[HN Gopher] Ultra-processed food targets bone quality via endoch...
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Ultra-processed food targets bone quality via endochondral
ossification
Author : myth_drannon
Score : 101 points
Date : 2021-06-04 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| pella wrote:
| +"Nutritional Dark Matter"
|
| _" "We are what we eat," but do you really know what's in your
| food? Our first paper on the Nutritional Dark Matter is in Nature
| Food, about the 26,000+ chemicals that are in our diet, and their
| impact on our health. "_ (2019)
|
| https://twitter.com/barabasi/status/1204413768987361282
| grendelt wrote:
| What are the official definitions of the varying degrees of food
| processing? When does food become processed and then move into
| "highly processed" and then on to "ultra processed".
|
| High fat and high calorie doesn't seem clear cut and scientific
| enough.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Exactly. Why isn't the control for this experiment a high sugar
| diet without the "processing"? It's very unclear what
| "processing" refers to. What the data suggest is that in
| combination the elements are bad, but they were unable to
| isolate which one was the cause and there is nothing to suggest
| processing was the cause. (For example, the rats eating
| processed corn oil or processed sucrose did fine.)
| teddyh wrote:
| I think it's the same as "chemical". When something's bad, it's
| a chemical. When something's good, it's not.
|
| I.e. nobody knows what "processed" means, they just know it's
| bad somehow.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Looks like even the "official" definitions vary.
|
| _Definitions vary, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture says
| anything that changes the fundamental nature of an agricultural
| product - heating, freezing, dicing, juicing - is a processed
| food.
|
| "Those little baby carrots that you get in a supermarket -
| that's a processed food," said Penny Kris-Etherton, registered
| dietitian and distinguished professor of nutrition at
| Pennsylvania State University's Department of Nutritional
| Sciences. So are frozen vegetables, or even broccoli that's
| been cut into florets.
|
| Ultra-processed food takes things further. Nutritionists
| started using the term about 10 years ago, and again,
| definitions vary. One diet classification system called NOVA
| sums it up as "snacks, drinks, ready meals and many other
| products created mostly or entirely from substances extracted
| from foods or derived from food constituents with little if any
| intact food."_
|
| From here: https://www.heart.org/en/news/2020/01/29/processed-
| vs-ultra-...
| asiachick wrote:
| So olive oil is a processed food (pressing is the same a
| juicing). Bread is a processed food. Most salads with diced
| tomatoes and onions are processed food. Like most similar
| classifications (eg. organic) it's mostly nonsense.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > _freezing, dicing, juicing_
|
| I know it's not the correct interpretation in reality, but
| it's fun thinking that by this definition, all beef is
| processed unless you buy the whole live cow.
| artful-hacker wrote:
| Yeah, I feel there is no way we can have a clear definition
| on it. Even these citations (thank you for extracting them by
| the way) require more definitions. What exactly is a "intact
| food"? Does that mean a plant or animal that could exist in
| nature? Cause thats approximately zero percent of what I buy
| or eat.
|
| It's all subjective, feels very much like a "you know it if
| you see it" kind of thing.
| macNchz wrote:
| It's definitely not always obvious but I think the
| categories of "minimally processed" / "processed" / "ultra
| processed" make some intuitive sense:
|
| Raw fish filet / Canned Fish / Frozen Fish Fingers
|
| Corn on the cob / Frozen Corn / Corn Chips
|
| Raw chicken breast / Rotisserie Chicken / Chicken patty
|
| Peanuts / Peanut Butter / Peanut M&Ms
|
| Milk / Cheese / Powdered cheese sauce mix
|
| Brown rice / White rice / Rice Krispies
|
| Wheat / Simple bread / Chocolate chip cookies
| ianai wrote:
| I think ultra processed includes things like high
| fructose corn syrup-which basically has nothing else from
| corn within it. It's pretty much a naked solution at that
| point.
|
| This is tough. Maybe a good definition could involve how
| the food hits your blood sugar levels compared to its
| completely whole equivalent.
