[HN Gopher] A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
___________________________________________________________________
A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
Author : apsec112
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-07-10 21:22 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (slimemoldtimemold.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slimemoldtimemold.com)
| EMM_386 wrote:
| Fascinating read. At first I was thinking things like the
| introduction of high fructose corn syrup, or microwave dinners,
| but that doesn't completely explain all of those data points.
|
| This is an interesting comment someone left ... it's one of the
| only ones that could potentially explain all of the results,
| outside of some outliers like the altitude effect.
|
| > With these premises it seems almost obvious to attribute the
| obesity pandemic to an external factor - for instance, virus or
| bacteria. My money is on gut bacteria being altered by some
| bacteria/virus, of which transmission is relatively hard (but it
| persists), which spread like wildfire in the last forty years and
| which thrives on cafeteria diets (which would explain its
| emergence in the second half of the 20th century).
| elliekelly wrote:
| You might find Tim Specter's "The Diet Myth" interesting. He's
| a geneticist specializing in twin studies who sort of stumbled
| into the role of the microbiome in obesity. It's been a while
| since I've read it but IIRC he points to pasteurizing as one of
| the contributors to America's obesity compared to Europe.
| dobin wrote:
| I've heard something of overuse of antibiotics destroying the
| gut microbes
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't know about this, there's a lot of factors listed
| individually here but not in comnination. It could be something
| like "eats lots of sugar and doesn't move", like are those honey
| and starch eaters as sedentary as us?
|
| Then again, it woildn't totally surprise me if it were something
| like indoor lighting or something.
|
| Edit: The second article accounts for some combinatiins but not
| to my satisfaction. Also:
|
| > The USDA Economic Research Service estimates that calorie
| intake in the US increased from 2,016 calories per day in 1970 to
| about 2,390 calories per day in 2014. Neither of these are jaw-
| dropping increases.
|
| That does seem like a jaw-dropping increase if sustained over
| time and other varianles are held constant. So, huh?
|
| I have another idea though since it talks about lipostat theory:
| Isn't it known that cortisol exposure causes weight gain? What if
| it's simply that our life is morr stressful despite being
| objectively less chaloenging in some sense. This could be due to
| anything from less cardio to a bad news diet.
| garganzol wrote:
| It's not just calories.
|
| It's how fast those calories get into bloodstream as a glucose.
|
| "Fast" carbohydrates are extremally efficient in this regard; you
| can eat a ton before hunger leaves you. And this is a big gotcha
| as we constantly overeat being fooled by our mind and
| carbohydrates with high glycemic index.
|
| So, it is not just calories: it's the amount and speed of insulin
| response to those calories.
| andylei wrote:
| This is covered in the second part of the article:
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-hunger-p...
| [deleted]
| mysterypie wrote:
| > _We should start seriously considering other paradigms. If diet
| and exercise are out as explanations for the epidemic, what could
| possibly explain it? And what could possibly explain all of the
| other bizarre trends that we have observed?_
|
| > _[Next Time: A CHEMICAL HUNGER]_
|
| That's the part I really wanted to see. I've now bookmarked it so
| I can read the next instalment. I expect to hear some fascinating
| theories -- perhaps some modern equivalent of lead poisoning of
| ancient Rome.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > Combined with all the sugar they get from eating fruit, they
| end up eating about the same amount of sugar as Americans do. ...
| These are all unrefined sugars, of course
|
| Isn't it important to distinguish the type of sugar?
|
| I thought the 5-10% increase in proportion of sucrose to fructose
| was sufficient enough to result in significant difference between
| how types of sugar impact insulin response. E.g., the shift to
| more easily-metabolized fructose results in even more available
| calories to convert to fat than the 50/50 sucrose/fructose found
| in fruits.
|
| > even when statistically adjusting for variables like age, BMI,
| and physical activity.
|
| I find this hard to believe, that the statistics were adjusted
| _correctly_ for physical activity. You can talk about !Kung,
| Maasi, and Inuits all day long, but these tribes are wildly
| active compared to the typical desk-jockey westerner. That can 't
| be shrugged off so easily.
| code_duck wrote:
| Is fructose considered easy to metabolize? It takes drastically
| longer to convert to glucose than other sugars, requires liver
| enzymes and can creates gastric upset in excess. It seems quite
| inefficient compared to carbohydrate sources like starch which
| are simply chains of glucose molecules that your body
| separates.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I think you have it backwards: fructose is a monosaccharide
| which is metabolized almost instantly, and sucrose is a
| disaccharide which requires additional energy to metabolize.
| Glucose is the end result, but glucose isn't what is added to
| industrial foods. So more effort is required to use sucrose
| than fructose, and I believe that is the source of the issue.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| It is not really a mystery any more. There was a heart disease
| epidemic in the mid 20th century (the rate doubling every
| decade). A scientist named Ansel Keys did an epidemiological
| study comparing rates of heart disease to fat intake in 6
| different countries and found a strong correlation: countries
| that ate more fat had higher rates of heart disease. Therefore
| fat causes heart disease.
|
| This is the lipid hypothesis, which still drives nutrition advice
| and laws today.
|
| Ansal Keys joined the board of The American Heart Association
| which adopted the lipid hypothesis and started telling everyone
| to cut out fat and eat more carbohydrates (carbs are sugars
| strung together which are quickly chopped up and metabolised as
| sugar, what could go wrong? ;). Numerous clinical trials,
| involving tens of thousands of people, all failed to find a link
| between fat and heart disease (often actually finding the
| opposite). The government ignored these trials and supported
| Ansal Keys instead.
|
| The Mcgovern senate committee was tasked with creating a national
| nutritional policy in 1977, but when scientists told the
| commission that there was no evidence supporting the low fat/high
| carb diet and that more research was needed to confirm the
| hypothesis, they where told that the government does not have the
| luxury of waiting for scientific research [0] and in 1980 the
| USDA published the dietary pyramid that we still use today,
| recommending that people get the bulk of their calories from
| carbs.
|
| The single epidemiological study by Keys was all they had to go
| on at that time. Since then, there have been many more rigorous
| diet trials which failed to confirm the lipid hypothesis and
| actually show a strong link between carb consumption and obesity.
| So the scientists introduced an entirely new scientific method,
| now called teleoanalysis[1][2] to prop up the lipid hypothesis.
| No causative link between dietary fat and heart disease could be
| found in controlled trials. But, they did find an association
| between fat and cholesterol, and then they found an association
| between high cholesterol and heart disease. So now using
| teleonalysis we can say that fat is associated with high
| cholesterol and high cholesterol is associated with heart disease
| therefore fat causes heart disease.
|
| The American government officially supports the lipid hypothesis
| and promotes the high carb diet pyramid at all contact points.
| Schools, universities, government agencies all must promote the
| lipid hypothesis or be sacked or defunded; "The dietary dogma was
| a money-maker for segments of the food industry, a fund raiser
| for the Heart Association and busy work for thousands of fat
| chemists... To be a dissenter is to be unfunded because the peer-
| review system rewards conformity and excludes criticism"[3]
|
| Carbs have low nutritional content and most vitamins are fat
| soluble so by eating less fat you feel more hungry because your
| body needs those nutrients and you are forced to eat more. When
| you eat a lot of carbs, your liver gives you an insulin shot.
| Insulin tells your fat cells to absorb the carbs to bring the
| body back to balance. So your fat cells swell and then divide,
| making your body bigger, and a bigger body requires more food to
| sustain it.
|
| The result is that obesity and heart disease have increased about
| 10x since 1980 [4]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFQc2kxm9c
|
| [1] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-
| response/2011/10/30/teleoanalysis-...
|
| [2] https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/65372/what-is-
| wron...
|
| [3]
| https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CxKQ2Ak6_p4C&pg=PA144&lp...
|
| [4]
| https://www.ahajournals.org/cms/asset/d4e7b1a9-3093-4507-984...
| andylei wrote:
| the author of the post refutes the carbohydrate hypothesis
| here:
|
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-hunger-p...
