketosis (among other things) as follows:

"... That, however, raised the question of why such a low- calorie regimen would also suppress hunger, which Atkins insisted was the signature characteristic of the diet. One possibility was Endocrinology 101: that fat and protein make you sated and, lacking carbohydrates and the ensuing swings of blood sugar and insulin, you stay sated. The other possibility arose from the fact that Atkins's diet is ''ketogenic.'' This means that insulin falls so low that you enter a state called ketosis, which is what happens during fasting and starvation.
Your muscles and tissues burn body fat for energy, as does your brain in the form of fat molecules produced by the liver called ketones. Atkins saw ketosis as the obvious way to kick-start weight loss. He also liked to say that ketosis was so energizing that it was better than sex, which set him up for some ridicule. An inevitable criticism of Atkins's diet has been that ketosis is dangerous and to be avoided at all costs.

When I interviewed ketosis experts, however, they universally sided with Atkins, and suggested that maybe the medical community and the media confuse ketosis with ketoacidosis, a variant of ketosis that occurs in untreated diabetics and can be fatal. ''Doctors are scared of ketosis,'' says Richard Veech, an N.I.H. researcher who studied medicine at Harvard and then got his doctorate at Oxford University with the Nobel Laureate Hans Krebs. ''They're always worried about diabetic ketoacidosis. But ketosis is a normal physiologic state. I would argue it is the normal state of man. It's not normal to have McDonald's and a delicatessen around every corner. It's normal to starve.''

Simply put, ketosis is evolution's answer to the thrifty gene.
We may have evolved to efficiently store fat for times of famine, says Veech, but we also evolved ketosis to efficiently live off that fat when necessary. Rather than being poison, which is how the press often refers to ketones, they make the body run more efficiently and provide a backup fuel source for the brain. Veech calls ketones ''magic'' and has shown that both the heart and brain run 25 percent more efficiently on ketones than on blood sugar. ..."

Ketosis expert Dr. Richar Veech, whom Gary Taubes mentions in his article, is the author in over 150 Medline studies, below a couple of them:

Cahill GF Jr, Veech RL.
Ketoacids? Good medicine?
Trans Am Clin Climatol Assoc. 2003;114:149-61; discussion 162-3. Review.
PMID: 12813917 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi? cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uids=12813917&amp; dopt=Abstract> (http://tinyurl.com/tkhl)

Veech RL, Chance B, Kashiwaya Y, Lardy HA, Cahill GF Jr.
Ketone bodies, potential therapeutic uses.
IUBMB Life. 2001 Apr;51(4):241-7. Review.
PMID: 11569918 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi? cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uids=11569918&amp; dopt=Abstract> (http://tinyurl.com/tkhm)

Veech has shown that both the heart and brain run 25 percent more efficiently on ketones than on blood sugar.
That's serious accusation without any grounds whatsoever and you know that.
You're libeling a famous scientist just because his view about ketosis differs from yours. What a shame.
Better than you? I agree with you about that And he has shared some of this better knowledge about ketosis via Taubes' article.

Still, the ketosis expert Dr. Richard Veech claims:

''Doctors are scared of ketosis,'' says Richard Veech, an N.I.H. researcher who studied medicine at Harvard and then got his doctorate at Oxford University with the Nobel Laureate Hans Krebs. ''They're always worried about diabetic ketoacidosis. But ketosis is a normal physiologic state. I would argue it is the normal state of man. It's not normal to have McDonald's and a delicatessen around every corner. It's normal to starve.''

Simply put, ketosis is evolution's answer to the thrifty gene.
We may have evolved to efficiently store fat for times of famine, says Veech, but we also evolved ketosis to efficiently live off that fat when necessary. Rather than being poison, which is how the press often refers to ketones, they make the body run more efficiently and provide a backup fuel source for the brain. Veech calls ketones ''magic'' and has shown that both the heart and brain run 25 percent more efficiently on ketones than on blood sugar. ..."

It seems that Veech is not overtly concerned about hyperketonemia.
Ah, but Veech probably learned a bit at Harvard and Oxford.