| akiselev wrote:
| How "intact" a food is basically how much of the original
| nutrition remains after processing. Hand milling whole
| grain into flour is a form of processing, for example, that
| leaves the food almost completely intact because it gets
| rid of the inedible chaff without destroying much of the
| bran, germ, and endosperm. Industrially processed all
| purpose flour, on the other hand, goes through a more
| destructive process that destroys more of those layers and
| more of the nutritional value (due to chemicals used, more
| heat and force generated from machinery, etc). Processing
| flour into bread, leaves even less of it intact because the
| yeast and heat irreversibly change the chemistry of the
| bread, but if the flour is made from intact grains it will
| be significantly more nutritious, despite roughly the same
| amount of processing.
|
| "intact" food is important because of bioavailability of
| nutrients as well as metabolic responses like insulin. You
| can't add fiber or vitamins back into fruit juice with the
| same effect as eating whole fruit, for example.
|
| Edit: Even fully synthesized food that counts as "super
| duper ultra processed" can be more nutritious than
| unprocessed food, but as a general rule outside of medicine
| it isn't.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, my first thought was ground beef which to me still
| feels like minimally processed. Sure, it's high in fat but
| eaten correctly is a solid food choice in many dishes.
| datameta wrote:
| I presume what sets apart food in its "natural", "prepared" or
| cooked state is the increased level (though industry regulated)
| of potential contaminants introduced during separation of
| protein, fat, and sugar from all the other constituent
| compounds that may not have caloric value but have nutritional
| or protective effects.
|
| I would like to find the written definition myself.
| yoz-y wrote:
| The experiment itself only seems to consider imbalanced macros
| and additional sugar inside water.
|
| I too wish to know what exactly is meant by the term
| "processed" and whether, say, an industrial sausage is any
| worse than "all natural" shake having exactly the same macros
| (- preservatives)
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Ready-to-eat foods high in fat and refined sugars doesn't seem
| as nebulous as this sort of cookie cutter HN comment seems to
| assert though.
| grawprog wrote:
| I like to go with, if it's something that no longer resembles
| food that's possible to make with unprocessed ingredients or if
| more than half the ingredients in a product are chemicals. It's
| probably ultra processed.
|
| Say burgers. A home made Burger made of freshly ground meat is
| a 'processed food.'
|
| A Patty created in a factory out of a slurry of smooshed up
| animal, parts, binders and preservatives then flash frozen and
| shipped to various places where it's then thawed and cooked
| using an industrial grill and assembled by a teenager for
| minimum wage...that's ultra processed.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| In case anyone is wondering how McDonalds beef patties are
| made, they're minced from large whole cuts of meat and fat.
| At industrial scale for sure, though not quite so harrowing
| as parent's description.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/i-went-to-a-mcdonalds-
| factor...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You're defining 'processed' as 'not unprocessed', there.
| Obviously a cyclic definition. And how are you defining
| 'chemical'?
| TchoBeer wrote:
| > chemicals
|
| Do you have some special definition of that which wouldn't
| include "everything".
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| Come now: there is energy, and probably dark matter too.
| And space-time. And black holes. And neutron stars.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Generally don't eat of that though
| okareaman wrote:
| I had the same question:
|
| _food we eat every day that has been significantly changed
| from its original state, with salt, sugar, fat, additives,
| preservatives and /or artificial colours added._
|
| https://www.heartandstroke.ca/articles/what-is-ultra-process...
|
| It's not clear to me what attribute of UPF is bad. I know sugar
| is not good. But fat? Additives, preservatives and/or
| artificial colors?
| jfengel wrote:
| It's more about concentration than about special ingredients,
| and to a lesser extent about missing nutrients.
|
| These foods tend to be very calorie-dense, which encourages
| you to eat too much of them. They provide those calories
| without a lot of other things (fiber, calcium, and possibly
| other unknown micronutrients). There's some suggestion that
| their high concentrations also throw off the complex balance
| of gut flora, but that's harder to pin down.
|
| The additives, preservatives, colors, etc. are probably safe
| in and of themselves. They've generally passed at least some
| basic level of safety testing (including being fed in
| megadoses to rats). They tend to be added to convenience
| foods to make them even more appealing and available. So
| they're correlated with negative health outcomes, but without
| being the cause of it.