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| That one graph from one epidemiological study is not enough
| to refute 60 years of data from many clinical trials. There
| is probably a confounding variable.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I know exactly why I'm fat. I consistently continue eating after
| already feeling full. Regardless of whether it's socially
| designated as a "health food" or "junk food".
|
| Most of the pleasure of eating and drinking comes from the first
| few bites and sips, after that the senses start dulling and
| diminishing returns start to set in, so it's really no big loss
| to stop when full. Certainly not worth getting indigestion over.
|
| A few weeks of disciplined eating seriously diminishes the urge
| to overeat, but all it takes to settle into old habits is a
| single slip-up. I think making food artificially unpalatable by
| cutting salt, fat, or whatever ingredient is currently being
| vilified is just unproductive. It will just make the experience
| frustrating and unsatisfying no matter how much or little you
| eat.
| jinpa_zangpo wrote:
| People are getting fat because they are consuming more calories.
| And they are consuming more calories because processed foods are
| engineered to make you overeat them. To lose weight, stop eating
| processed foods and learn to cook simple foods from scratch,
| minimizing the use of sugar, salt, and oil, three common appetite
| stimulants.
| nradov wrote:
| For most people there's no particular need to minimize salt and
| oil in order to avoid getting fat. However certain oils,
| especially vegetable oils, tend to have other bad health
| effects.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| >And they are consuming more calories because processed foods
| are engineered to make you overeat them.
|
| I've heard this being claimed a lot, and have therefore often
| thought about it while eating fast- and other processed foods,
| picking around in it trying to discover the big conspiracy, but
| I can't seem to find any substantial differences with what I
| make at home from raw ingredients.
|
| The engineering seems to be geared more towards reproducibility
| of all the dishes over a large network of franchises around the
| world. It's still the same ingredients, they're just less
| tolerant of substitutions and deviations from the specs.
|
| Maybe it's really a matter of fast food being compared to food
| cooked by unskilled home cooks who just happen to be suffering
| from a socially induced panic about some arbitrary ingredient,
| and therefore tends to produce a result that's just plain
| unpalatable compared to something made by a professional or a
| seasoned home cook.
|
| No cook with any amount of self respect will make intentionally
| unpalatable food, and the French paradox clearly demonstrates
| that it's not necessary for food to be unpalatable to avoid
| obesity.
| joseluis wrote:
| Insulin is the big elephant in the room that's barely talked
| about. Everybody should watch this lecture
| https://youtu.be/RuOvn4UqznU
| guerrilla wrote:
| Could you do more to motivate us to watch the nearly 1.5 hour
| video than "insulin"? Who is this guy and what's the thesis?
| Summary?
| joseluis wrote:
| Ok, I didn't realize it might be necessary, since the speaker
| is so good and engaging since the first minute but I'll try.
|
| He basically exposes the underlying physiological mechanisms
| of fasting and nutrition. And puts it in context of our
| biological evolution and current first-world diseases.
| Explains the enormous power fasting has for healing the
| physiology, regulating insulin levels, even reverting insulin
| resistance, how when you stop eating for a day the body
| activates the expression of certain genes in every cell for
| producing all the antioxidants known to man, promote
| autofagie of dead cells, producing growth hormones, start
| growing bone marrow cells, stem cells... How insulin is a key
| piece in that mechanism, how in western societies are junkies
| of processed food, specially sugar, carbohidrates and, and
| how by eating too often and too much we keep our insulin
| leves always high, which impedes our body to begin that
| innate process of self-healing we have, and we instead just
| saturate the body with things it doesn't really need and
| don't give it the opportunity to get rid of them, deriving in
| preventable diseases.
|
| He speaks about 24h, 36h, 3day and 7 day fasting... How it
| affects multiple things, including response to chemoterapy,
| diabetes, dementia...
|
| He has a previous talk called "The bittersweet truth" where
| he dives more deeply on how exactly fructose basically
| poisons the body and talks more about insulin, fructose,
| nutritional myths... Just one fascinating fact after another,
| supported by data, studies and clinical experience. He tryes
| to relate the facts in order to give you a very powerful big
| picture.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Since bing on Keto for a few months I've noticed a lot of the
| keto friendly processed foods are close enough to the real thing
| that it really makes me wonder why companies are not making their
| products lower carb to begin with. Obviously it costs more, but
| maybe at scale it doesn't. I suspect companies want higher carbs
| so people feel hungrier and eat more which in turns means they
| buy more.
|
| Take for instance this Nick's brand ice cream. It's 7 net carbs
| per pint and texture and flavor is pretty much identical to
| 'real' ice creams out there.
|
| Franz makes a wonderful 0 net carb bread (and hamburger and
| hotdog buns now which are honestly just as good as the regular
| cheap buns).
|
| Not saying companies need to strive to be 0 carb, that's crazy.
| If they just stopped putting 50g of sugar in everything that
| alone would go a long way. Ps: Allulose/Psicose is amazing.
| GordonS wrote:
| > it really makes me wonder why companies are not making their
| products lower carb to begin with
|
| Cost has got to be one of the biggest factors, but I'd also say
| the overwhelming majority of people still have "fat is bad"
| _firmly_ ingrained into them - it 's going to take a very long
| time to diminish that.
|
| And of course, people like sweet things.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| I was thinking it could be partially due to food getting cheaper
| in recent years, but the data doesn't show a big decrease in
| total amount spent on food during the recent period of increased
| obesity. The big changes happened much earlier:
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/yo...
| imtringued wrote:
| I remember some HN threads about impossible burger and other
| imitation meat. There were comments about how food engineering
| can produce food that tastes even better than regular meat. That
| was shocking to me. We already have hyper palatable processed
| food and they want it to be even worse?
| gambiting wrote:
| I think there are different goals here which aren't necessarily
| overlapping. I would support making plant-based meat subtitutes
| that are so frikking delicious that people want to eat them
| instead of meat. Not because I'm vegetarian(I'm not) but
| because it simply makes sense from the point of view of
| ecological impact of animal farming. The modern western diets
| where people eat meat 3 times a day are crazy(in my opinion) -
| we just don't need that much meat.
|
| So from that point of view, yeah, it would be great if at least
| some people switched to plant based substitutes instead.
|
| Now obviously the problem is that we possibly have the science
| to make these substitutes so delicious, people will overeat
| them and in the process make themselves worse than had they
| just had meat. That is also a concern, absoluteley.
| pif wrote:
| The root problem is that current technology doesn't help us:
| processed food can only be either palatable or calorie poor.
|
| The person who will invent low-calorie bread and cheese, she'll
| be the Messiah :-)
| faichai wrote:
| The lipostat theory is quite interesting. This is pure
| conjecture, but its already known that plastics can impact
| estrogen levels, I wonder if plastics also have some, yet
| unknown, impact on metabolism that is upsetting lipostatic
| homeostasis.
|
| Estrogen, cortisol and testosterone all operate in a delicate,
| interrelated balance, so it's not too big a leap.
| Pyramus wrote:
| I don't think you have to go all the way to plastics and
| chemicals (not saying that they aren't potentially playing
| their part).
|
| Take a simple model with a combination of all the factors the
| author discusses (type of diet, sugar, trans-fats, caloric
| intake, processed foods, exercise, genetics etc), allow
| interaction between the factors, and have the lipostat as the
| dependent variable. I.e. several factors together will, over
| time, upregulate the lipostat.
|
| A relatively simple model that evades the authors objections,
| yet might fit the data.
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| Also the increase in thyroid disease, especially among women,
| may be related.
| derbOac wrote:
| For some reason when I read the lipostat section I was reminded
| of decreases in average body temperature trends over time --
| probably because of the temperature analogies.
|
| I've sometimes wondered if microbiome factors are in play, and
| by extension, things like antibiotic use (maybe there are some
| studies about antibiotic exposure and weight gain?). I've
| usually thought of it in terms of microbiome -> gut ->
| digestion though, and the lipostat section made me wonder if
| it's more like microbiome -> "immune response" -> caloric
| expenditure.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Where can I read more about this?
| derbOac wrote:
| The body temperature decreases?
|
| This study was being discussed quite a bit when it came
| out, although there was prior work on it:
|
| https://elifesciences.org/articles/49555
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-human-body-
| te...
|
| One hypothesis is that there's been a decline in baseline
| immune activity with decreased exposure to pathogens,
| better sanitation, better treatment of infections, etc. But
| people don't know for sure.
|
| I'm not sure that it applies to the obesity crisis as temps
| have been declining over a longer time period than what
| seems to be involved in that. But it got me wondering if
| there's something like that that might have came into play
| later. My guess is _no_ , that it's something else, but I
| could see how antibiotic use might somehow be involved.
| nradov wrote:
| In particular phthalates (plastic softeners) are suspected to
| reduce testosterone. Lower testosterone is linked to fat gain.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Saying "Calories In Calories Out" is what makes you fat is as
| interesting as saying "Money In Money Out" is what makes you
| poor.
|
| It's tautologically true but doesn't help anybody.
| ju_sh wrote:
| Losing fat without any attempt to track calories in vs calories
| out is like trying to improve the performance of an algotighm
| without profiling it or tracking how the changes made affect
| the outcome.
|
| If you're serious about losing fat, it's essential helps to
| track the calories you eat, calories you burn, macro nutrient
| split (carbs, fats, proteins) and your weight.
|
| - Calculate your TDEE (Total daily energy expenditure, also
| known as `maintenance calories`) There are many online
| calculators to do this - Calculate your daily calorie intake to
| lose weight (Subtract 15-20% from your `maintenance calories`)
| - Decide on a rough macro nutrient split (40% protein, 40%
| carb, 20% fat is a good place to start) - Track the calories
| you eat and burn. There are apps for this that make it very
| easy (myfitnesspal is one example) - Weigh yourself regularly
| and record it (Daily is better, first thing in the morning,
| without clothes and after any restroom activity) - If you're
| not losing weight, increase your daily exercise or reduce your
| calories by a further 5% until you see your weight going down -
| Note: A healthy weight loss strategy is to aim to lose 1-2 lbs
| per week
|
| You can absolutely loose fat without doing any of this but it's
| 100x harder and will take much longer.
| oezi wrote:
| I think there are two things to embrace:
|
| - Saving more than 500 calories per day is very hard, thus
| you are likely to only loose 1 lb per week/10 days of body
| fat.
|
| - You need the will power to stay on course and fight off the
| hunger sensation. This is the hardest of any diet.
|
| I don't believe that people can change their diet mix / macro
| nutrient split because there isn't enough choice to change
| your diet fundamentally without becoming bored quickly or
| being unhealthy or eco-unfriendly (for instance eating more
| meat).
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > "Money In Money Out" is what makes you poor.
|
| Actually many programs for social welfare are exactly based on
| the idea that it is more complicated than that.
|
| The proponents of universal basic incomes for example have been
| fighting tooth and nail to even get this "tautological" fact
| accepted, and it is only now taking hold. The consequences of
| that would be that "simply" giving people money makes them less
| poor. It sounds simple when put like that, but it is a real
| struggle to have the conclusions of that be put into policy.
| gadders wrote:
| It helped me. I wanted to lose 16kg by a certain date. I put my
| details into the Precision Nutrition calorie calculator. It
| told me how many calories I would need to consume per day to
| hit my goal.
|
| I tracked my calories, and stuck to the daily allowance it
| recommended. I lost nearly all the weight by the agreed
| timeline (I lost 14.9kg in the end).
| EMM_386 wrote:
| It really is as "simple" as that. While there are many
| biological processes that try to maintain homeostasis and
| weight, if you ingest less calories you will eventually lose
| weight.
|
| Think of it this way ... if you were thrown in prison today
| and they gave you only essential nutrients to survive, you'd
| lose a lot of weight. Your body might go into starvation mode
| first and try to fight against it, but without any calories
| coming in, you will lose weight 100% of the time.
|
| I decided after years of wanting to lose weight, but doing
| nothing about it, I would just give up and do 1,000 calorie
| max / day for 3 months.
|
| I lost 20 pounds to bring my BMI in-range without any other
| changes, and I'm middle aged.
|
| That's not the healthiest way to go about this, but it does
| work.
| gadders wrote:
| I actually wanted to lose the weight for my 50th birthday,
| so I'm not some 25-year old with the metabolism of a
| greyhound.
| phreeza wrote:
| It's obvious to scientifically literate folks, but not to
| everyone.
|
| Much weight loss advice is equivalent to saying "spending money
| in cash is fine, credit cards are what make you poor", which
| actually may contain a grain of truth but kind of obscures the
| actual mechanism.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| If you swallow 16oz of dried corn kernels whole or 16oz of
| cornflour, they have the same calories but you are going to
| metabolize them in a very different way. I don't understand the
| CIN/COUT argument when different calories are metabolized
| differently. Perhaps I am misunderstanding how calories are
| approximated for foods.
| jwdunne wrote:
| It also assumes that the human body is a machine with singular
| inputs and singular outputs, as though it's a pure function.
|
| But it's more complicated than that. Especially when you bring
| homeostasis into it, where the body will adjust calorific
| expenditure downwards in response to sustained reduced
| calorific intake, as just a single example.
|
| But there's lots of things going on that influence the calories
| coming in, the calories stored and the calories expended. It's
| unfair to reduce it down so far.
|
| It leads to fat shaming by people whom have never struggled
| with their weight who justify their cruelty by parroting
| "calories in calories out".
|
| Even worse, some of those will do silly experiments where they
| put on weight really really fast and then lose it just as fast,
| totally ignoring the fact that their body has been in the
| original state for a long time.
| DJBunnies wrote:
| It's not cruel, it's science. If it's not working it's not
| being done correctly. I struggled when I was younger.
| jwdunne wrote:
| Not sure if science ever justifies the cruelty of fat
| shaming mate?
| gadders wrote:
| It's value neutral. It's just a fact. It's like saying
| the sky is blue, or the earth is a sphere. How people
| react to that information is up to them.
|
| What other science would you like prevented to spare
| people's feelings?
| jwdunne wrote:
| So, really, you agree that science cannot justify the
| cruelty of fat shaming? As you said, it's value neutral.
|
| Which part of my comment says I'd like science to spare
| people's feelings?
|
| Show me the science that justifies fat shaming and
| inappropriate behaviour.
|
| Fat shaming somebody because "science" doesn't make you
| any less of shit person. In fact, you can't really use
| any science to excuse poor behaviour.
|
| So I think we might be in violent agreement? Do you talk
| to your mother like that when you misunderstand her? Wow.
| gadders wrote:
| I'm saying that the phenomena of fat shaming should not
| be used to suppress the fact that calories in/calories
| out is how you lose weight and works.