|
| It's still possible that there's something wrong with the
| additives themselves, but if you avoid them by eating less-
| processed products, you'll likely do better regardless of the
| additive safety. Generally, that means doing more cooking
| yourself, or at least selecting menu items that more closely
| resemble home cooking.
| symlinkk wrote:
| If it's about calories then just say it. "High calorie
| foods are unhealthy" makes perfect sense. This vague "ultra
| processed" definition is confusing.
| jfengel wrote:
| The problem is that they've been saying "eat less
| calories" for decades, and it hasn't fixed the problem.
|
| Why? Lots of reasons, one if which is that calorie
| counting is hard. Totting up every calorie you eat is
| incredibly tedious. "Eat fewer calories" would be less
| onerous, but only if you're eating regular and consistent
| meals so that it's easy to identify what "less" means.
|
| So they try to give easy-to-follow advice, like "eat
| fewer foods with a lot of calories". How do you identify
| those? Well, they're the ones that have been through a
| lot of industrial processes that take out not-fun stuff
| (water, fiber) and add in a lot of things that are
| purified to the calorie-rich parts (sugar, oil, butter).
|
| They're looking for another way to say "Don't go to
| McDonald's and don't eat candy bars or drink soda" for a
| long time. If those are things that you do, and you stop
| it, you will almost certainly lose weight. But we can't
| even get people to do that, even though it's been the
| same advice for decades.
|
| "Ultra processed foods" are convenience foods. If
| "convenience foods" were to be their next iteration of
| the advice, I'd be fine with that. It's not about the
| fundamental nutrition; they've been trying to get people
| to do the same thing for decades without any headway.
| It's about communication and persuasion, which are far
| harder jobs.
| lbotos wrote:
| The problem with calorie counting is that we cannot
| reason about what a calorie looks like.
|
| what does 1 calorie of ice cream looks like?
|
| What about 1 calorie of broccoli?
|
| 1 calorie of steak?
|
| The solution is to switch to a macro focused diet, which
| still uses calories under the hood.
|
| With Macros you'll get a target of x g fats / y g protein
| / z g carbs which makes it much easier for a person to
| learn and reason about the food they are eating by sight
| and weight.
|
| The second factor is, our much more sedentary lifestyle
| means that often a 2000 calorie diet is 200-400 calories
| off or a lot of people.
| jfengel wrote:
| Counting anything is hard, so I prefer to develop a feel
| for it, if you can.
|
| Cut the obvious junk. Cook more for yourself, with more
| focus on vegetables. Don't worry about trying to limit
| yourself; just aim for sensible foods. Try that alone for
| a few months, and see if your weight stabilizes and
| declines a little, which it should.
|
| If that works, you can start substituting more processed
| stuff, as a treat or convenience. There you can look at
| calories or macros to help: "Ok, I was going to eat
| dinner, which is ordinarily around 800-1000 calories.
| This frozen pizza is... holy crap!" Have it anyway; you
| just know what it means now.
|
| Overall, what I recommend is not to go on a restrictive
| diet, but to start eating for the weight you wish to be,
| and plan to remain there forever. (If you're a lot
| overweight, you may need to do that in stages.) A lot of
| people want to diet and then switch to a maintenance
| phase. I think it's better to go directly to maintenance,
| and let that asymptotically lower your weight. You suffer
| less and thus bounce back less.
|
| But that's just my $.02. This is all brain stuff;
| whatever persuades you to eat right and exercise is good.
| lambdaba wrote:
| There are issues with heat treatment in those foods that
| create advanced glycation end products.
|
| Fats in ultra-processed tend to be low quality industrial
| seed oils, like soybean, sunflower, etc.
| symlinkk wrote:
| And this "low quality seed oil" is bad...why? It seems to
| me that all of food science besides the basic "calories and
| macronutrients" that everyone knows is complete
| pseudoscience bullshit.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ianai wrote:
| It's usually got a huge amount of fat or sugar compared to a
| healthy amount of a whole food. So chips are soaked with fat-
| on par with nuts. But unlike nuts, chips often come with less
| protein, no fiber, and fats that have been refined highly.