|
| Would I run up to a morbidly fat person and shout
| "Calories in/Calories out"? No. Would I contradict an
| obese person who said "Calories In/Calories Out" was
| wrong? Yes.
| jwdunne wrote:
| Okay, which part of my comment says that fat shaming
| should be used to suppress science?
|
| Which part of my comment says that it's wrong? It IS a
| simplified view and there ARE many more variables that
| influence the success of dietary change. And there are
| even more that influence the wider obesity problem. But
| that doesn't mean I'm saying it's wrong.
|
| As you said, the sky is blue. Is that wrong? No. Is it
| simplified? Yes, sometimes it's grey. Sometimes it's a
| deep blue. Sometimes it's pretty much black. But,
| generally speaking, yeah it's blue.
|
| Is CICO the solution to the obesity epidemic? No, because
| it'd have worked to reduce the epidemic by now. It's
| clearly _not_ the only thing we need to solve the
| epidemic. There is a difference between the method to
| lose weight and the solution to the obesity epidemic. The
| latter has many more variables in play.
|
| Next time you contradict an obese person who "says CICO
| is wrong", make sure they're actually saying it's wrong.
|
| I am, however, glad you wouldn't run up to people and
| shout "calories in / calories out". That's a relief.
| fredophile wrote:
| It's science but it doesn't give very useful actionable
| things you can do to change your weight. Generally people
| interpret it to mean you get two inputs you can change,
| food intake and exercise, and they're independent.
| Unfortunately, those two things are not independent.
| Increased exercise often leads to increased hunger which
| leads to increased eating for many people in the real
| world. Just saying "eat less" in this context is about as
| useful as telling someone to be better at their job. Many
| people will not have the willpower to sustain eating the
| diet they currently eat but eat less of it. Decreasing
| calories consumed can lower basal metabolic rate. You can
| easily google for data on this from the Biggest Loser
| contestants.
|
| There are also other ways to modify those two parameters
| that don't involve food and exercise. Are you a type 1
| diabetic and want to lose weight? Just under dose your
| insulin and the pounds will fly off. Want to lose weight
| but you aren't diabetic? Take a little DNP. Want to lose
| weight faster? Take a little more DNP. Just don't take too
| much or instead of losing weight you'll die of
| hyperthermia. Taking DNP or under dosing insulin are not
| things I would ever recommend anyone do but they are both
| examples of non food and activity related ways to affect
| calories out.
| amelius wrote:
| It's basically differentiating the original equation wrt the
| only quantity you can say something about, which effectively
| throws out all the things you know nothing about and which you
| can then "conveniently" ignore.
| karamanolev wrote:
| In some way, you're right, but I think there's more to it.
| Let's ignore for a moment whether it's true. I've seen it said
| in the sense that if you eat too many "good" calories (from
| salads or other healthy foods) and spend the same, you'll get
| just as fat as from bad calories. So the money analogy in a way
| works - if you get $100 cash, you'll be just as rich/poor as if
| you get them via a bank transfer.
|
| All of that glosses over a million details, like how full
| you'll be feeling after 1000 cal from salad vs 1000 cal from
| Coke, but that's a whole another can of worms.
| defaultname wrote:
| But it's the fundamental, most basic truth.
|
| If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should
| do, it's _eat less_. Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That 's
| incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done,
| but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight
| loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss
| attempts are waving that away and believing some specific
| macronutrient is really the cause, if you just subscribe to
| whatever the current trend is.
|
| People get really upset about the calories reality.
|
| And indeed if you compare caloric intake between say 1970 and
| 2010, there was a significant jump in the average diet. Grain
| products rose, but not nearly as much as fats and oils rose.
| People ate more and they got fatter. When excess accumulates
| over time, the increase doesn't have to be large. More calories
| in, BMI increased.
| tzs wrote:
| People in the 2000's weighed about 10% more than people in
| the '80s who ate the same amount of calories, with the same
| micronutrient distribution, and did the same amount of
| exercise [1].
|
| And what about non-humans? Animals are getting fatter, too
| [2]. Some of this can be explained by humans eating more,
| hence making more food available to those animals that eat
| human leftovers or steal human food. But this weight gain has
| also been noted in laboratory animals which are on controlled
| diets.
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/why-
| it-wa...
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.628
| defaultname wrote:
| The nonsensical "lab animal" argument has been debunked a
| dozen times. It is bullshit. For animal rights reasons,
| labs switched to rats and mice being given a perpetual,
| self-serve diet of food. Unsurprisingly they ended up
| fatter than mice and rats given portioned foods. When they
| are given portioned foods...what do you know, they're not
| fat any more.
|
| "People in the 2000's weighed about 10% more than people in
| the '80s who ate the same amount of calories, with the same
| micronutrient distribution, and did the same amount of
| exercise [1]"
|
| To say that the cited study is laughable gives it far too
| much credit. For instance it specifically and only
| considers _leisure_ activities. As to self-described
| dietary results, the only takeaway is that people are far
| more full of shit now than then. It is Ginny in the
| Sopranos boasting about their diet while eating chocolate
| bars in the laundry room.
|
| It's interesting how gullible people who are otherwise so
| discerning are when it comes to diet, particularly for
| dietary _excuses_. There is no field that has been so rife
| with study that upsets study, and gross scientific
| malpractice, as nutrition. But hey, here 's one study where
| they mangled numbers from sets decades apart and drew some
| viral result. Serious groan.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| TFA, and particularly the second part (link near the bottom)
| does quite a bit to refute this. It's worth reading it all
| the way through.
| Raidion wrote:
| I mean, I think you can make a case that calories in
| calories out might not make as much sense for some thinner
| people in that, almost regardless what they eat, they can
| find ways to either burn or not process the calories. I
| don't think he does such a good job making the case it
| doesn't apply the other way. A body needs a set amount of
| energy to function, you reduce intake enough and weight
| drops. No lack of figeting or slightly lower core temp is
| going to be able to outweigh the lack of calories going in.
| That being said...
|
| I think the real question raised by this article is why
| eating at the level required to maintain a specific body
| weight is second nature to some and torture to others.
| 'Calories in calories out' starts to sound a lot like 'if
| you don't want to be addicted don't do drugs'. It's much
| easier said than done by someone who doesn't understand
| addiction. In fact it's almost worse than addiction, as
| someone hooked on heroin or booze can do rehab or some
| other form where you just can't get ahold of those. But if
| you're addicted to food, you have to deal with the subject
| of your addiction 3 meal times a day (plus advertising!).
| That's a hard place to be.
| defaultname wrote:
| We've known for decades that cigarettes are addictive.
| We've known that opiates are addictive. We know that
| alcohol in excess can be addictive.
|
| Loads of people took in that information and never became
| addicted (at least until the medical industry tricked
| them into addiction). The information "if you don't want
| to be addicted don't do the thing that is sure to get you
| addicted" is _very_ good advice. It is irrefutable
| advice.
|
| Once you're addicted it's an entirely different, much
| more difficult problem. But it isn't a better
| understanding of addiction to say "Whoa, look I used
| heroin at a bunch of parties and now I crave heroin,
| therefore you shouldn't tell people to not do drugs". It
| doesn't follow.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| None of this explains the cross species effects, though.
| Zoo and lab animals are also seeing a rise in obesity
| under controlled diets. There's clearly an additional
| environmental and/or chemical effect involved here.
| qvq wrote:
| It's likely there's another factor but no evidence this
| would cause a human to go from normal BMI to obese on a
| controlled diet.