|
| Additives/preservatives/artificial colors can be of dubious
| safety as the standards for "safe to eat" are very lax.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| In this specific study
|
| > The diet chosen here exemplifies the Western UPD with
| unbalanced levels of micro- and macronutrients
|
| Generally speaking, "unprocessed" foods are raw whole foods.
| "Processing" means cooking, cutting, adding stuff, etc. (of
| course none of this is bad in any way). "Highly processed" and
| "ultra processed" mean there's high calorie density without
| protein, fiber, micro-nutrients, etc. AKA it's very easy to
| overeat and throw your nutrient balance off. Of course products
| like Soylent are technically highly "processed" but that's
| rarely what these articles mean.
| 6foot4_82iq wrote:
| Real meat to plant-based "meat" is one instance.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| My personal anecdotal position on this, is there's something with
| the wheat in America. European wheat tastes different. Wheat is
| the number one component of food that is over eaten by those that
| are obese.
| occamrazor wrote:
| Arandom fact: most durum wheat used to make pasta in Italy is
| imported from Canada.
| kortex wrote:
| That'll be a fun one to throw at my kooky aunt, who insists
| that pasta in America gives her problems, but the stuff in
| Italy does not. She thinks it's GMO. I told her "GMO wheat"
| isn't even a thing.
|
| > As of 2020, no GM wheat is grown commercially, although
| many field tests have been conducted, with one wheat variety,
| Bioceres HB4, obtaining regulatory approval from the
| Argentinian government.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_wheat
|
| https://grainstorm.com/blogs/blog/is-wheat-genetically-
| modif....
| jimrandomh wrote:
| Hidden in the supplementary material (which you have to import an
| MS Word doc to read): the "ultra-processed diet" they fed the
| rats has multiple severe micronutrient deficiencies, probably
| because rather than being a mixed diet of many different
| ultraprocessed foods, it's: a hamburger and fries and soda, and
| nothing else ever, in a blender. Which is not remotely
| representative of any human diet.
| virtue3 wrote:
| That's basically been my depression diet during this whole
| pandemic. :/
|
| n=1 applies to you ya know.
| 6foot4_82iq wrote:
| > Which is not remotely representative of any human diet.
|
| People don't come to weigh 350lbs eating vegetables daily.
| klyrs wrote:
| Fries and soda is a vegan meal. Some vegans eat like crap and
| gain weight, suffer malnutrition, or both.
| 6foot4_82iq wrote:
| Sure, there are very few (if any) 350lb vegans though.
| Vegetables (even processed and deep fried) are too light on
| calories.
|
| The most redeeming ingredient in a burger, fries, and soda
| combo is the meat patty.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes, the "ultra-processed" claim seems way off. It's not the
| processing in this experiment, it's the choice of raw
| materials.
| jimrandomh wrote:
| Control: 1000mg calcium/100g Intervention: 62mg calcium/100g
|
| OMG PROCESSED FOOD CAUSES BONE PROBLEMS </s>
|
| They even avoided including cheese, to increase the size of the
| calcium deficiency.
| defaultname wrote:
| This is the sort of study that just feels like animal abuse
| without the justification. They pursued a study where they
| knew the results beforehand -- an intentional macronutrient
| deficiency yields, unsurprisingly, a deficiency. And they
| knew it would earn press because it serves a particular
| worldview.
|
| One could contrive a "zero processed food" study that yielded
| identical results.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Minus the soda, that's actually not a badly balanced diet
| depending on the hamburger toppings.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Which is not remotely representative of any human diet.
|
| I know many humans who have diets not far off from that. Maybe
| deep fried chicken tenders as a substitute for hamburgers.
| Granted, most of them eat ketchup, which is a serving of
| vegetables in some states.
|
| Seriously though, this problem is more common that I think a
| lot may realize. Something about a high-sugar, high-salt, fast
| food diet has the long-term effect of destroying peoples'
| ability to eat other foods. I've seen kids grow up on fast food
| who find the idea any green vegetable completely revolting.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Of all the things my mother did for me, the one I'm second
| most grateful for was not catering to my childish tastes.
|
| I see some of my friends not far beyond chicken fingers for
| every meal and shudder...
|
| So thanks, Mom! You were right. Here's to "Dinner is what I
| cooked, and if you want something else then breakfast is in
| 12 hours."