|
| It seems like the decrease in satiety has a stronger
| effect.
| defaultname wrote:
| It isn't clear at all.
|
| a) Humans are spectacularly efficient at turning solar
| energy into bioavailable calories. This impacts virtually
| every animal.
|
| b) Lab and zoo diets have dramatically changed. For
| instance in the lab there was a change from specific
| portioned diets to the notion that food should always be
| provided. Any study that claims that there was some
| mysterious rise in obesity is simply lying. And again
| there is a push for controlled, restricted diets because
| having sedentary rats and mice who can eat whenever they
| want is yielding unhealthy subjects.
|
| c) The study this article links was lead by a guy who is
| an advisor to Coca-cola, Kraft, Frito-Lay, the Restaurant
| Association, among others. It is a _profoundly_ corrupt
| industry, and yeah the notion that some mysterious
| unknown cause is to blame is convenient in that
| situation.
| defaultname wrote:
| I read the article to the point where it awaits the next,
| sure-fire cure-all outing. It is filled with the same
| delusions and misrepresentations that virtually every
| snake-oil, magical diet fix is.
|
| Haven't people gotten a little less gullible about this
| stuff yet?
|
| Look, some tribe had fruit on the ground and they weren't
| obese. Stuff that pizza is your mouth while we get to the
| bottom of this.
|
| The reality is that calories have never been as available
| and _cheap_. And there is an absolutely lock-step
| correlation between dietary calories and obesity rates. No,
| it isn 't the great mystery that it is held as. Indeed,
| this article spends most of its time debunking "it isn't
| the calories" dietary trends -- low fat, low carb, low
| sugar, low fat.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > The reality is that calories have never been as
| available and cheap.
|
| Don't forget _addictive_. We 've become incredibly good
| at making food that makes you want to keep eating more of
| it. Once you pop, you can't stop.
| kiba wrote:
| I don't try to measure how much calories I eat. I just skip
| meals. Turn out it's a lot easier than eating less per meals.
| Fasting is much easier for me to do.
|
| However, when your parents constantly ask you if you want to
| eat, it's a bitch to resists the temptation.
|
| I had lost 20 lbs without needing to keep track of how much
| food I eat, as opposed to how many meals I eat.
|
| Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how you're going to
| keep your desired weight. CICO in the long term is a failure.
| Partly, because our model is actually wrong. Exercise is
| basically useless for reducing calories, because it's both
| very hard to do a lot of it, and your basal metabolism
| adjusts in the long run by adjusting itself to be lower. You
| should still do exercise, and if you can around 750 minutes
| per week, which is when you start hitting diminishing return.
| defaultname wrote:
| > Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how you're going
| to keep your desired weight
|
| People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric
| intake has a _perfect_ correlation with obesity. The
| psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science
| of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very
| firm.
|
| The Japanese eat, on average, 25% less calories than
| Americans. They have an obesity rate of 4% versus 36% in
| the US. This despite eating loads of "bad" calories like
| simple carbs (white processed rice).
| kiba wrote:
| _People at a healthy weight consume less calories.
| Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity.
| The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the
| science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier"
| is very firm._
|
| It is uncontroversial that by reducing calories in one's
| diet that it will cause weight loss. The controversy is
| centered around weight control, whether an individual can
| keep the weight at a stable level over the long run. In
| that sense, all diet fails.
|
| I would contend that how many calories a person eat is
| only a proximal cause of obesity, especially since CICO
| is actually an incorrect model of how our body work.
| nradov wrote:
| Almost all diets succeed, if you actually follow them
| instead of just complaining. But it requires making a
| permanent lifestyle change. I know several people who
| have done that over the long run.
| kiba wrote:
| _Almost all diets succeed, if you actually follow them
| instead of just complaining. But it requires making a
| permanent lifestyle change. I know several people who
| have done that over the long run._
|
| Several people as in how many out of those that failed.
| If the statistics tell us that 90% of people failed, then
| these diets or programs are still an utter failure. By
| saying it is some kind of moral failing or willpower
| means we decided to be lazy about investigating the cause
| of obesity.
|
| Remember, the obesity epidemic is a modern phenomenon.
| There are countries around the world that are still
| relatively lean.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > People at a healthy weight consume less calories.
| Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity.
| The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the
| science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier"
| is very firm.
|
| The word 'psychological' is doing a lot of heavy lifting
| here. We have no reason to believe it is more or less
| likely for overeating to be caused by psychological
| rather than metabolic or other systemic reasons.
|
| The fact of the matter remains that some people struggle
| with their weight while others don't. CICO doesn't
| address this at all.
|
| Of course, CICO also doesn't work very well when
| comparing between people, despite your claim. For
| example, people with endocrin disorders are well known to
| lose or gain weight disproportionately in relation to
| their diets. Base metabolic rates vary significantly
| between people, even healthy ones. There are other
| discrepancies as well, which mean that, knowing person A
| and person B eat the same amount of calories and exercise
| the same amount will not help you to predict the weight
| gain/loss difference between them.
| nradov wrote:
| Except in rare cases of severe disease, basal metabolic
| rates only vary by a few percent between people with the
| same sex, height, and weight. Some people are too quick
| to blame a "slow metabolism" for gaining weight. I always
| recommend they quantify it will a simple resting
| metabolic rate test. Those are cheap and non-invasive.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Yes of course. But its a fact: a given person can
| restrict calories from where they are at, and lose more.
| That's physics. Anything getting away with that simple
| algorithm is fairly classed under "psychological".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's true, but uninteresting. Insisting on this truth is
| harmful, because it makes an assumption that people can
| just choose to eat less without any negative
| consequences. People love pretending that calories in is
| simply a matter of rational choice, not a complex result
| of our inner machinery.
|
| We are biological machines, and the amount we eat is
| biologically determined by our bodies (assuming food is
| widely available). We can somewhat influence that with
| rational thought, but to a limited degree, just like we
| can choose to breathe in faster or slower, but we can't
| maintain that for any length of time.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hey I'm all aboard that. It's under the umbrella of
| "psychological".
| kiba wrote:
| Your body adjusting itself to burn less energy is also
| physics.
|
| It's like having a thermostat that adjust the temperature
| to 70 degrees, and you want it to be 75. So your solution
| is to bring in more heat while ignoring the thermostat.
| The thermostat adjust by engaging the air conditioner.
| Which certainly will work, but also very inefficient.
|
| Your body isn't that stupid and it's not certainly a dumb
| engine.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Adjust within limits. And the limits are fairly narrow.
| It's also true that hard exercise will blow away those
| limits, and require more food. Every single time.
|
| But hard exercise is hard! Folks don't want to do it.
| They want to stretch and walk around a track and pretend.
| But they don't want to do 20 miles on a bike. They
| convince themselves that they can't. Or they try and get
| aches and pains and decide that's bad. Pretty much
| throwing up roadblocks right and left, anything to avoid
| the work.
|
| We all know this. It's why there are 1000 books about
| tricks and diets and how to fool yourself. Because we
| want to do that instead. But we can stop enabling that;
| stop making excuses for small issues about body
| adjustments and so on.
| kiba wrote:
| OK? You and I can do these things, but we are outliers.
| For example, 750 minutes of exercise per week is a lot is
| what I estimated from a study for diminishing return for
| health. That's 12.5 hours, let alone meeting the weekly
| minimum requirement.
|
| Most people are busy, they have jobs or families or kids.
| Yet decades ago, these same people aren't fat.
|
| _We all know this. It 's why there are 1000 books about
| tricks and diets and how to fool yourself. Because we
| want to do that instead. But we can stop enabling that;
| stop making excuses for small issues about body
| adjustments and so on._
|
| There's certainly no magic trick, but being dogmatic or
| smug isn't helpful either.
| MaysonL wrote:
| > That's incredibly hard to do, of course
|
| Only for fat people. People like me find it fairly easy.
|
| Over my adult life[currently 75yo], my weight has fluctuated
| modestly year to year (as measured by the tightness of my
| belt). When my abdominal circumference has grown by a couple
| belt notches, I tend to eat less for a while, until the belt
| is less tight. THIS REQUIRES ALMOST NO WILLPOWER OR CONSCIOUS
| ATTENTION ON MY PART. Why????
| pydry wrote:
| It no more fundamental or surprising than the "truth" that
| giving up smoking is done by not smoking cigarettes.
| defaultname wrote:
| The point is that it's _entirely unsurpising_. It 's the
| most basic, trivial thing possible.
|
| But there are massive industries[1] that exist to tell
| people that no, it's really that you aren't eating enough
| food that is red. Or that fell to the ground. Or whatever.
| Whatever magical, simple fix means that they can still eat
| an excess of calories. These diets have a failure rate
| approaching 100%. The US is the most diet focused country
| in planetary history, yet also one of the fattest.
|
| Maybe pretending that the basic thermodynamics are just
| some unachievable mirage is a really profoundly stupid
| approach?
|
| And yes, people who have actually lost weight (or, more
| often than not, not gain it in the first place) simply ate
| less (it's magnitudes harder to burn more calories to any
| meaningful amount). Virtually universally.
|
| But this makes obese people angry. It always makes them
| angry.
|
| [1] - And authors. This paper cites Stephen Guyenet
| casually dismissing "CICO". The guy makes his living
| pitching easy "AHA" moments to fat people. It is,
| ironically, his bread and butter.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Your fundamental truth is based on a false premises that
| the goal is weight loss as opposed to health, more
| specifically metabolic health.
|
| But lets assume it all boils down to calories in/calories
| out, your solution is singularly focused on calories in
| (eating less), that in a vacuum has no effect of calories
| out except generally a negative effect (your body will
| adapt and try to burn less calories). Thus, you are
| ignoring that the form of calories in directly effects
| the calories out, and that there are better ways to
| balance the equation by increasing calories out without
| necessarily reducing calories in, or in some cases
| increasing calories out might even require a caloric
| surplus (such as muscle building).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Your fundamental truth is based on a false premises
| that the goal is weight loss as opposed to health
|
| I think you're the one with the misconception. Obesity is
| consistently a contributor to health problems. Losing
| weight is definitely healthier for anyone who is obese
| and the way you lose weight is to _eat less_. Period.
| Full stop.
|
| There are strategies for _eating less_ that may or may
| not be more effective for most people, but it when it
| gets right down to it anyone telling you that you don 't
| have to _eat less_ is a snakeoil salesman.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > Losing weight is definitely healthier for anyone who is
| obese and the way you lose weight is to eat less. Period.
| Full stop.
|
| What if someone eats the same but creates the caloric
| deficit through increased exercise? Will they lose
| weight?
|
| Just like OP you want to simplify things as calories
| in/calories out while entirely ignoring calories out.
|
| Losing weight is not healthy in and of itself, even in
| obese people, however, losing weight can be a byproduct
| of making healthy dietary and lifestyle changes.
|
| Calories is just a unit of measurement of metabolic
| energy, that energy comes in 3 forms fat (ketones),
| glucose, and alcohol and is metabolized into energy
| (adp), but that energy production (metabolism) is more a
| measurement of health than a measurement of the total
| number of calories in. That is what you are ignoring.
|
| Edit: I'm sure you have lost your weight through eating
| less. But have you changed and improved the actual foods
| you consume also? Have you begun to burn more through
| improved dietary metabolism and/or increased exercise? I
| have a hard time believing one day you were eating
| nutritionally deficient and caloric dense foods and lost
| 150 by making no other changes than simply eating less of
| the same calorically dense and nutritionally deficient
| food. Even more unlikely would be you being obese eating
| low calories nutritionally dense foods, and lost 150lbs
| reducing the calories.
| defaultname wrote:
| How does it ignore it while specifically citing it, over
| and over again?
|
| However the basic reality is that it's a lot
| easier/achievable to significantly change calories in.
| Simple keeping your body and brain operating is actually
| a pretty energy expensive function, such that
| dramatically increasing your activity is only going to
| mildly increase your daily energy use.
|
| You can not eat that muffin....or exercise on the stair
| climber for an _hour_ , for instance. As an aside, loads
| of exercise equipment and guides effectively lie about
| this by including basal calories with active calories,
| grossly overstating the calories "burned" by activities.
|
| So _again_ , exercise. Eat healthy. But most importantly
| of all, eat less.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > What if someone eats the same but creates the caloric
| deficit through increased exercise? Will they lose
| weight?
|
| Yes, but there's a reason for the saying "you can't
| outrun a bad diet". I get it though, you're technically
| correct and that's the best kind according to meme
| science.
|
| > I'm sure you have lost your weight through eating less.
| But have you changed and improved the actual foods you
| consume also?
|
| Yes, because that's one of the things that makes it
| easier. Some foods are more satiating than others. And
| yes, I did increase in exercise. In fact, the exercise
| preceded the weight loss because the activity I took up
| (rock climbing) was what finally provided enough
| motivation for me to overcome my desire to eat more.
|
| > I have a hard time believing one day you were eating
| nutritionally deficient and caloric dense foods and lost
| 150 by making no other changes than simply eating less of
| the same calorically dense and nutritionally deficient
| food.
|
| It's harder, but definitely possible: http://www.cnn.com/
| 2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/....
|
| My point being, you can add all the exercise you want but
| if you're not paying attention to your caloric intake
| then chances are you're just going to eat more to make up
| for the expended calories.
| defaultname wrote:
| Obesity has an _extremely_ high correlation with poor
| health. But that 's irrelevant as this thread is
| specifically on weight.
|
| "that in a vacuum has no effect of calories out except
| generally a negative effect (your body will adapt and try
| to burn less calories)"
|
| This is comically overstated. No, your body doesn't
| magically become super efficient. This is, again, feel
| good pablum to make people feel better about their
| situation, sure it is an unwinnable battle without Magic
| Product or System ("buy my new book and subscribe to my
| It's Everyone Else's Fault newsletter!"). But the feel
| good stuff clearly is astonishingly ineffective. This
| tact hasn't worked.
|
| Find any person who is overweight but claims they starve
| themselves and log and count calories. In 100% of cases
| you will find a calorie excess, likely significant. Find
| someone who is a healthy weight but claims they "eat
| anything they want". In 100% of cases -- okay 99.9% maybe
| they have a big tapeworm -- they will have a lower
| caloric intake.
|
| The latter is someone who likely skips meals. They don't
| snack. They don't drink giant sugary drinks. And then
| when it's pizza day they have four slices and all of the
| high BMI sorts lament how they wish they had such a "high
| metabolism" and that they can "eat anything". It's all
| bullshit.
|
| There is a significant, very difficult psychological
| component to eating in excess. It is a very hard problem.
| But I'll take every angry downvote by people who
| seriously want to refute the core, fundamental truth
| about calories, likely while parroting nonsensical myth.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It angers me that your comments have been consistently
| grey. As I've mentioned elsewhere I've lost significant
| amounts of weight (>150lbs, about half my peak body
| weight) and so am excruciatingly painfully aware of the
| absolute truth of what you're saying.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Find any person who is overweight but claims they
| starve themselves and log and count calories. In 100% of
| cases you will find a calorie excess, likely significant.