| mod wrote:
| My best friend and his wife are the best parents I've ever
| seen in practice, in many ways. Quality time, attention,
| simulating activities etc. They're both schoolteachers.
|
| BUT! Their kids eat 3 meals for dinner: pizza, chicken
| nuggets with French fries, or easy Mac. For lunch they have
| pb&j, for breakfast eggs or cereal. Chips and candy for
| snacks. Throw in some applesauce you suck out of little
| pouches. That's it.
|
| I'm pretty much appalled. The kids seem healthy, although
| I'm not an expert. But man, they're missing out on
| literally all the good stuff.
|
| I hope they come around in a couple years. I haven't asked
| them their plan or anything.
|
| I'm firmly in the camp of not cooking around kids unless
| they really hate one particular thing, or it's too spicy
| perhaps, or an allergy.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| I became an extremely picky eater suddenly around age 4.
|
| I literally didn't eat a single vegetable or fruit that
| wasn't an onion or tomato sauce until age 20, and my diet
| consisted mostly of "kid food" - hamburgers, hot dogs,
| breakfast cereal, milk, etc.
|
| Meanwhile, my family was eating lots of home cooked
| mediterranean meals. I can't count the number of times
| I'd be eating a hot dog while they were enjoying
| something like stinky artichokes.
|
| My parents cooked around me. Never forced me to eat
| anything I didn't like. Never insisted I "just try" a
| food that was going to make me gag.
|
| Shortly after I turned 20, something just clicked and I
| started eating everything. Now my diet is more varied
| than the rest of my family.
|
| Don't force your kids to eat stuff they hate.
|
| If they're not actually malnourished or obese, they'll
| likely turn out fine. The last thing you want to do is
| establish a pattern of stress and anguish re: meals and
| food. That probably never turns out well in the long run.
| vasco wrote:
| This is very strange to me, coming from a culture of
| "food is what is cooked". There was no stress around it
| because that's the way the world worked, sometimes you
| don't like the food but you still eat it. The same way
| you'd prefer to play all day instead of going to school.
| I can't fathom how one would call this traumatic, it's
| just part of learning to not be a spoiled brat that gets
| everything their way.
| thepratt wrote:
| I'm western, but almost all of my childhood and early/mid
| teens was spent in Asia. I think growing up seeing all
| the variety of odd and stinky things made me much more
| willing to try; they were having it, so _I want it_.
|
| I wonder how much environment shapes how open one will be
| to food. Most picky eaters I've met come from places with
| cultures of TV-centric dinners (America, Australia, UK)
| opposed to family-centric ones (Japan, Germany,
| Singapore), which makes me wonder if there's a link or
| just coincidence in experience.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Good-sounding advice I have heard from professionals is a
| middle ground between your approach and the grandparent
| comments' "this is what the meal is" approach: Don't cook
| separate meals for your kids, but include at least one
| food in the meal the child will definitely eat, even if
| it's just bread, crackers, etc. (I have also heard "don't
| make dessert separate from the rest of the meal.") Also,
| if your kids are old enough, don't pre-portion the food
| or serve it to the kids; let them make their own plates.
| If they just eat bread and cheese, that's up to them -
| but it doesn't set up the idea that they are going to get
| something "special" if they don't like what's being
| offered.
|
| Not being a parent, I have no idea whether this works.
| I'd be interested to hear whether anyone has tried an
| approach like this. I'm sure kids can find some way to
| defeat it no matter how good it sounds.
|
| Personally, my biggest issue growing up was less
| pickiness (like a lot of kids, I went through a picky
| phase and emerged from it not picky), and more that my
| parents had the classic "finish what's on your plate"
| rule, which I think has definitely contributed to
| unhealthy eating habits in adulthood.
| hathawsh wrote:
| One of my daughters finds almost all foods revolting. She
| accepts rice, ketchup, ramen, breakfast cereal, and most
| sweets. Sometimes she'll accept pickled beets. She
| doesn't tolerate veggies, fruits, most meat, most breads,
| and most restaurant food (including fast food).