| Find someone who is a healthy weight but claims they "eat
| anything they want". In 100% of cases -- okay 99.9% maybe
| they have a big tapeworm -- they will have a lower
| caloric intake.
|
| I take great issue with you saying 'they _claim_ to
| starve themselves '. The entire point is that people who
| are obese can feel that they are starving while eating
| twice the calories that they should. Some other people
| feel full after eating half the calories that they
| should. This is the almost the entire problem, the
| unexplained difference.
|
| And, despite your claim, there are also demonstrable
| differences in the base metabolic rate between people.
| One of the most basic is the difference between men and
| women, which is usually estimated to be about 25% -- men
| are generally accepted to have to eat about 2500 Cal per
| day to keep their weight, while women should only eat
| about 2000 Cal (for example, by the NHS [0]). There is no
| reason to think that, if there can be a 25% difference in
| the BMR between men and women, there can't be similar
| differences between individuals as well. Of course, you
| won't find anyone who eats 10k Cal and is not gaining
| weight (outside professional athletes, perhaps), or
| anyone who is eating 100 Cal and not losing weight. But
| it's quite plausible for someone to eat two extra pizza
| slices and still lose weight compared to someone else.
|
| [0] https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-
| diet/wha...
| defaultname wrote:
| >I take great issue with you saying 'they claim to starve
| themselves'.
|
| I'm being pretty overt that when people make that claim
| they are often being dishonest. They know they are eating
| too much. There are psychological issues underlying this,
| but if someone tells you how little they eat yet they're
| gaining weight, they're likely lying.
|
| > And, despite your claim, there are also demonstrable
| differences in the base metabolic rate between people.
|
| Nowhere did I contest this. Men have more muscle mass
| than women and are generally larger. But between people
| otherwise equal, claims about varying metabolisms are
| largely _bullshit_. It is magnitudes less of an influence
| than it is held as.
|
| I've been cited as a "fast metabolism" examples many
| times in my life. I skip meals constantly, can manage to
| go through a movie without eating a bucket of butter-
| soaked popcorn and a jug of coke, etc. I eschew all of
| those things. Then there's a bbq and I eat two burgers
| and the upper BMI people all gather around to tell the
| tale about how easy it is for me, what with my "fast
| metabolism". It's horseshit. It's destructive, self-
| enabling nonsense.
|
| Another guy mentioned that when his belt size starts
| getting tight he knows it's time to cut back. Precisely
| my tactic. There have been a few times where suddenly
| slacks are a little tight and it isn't a signal that I
| need to buy new clothes or go to the next rung, but
| instead means it's time that I skip the occasional snack.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I'm not surprised to see your comment in the grey even though
| everything you're saying is absolutely true. I've lost
| >150lbs and kept it off[0] and I can assure everyone that the
| one thing that absolutely 100% works for losing weight is
| eating less. It's also the most difficult thing, which is why
| everyone wants to believe bullshit marketing that says
| otherwise.
|
| [0] put about 30lb on during the pandemic period that I'm
| working off again.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That is well known and undisputed. The question is: when
| can you stop eating less than your body is telling you that
| you should? Did you ever get rid of the hunger?
|
| I lost about 30kg (105 -> 75) by eating less, excersing
| more, all in about the span of a year. I never stopped
| feeling hungry overall for this period, constantly had to
| fight the urge to eat more. In periods where high stress
| reduced my willpower, I started putting back weight. I've
| put on about 10kg back in the following 5 years, so on
| balance I'm still in pretty good shape, but the trend is
| clear.
|
| The mystery is why I have this relationship with food, and
| why other people don't. Most thin people are not going to
| bed dreaming of tomorrow's meal.
| defaultname wrote:
| "That is well known and undisputed."
|
| Unfortunately, loads of people in this very thread are
| disputing it. This submission is based upon the bizarre
| hope that there's a mysterious external influence that's
| actually causing people to gain weight, and not the
| merely coincidental simultaneous rise in caloric intake.
|
| The psychological element is complex and profoundly
| difficult. That is without question.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am not sure whether we can reduce this to psychological
| elements. After all, laboratory rats and wild animals
| that eat our food leftovers grow fatter too, not just us
| humans. Arguably, rat or raccoon psychology is rather
| different from ours.
|
| I believe that the problem is not that different from the
| problem of alcoholism. Everyone lives in a society soaked
| with alcohol, some people do not feel an urge to drink at
| all, some people manage to keep their consumption in
| healthy limits for 50 years, some end up as hopeless
| wretches in 10 years.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's very possible that there is an external influence
| that's causing people to feel the need to eat more and
| gain more weight from what they're eating - this is
| precisely my point, and the point of the article.
|
| The fact that you can force yourself to eat less than you
| feel the need to and lose weight in the process does not
| prove, as you seem to think, that weight gain is simply
| explained by people being weak willed and eating burgers
| instead of salad. You still have to ask why this change
| actually occurred, since it seems that it has occurred in
| the general US population about 50 years ago and most of
| the world has been following suit.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Where did they say it had to do with being "weak willed"?
| That's your projection.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The whole point of the article is that the rise on
| caloric intake isn't merely coincidental and
| simultaneous, but there's some mysterious external
| influence that causes people in comparable conditions to
| eat more calories.
|
| People in cushy office jobs eating as much calories as
| they want in 1900 are much less obese than similar people
| in 2000. How come? It's not that the 1900s office workers
| put in more effort or attention to limit their calorie
| consumption and burn more calories, it's entirely the
| other way around.
|
| People in another culture eating a very sweet-heavy diet
| (and eating as much of it as they want) apparently
| consume much less calories than similar people in USA.
| How come?
|
| The psychological element apparently wasn't as difficult
| some decades ago - people in 1960s who had as much food
| as they wanted, and the same kinds of tempting calorie-
| rich snacks available, were much less obese not because
| they were better at overcoming some psychological
| difficulties, but because apparently much fewer of them
| had such difficulties to overcome. How come?
|
| It would be valid to reduce weight gain to "How to eat as
| much calories as you should instead of as much calories
| as you intuitively want" if and only if wanting to eat
| much more calories than you should is some innate,
| natural thing. The article points out that the spread of
| this tendency is a _novel_ thing, it used to be rare, and
| perhaps it can be made rare again, so it 's worth
| investigating the cause of that unhealthy appetite
| miscalibration instead of having people fight through the
| symptom (which they're failing at, because it's hard).
|
| If someone's organism was working properly, they should
| not need to pay attention to CICO as the body will
| balance both "CI" and "CO" to get a decent non-obese
| result - the experience of earlier times and other
| cultures shows that the human body almost always (96% of
| non-obesity) does that naturally. If now the same
| mechanism is failing for 40% of the population instead of
| 4%, that is not caused by a change in ignoring CICO,
| people were ignoring CICO hundred years ago as well.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yep, that's basically the same with me and as far as I
| can tell pretty much everyone else who's had to lose a
| lot of weight. The only thing I've ever found that
| allowed me to not feel hungry was amphetamines. Until
| that brief period where I was on them I'd never before
| had the experience of forgetting to eat that people
| sometimes talk about. Unfortunately, amphetamines bring a
| lot of undesirable effects with them too.
|
| I eagerly await the day science figures out how to stop
| my food cravings and delivers it in a form I can obtain
| easily.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > Saying "Calories In Calories Out" is what makes you fat is as
| interesting as saying "Money In Money Out" is what makes you
| poor.
|
| But that is not what anyone I've heard is saying.