|
| We have convinced her to eat other foods, but she gags
| every time. I suspect she has an eating disorder. She has
| been seeing a therapist. I wonder if she needs to see a
| different therapist who specializes in eating disorders.
| In any case, she seems physically healthy. She runs and
| plays and doesn't get hurt.
|
| What's amazing to me is I was completely unaware of these
| kinds of disorders before she came along. I think she
| wants to eat veggies (because she really believes us when
| we say they are good for her), but her body strongly
| resists.
| hamburglar wrote:
| One problem with parenting is that there is so much
| simple advice out there that "works" for some people so
| they become quite sure they've found the one true answer.
| We have raised both kids with the same "this is dinner"
| attitude and it worked wonderfully on the first kid and
| not at all on the second kid. It's hubris for people to
| think they have figured out what works enough to tell
| others they should do the same.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I know many humans who have diets not far off from that.
|
| The minute you add Tomatoes + Cheese (found in pizza), you're
| suddenly fixing a major vitamin A deficiency (that Hamburgers
| / Potatoes lack).
|
| Like, at least round out the meal with other ultraprocessed
| foods if you want to prove something.
|
| -----------
|
| What causes bone deficiency? Well, a lack of calcium (also
| found in cheese) and Vitamin D (needed to process calcium
| more efficiently), which potatoes also lack.
|
| Pizza, Tacos, and Ice Cream would fix that, no joke, if I'm
| thinking about the "worst foods" that still hit those
| vitamins.
| mywittyname wrote:
| So I looked up the Vitamin A contents of Heinz ketchup and
| Kraft Singles (the highly processed "cheese" used in fast
| food cheeseburgers). Each say 2% RDV per serving, that's
| roughly 20mcg per serving.
|
| I'm not sure below what level constitutes deficiency.
| Perhaps that small amount is enough.
| mlyle wrote:
| Hitting 4-6% of the recommended daily value over a
| sustained time is likely severe deficiency.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Hitting 50% over time is noticeably inadequate at a
| population level.
| https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/132/9/2920S/4687708
| wyager wrote:
| Most green vegetables have barely any nutritive content.
| Babies naturally find them disgusting as well - this is an
| example of instinctive flavor preference actually working
| correctly. The problem is that evolved palatability is not
| well-calibrated for things like widely available sugars
| (including starches)
| chrisco255 wrote:
| You're getting downvoted, but this is correct. Most green
| veggies have high oxalates and high phytic acid
| (antinutrients) that actively prevent the absorption of
| certain nutrients. For example, Spinach has calcium oxalate
| that prevents the absorption of calcium (it binds to
| calcium instead and passes through your digestive system).
|
| Unless those veggies are soaked & boiled, fermented, or
| sprouted, chances are they're adding little nutritional
| value to your diet and can even cause anemia or other
| issues if you're just eating them raw.
| klipt wrote:
| This seems like a good argument for eating varying things
| over the day. E.g. you don't have to have greens with
| your breakfast, but it's probably good to eat them every
| so often for fiber.
|
| And yes fermented greens like sauerkraut or kimchi may be
| better in many ways.
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| The hamburger in the study had tomatoes and lettuce (but they
| explicitly pointed out no pickles or onions). So there was
| some vegetable material there already.
| mrandish wrote:
| I agree that the study really doesn't support what the headline
| conveys nor does it support the opposite. Thanks for doing the
| work of downloading the supplemental data and pointing out the
| rather important details.
|
| A few years ago I decided to get serious about my many years of
| chronic obesity and started deep-dive studying nutrition
| science. I was appalled by the pervasive lack of scientific
| rigor in most nutrition science. Even widely accepted parts of
| public health policy, like the "food pyramid" that was preached
| to kids in elementary school, were based on shockingly weak
| observational studies with many uncontrolled confounding
| variables. Most of the "Large N" studies are based on "diary
| data." Essentially, asking people via written surveys to
| estimate what they typically eat and extrapolating that over
| years. Yeah, not kidding.
|
| In short, I used to assume "nutrition science" was a somewhat
| rigorous field akin to biology or chemistry but discovered, for
| the most part, it's not. My N=1 experience has been that
| cutting out most carbs was tremendously effective for my
| metabolism type and I lost 85 pounds in 7 months without
| increased exercise. Since then I've kept it off for four years
| by sticking to a rigorous low-carb diet. It was difficult for
| the first few months but my palette and preferences adapted and
| now I plan to never go back. Eating low carb has the side
| benefit of cutting out most processed foods which may have
| helped improve my health. However, I don't recommend what I did
| for everyone because I've learned that metabolisms vary enough
| that what worked great for me may not work great for you.
| Instead, my advice is to do your own reading, develop
| hypotheses and experiment on yourself until you find a
| combination that works for your body, lifestyle and goals.
| Ultimately, weight loss is obviously a function of calories in
| vs calories out but in practice there are different ways of
| achieving the necessary caloric deficit. For me, low carb
| worked because it altered my blood sugar-driven hunger cycle.
| In all my years of failed dieting I'd never tried cutting carbs
| before cutting calories. Turns out it's _much_ easier to cut
| calories when you 're not hungry!
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| > Even widely accepted parts of public health policy, like
| the "food pyramid" that was preached to kids in elementary
| school, were based on shockingly weak observational studies
| with many uncontrolled confounding variables.
|
| It's even worse in fact. The Food Pyramid was originally
| developed by the US Department of Agriculture, and then
| edited by the Secretary of Agriculture's Office, which
| represent the interests of the farming industry. USDA
| nutritionists initially made some healthier recommendations,
| but were overruled to cater for farmer's interests.
|
| Here's an excerpt from an essay by Luise Light, one of the
| USDA nutritionists who's recommendations were rewritten:
|
| "Back in the early '80s, I was the leader of a group of top-
| level nutritionists with the USDA who developed the eating
| guide that became known as the Food Guide Pyramid.
|
| Carefully reviewing the research on nutrient recommendations,
| disease prevention, documented dietary shortfalls and major
| health problems of the population, we submitted the final
| version of our new Food Guide to the Secretary of
| Agriculture.
|
| When our version of the Food Guide came back to us revised,
| we were shocked to find that it was vastly different from the
| one we had developed. As I later discovered, the wholesale
| changes made to the guide by the Office of the Secretary of
| Agriculture were calculated to win the acceptance of the food
| industry. For instance, the Ag Secretary's office altered
| wording to emphasize processed foods over fresh and whole
| foods, to downplay lean meats and low-fat dairy choices
| because the meat and milk lobbies believed it'd hurt sales of
| full-fat products; it also hugely increased the servings of
| wheat and other grains to make the wheat growers happy. The
| meat lobby got the final word on the color of the saturated
| fat/cholesterol guideline which was changed from red to
| purple because meat producers worried that using red to
| signify "bad" fat would be linked to red meat in consumers'
| minds.
|
| Where we, the USDA nutritionists, called for a base of 5-9
| servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, it was
| replaced with a paltry 2-3 servings (changed to 5-7 servings
| a couple of years later because an anti-cancer campaign by
| another government agency, the National Cancer Institute,
| forced the USDA to adopt the higher standard). Our
| recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads
| and cereals was changed to a whopping 6-11 servings forming
| the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed
| wheat and corn industries. Moreover, my nutritionist group
| had placed baked goods made with white flour -- including
| crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods laden with
| sugars and fats -- at the peak of the pyramid, recommending
| that they be eaten sparingly. To our alarm, in the "revised"
| Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid's base.
| And, in yet one more assault on dietary logic, changes were
| made to the wording of the dietary guidelines from "eat less"
| to "avoid too much," giving a nod to the processed-food
| industry interests by not limiting highly profitable "fun
| foods" (junk foods by any other name) that might affect the
| bottom line of food companies."
| zwieback wrote:
| Looks like there were rats being fed with a "recommended rat
| diet" and other rats being fed burgers, fries and a soft drink,
| e.g. the typical fast food meal.
| aszantu wrote:
| Makes sense in hindsight. When i cut it all out, all kinds of
| joint and back pain went away
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Same for me. I also recently started eating mainly pasta or
| potatoes with some boiled or sauteed vegetables. Rarely any
| bread or other processed foods. Comparing to most other people
| I already had a very good diet before but now I am dropping
| some more pounds and my joints feel much better.
|
| Seems we are really poisoning us with the typical diet of most
| people.
| kortex wrote:
| * in rats
|
| Rats are pretty good models for humans, but they are a leaky
| abstraction like all models. Obviously no one is arguing junk
| food is _good_ for you, but rats have rather different dietary
| and metabolic needs than humans. Both Homo sapiens and Rattus
| norvegicus are garbage disposals of the animal kingdom, but
| believe it or not humans are actually a little better equipped to
| handle extreme diets vs rats. Feeding lab rats ultra-high fat
| diets is pretty much guaranteed to result in obesity, insulin
| resistance, and all the problems that come with it, but Inuits
| and other groups have survived thousands of years with exactly
| such a diet for large parts of the year.
|
| Also, rats are wicked smart and even the "human" conditions for
| lab rats are likely insufficiently stimulating physically and
| mentally.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Lots of dietary science seems to study "processed food", but none
| seems to break down the effects they find to the specific food
| ingredients or processing steps.
|
| For example, a hot dog is ultra processed by most definitions.
| But if you feed mice the raw ingredients that go into a hot dog,
| but not yet ground up into a hot dog, do they have the same
| health effects?
|
| How about when you start adding and removing ingredients?
|
| I suspect a _specific_ processing step or ingredient causes many
| of these developmental issues, yet no study seems to attempt to
| find it
| lambdaba wrote:
| > Only in the US does UPF comprise 57.9% of energy intake, of
| which 89.7% is derived from added sugars.
|
| It should be no mystery that refined sugar is devastating to
| bones.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > It should be no mystery that refined sugar is devastating to
| bones.
|
| Why? What particular qualities does sugar have that directly
| affects bone?
|
| I took a look and found one study[1] that indicated Fructose
| doesn't affect bone growth. This study[2] indicates that
| Fructose strengthens bones. This meta-analysis [3] says that
| there can't be any conclusions drawn due to not enough
| evidence.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27832314/ [2]
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24267046/ [3]
| https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/66/6/301/1...
| lambdaba wrote:
| It's depleting magnesium, induces inflammation, reduces
| vitamin D.
|
| > The overconsumption of dietary sugar has the potential to
| increase the risk of osteoporosis by: a) increasing the
| urinary excretion of both calcium and magnesium, b) reducing
| the intestinal absorption of calcium by lowering the levels
| of active vitamin D, and c) impairing bone formation by
| reducing osteoblast proliferation and increasing osteoclast
| activation as well as lactic acid production.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6140170/
| Filligree wrote:
| This definition of "refined sugar" includes starch, I guess?
| lambdaba wrote:
| Starch breaks down into glucose, while sucrose is glucose +
| fructose. Refined fructose is uniquely harmful.
| Filligree wrote:
| I'm aware. But the numbers given imply that Americans get
| fifty percent of their energy from sugar, which fails the
| sniff test -- it's completely unbelievable.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Sugar gives me joint pain and headaches so I have started
| to read food labels very closely. The amount of sugar in
| a lot of foods is completely insane. Especially a lot of
| "healthy" foods have a ton of it, for example protein
| bars, granola bars and a lot of breakfast food. A lot of
| salad dressing are high in sugar, so are pasta sauces,
| fruit juices and so on. Most bread has added sugar and
| pastry has way too much sugar compared to Germany.
|
| Almost everything is sweetened to an extreme level.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> it's completely unbelievable_
|
| Is it tho? High-fructose corn-syrup is ever-present in
| most convenient foods in the US down to such basics like
| bread and the hilariously oversized sodas, while obesity
| and diabetes rates have reached epidemic proportions [0]
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4887150/
| lambdaba wrote:
| Yes, might be an issue with more restrictive definitions
| of added sugar. The number I found is 70-80g/day, which
| is a lot but if you count things like fruit juices which
| only have "natural" sugars...
|
| Made me think about:
|
| > Oatly has voluntarily agreed to stop marketing its
| oatmilks as containing 'n added sugars' in ad campaigns
| followir a complaint by Campbell Soup drawing attention
| to its oatmilk production process, which breaks down oat
| starch into simple sugars.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| *in mice
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