|
| At least I think of "calories in / calories out" is a an
| attempt to defend against people believing in miracle diets or
| that they "cannot" lose weight.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Absolutely. CICO is the kind of thing that is so obviously true
| that anyone claiming it isn't shouldn't be taken seriously. I
| wouldn't say CICO doesn't help anyone though, because there's a
| whole lot of people out there trying to make money by telling
| you you can ignore CICO _with this one simple trick_. CICO is a
| useful thing to keep telling yourself when trying to lose
| weight because the calories are everything and there 's no
| cheating it. Trust me, I have tried.
|
| Source: lost >150lbs and kept it off until the pandemic where I
| gained about 30 of it back. Stress is a bitch.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| CICO makes sense as a rule of thumb, but the _kind_ of
| calories certainly matters. I 'm no dietician, but
| carbohydrates, sugar, and fat each react differently with the
| body's digestive and endocrine system. Surely that has some
| effect beyond mere CICO calculations. I'd love to see a study
| that compares change in bodyfat with 2000 calories of cake
| frosting vs 2000 calories of red meat.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I'm not aware of any such study, however there was this: ht
| tp://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/.
| ..
|
| In which a man loses 27lbs on a diet of twinkies and was
| even healthier overall according to all metrics.
|
| Between this and personal experience I'm prepared to say
| that as far as weight loss is concerned it really doesn't
| matter. Granted, different foods may have an effect on
| mood, energy level, and satiety which will all contribute
| to the CO part of the CICO equation, but all other
| variables kept constant a calorie is a calorie.
| dobin wrote:
| If someone can't eat less calories than he expends, thats
| usually called addiction (boredom, food as reward etc.), and
| should be treated accordingly
| captainmuon wrote:
| I've never understood calories. Sure if you eat less but keep
| the food composition and exercize the same, you loose weight.
| That's trivial. But calories is energy and weight is mass. I've
| joked if you eat a bar of plutonium you won't gain a ton. And
| if you eat a kg of sugar, you'll get a stomach ache but won't
| suddenly gain a lot.
|
| I think something that is often neglected is: What portion of
| the calories you eat is used, what portion is stored, and what
| portion is discarded? It seems there is an adjusting screw that
| makes us store more of the consumed calories than before. If we
| just eat less calories total, we also gain less (sure), but we
| often won't have enough power to go around.
|
| I can't find the source anymore, but I read a theory about high
| fructose corn sugar, or glucose-fructose sirup. Many debunkers
| say there is no problem with glucose-fructose sirup over
| sucrose (plain sugar), since sucrose is just split in the body
| into glucose and fructose, so it's the same. But the theory
| went that the body regulates sugar intake by regulating the
| breakdown of sucrose. If it is already broken down, there is
| nothing stopping the cells from taking all the simple sugars
| and using them.
|
| I don't know if there is any merit to that idea - it doesn't
| matter, it's just the pattern of the argument I find
| interesting - that you have to understand the metabolic
| pathways and what the body does with the nutrients, rather than
| just count calories.
| guerrilla wrote:
| When people say calories they mean calories that can be
| converted to ATP. This is why fiber is not considered to have
| calories (for humans, but is for cows) despite containing
| forms of energy.
| nradov wrote:
| Soluable fiber does have calories for humans.
|
| https://www.fiberfacts.org/fibers-count-calories-
| carbohydrat...
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| You're saying fiber content is actually stripped out of
| calorie counts on packaging?
| guerrilla wrote:
| I oversimplified but yes almost.
|
| > Determining whether or not fiber calories should
| "count" depends on context and requires some background.
| Calories are a basic unit of energy that measure, among
| other things, how much burning power they provide to the
| body. Fats, proteins, carbohydrates and alcohol provide
| the body with energy or calories. The traditional
| estimates are that 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories,
| each gram of either proteins and carbohydrates provide 4
| calories, and a gram of alcohol provides 7 calories.
| However, this doesn't account for differences in how well
| food is digested and the nutrients available to the body.
| Poorly digested foods may not release as much energy for
| the body to use. This is particularly important in the
| case of fibers.
|
| > Dietary fibers are complex carbohydrates, so some
| people estimate that they provide 4 calories per gram
| just like any other carbohydrate. However, others say
| that calories from fiber don't count since your body's
| digestive enzymes can't break down fiber. However, fibers
| differ in how well they are digested or how much energy
| is available to the body. Some fibers, called soluble
| fibers, either absorb water and become gels or dissolve
| in water and reach the intestine where they are digested
| by bacteria. As they are digested by bacteria, soluble
| fibers produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that
| provide your body energy. The US Food and Drug
| Administration (FDA) estimates that fibers fermented by
| bacteria provide about 2 calories per gram of fiber.
| Insoluble fibers travel to the intestine with very little
| change. Instead of being digested, insoluble fibers
| increase bulk, soften stool, and shorten transit time
| through the gastro-intestinal tract. Because these fibers
| are not digested at all, the FDA estimates that insoluble
| fibers do not contribute any calories.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| It helped me a lot. It was very easy to use, and by not having
| any off-limits foods or similar, just a calorie target, it
| helped me find meals that I enjoyed while keeping me full.
|
| It also was a nice perspective to have in mind for me. Calories
| in, calories out means it doesn't really matter what I do
| today, it's what I do each day that matters.
| joflicu wrote:
| How do you know the calories of home-cooked or restaurant
| meals to estimate the targets accurately?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Restaurants are usually difficult, so I treated them as an
| "off day", and hence would not go to them too often. One
| might order a salad, but who knows how much sugar, oils and
| whatnot they put in there.
|
| For home-cooked I would do rough estimation based on weight
| and some quick web searches for calorie content of the
| ingredients.
|
| After a short while I got a pretty decent hang of where the
| calories were, so could focus more on those. I had a small
| kitchen weight for the "heavy hitters", for the rest I just
| estimated based on listed weight and how much I used (~1/3
| of package fex).
|
| In the beginning I did weigh slices of bread and so on, and
| quickly built up a good overview over how many calories
| there were in such recurring items. Except for oils, butter
| and similar I wouldn't be super-accurate.
|
| But having a fairly good idea of how many calories was in
| my food really helped me plan portion sizes and
| compositions to roughly match the deficit I wanted, as
| determined by a web page estimating my calorie
| requirement[1].
|
| Like I said, focusing purely on calories in, calories out,
| rather than say "yes foods" and "no foods", made it a lot
| easier for me as I could eat what I wanted, just perhaps
| not as much.
|
| For example, I quickly found out that my weekend favorite
| of steak with french fries and bearnaise was way over
| target. However, I found that if I ensured my steak was no
| more than 250g, swapped french fries for quality green peas
| and reduced the butter in the sauce by half, the calories
| were around my target value. So I could still enjoy my
| weekend treat.
|
| One potential issue was to feel full while reducing portion
| sizes. For that I leaned on some studies I read about which
| seemed to suggest high protein and high fiber. So I tried
| to have at least 20% of my calories in proteins, and also
| have as much fiber as possible. My breakfast bread is 90+%
| whole grain, my pasta is whole grain, I swapped out iceberg
| lettuce for romain lettuce (which has much more fiber) etc.
|
| Based on this I had a almost entirely linear decrease in
| weight over a year, without feeling like I was on a diet.
| In the end I lost 30kg.
|
| [1]: https://nhi.no/skjema-og-
| kalkulatorer/kalkulatorer/diverse/b...
| tracedddd wrote:
| You measure everything as best you can, and generally avoid
| restaurants.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Weighing of components. Keep digital kitchen scales on the
| table and use them all the time. E.g. if you eat breakfast
| cereal, put the bowl on scales, press button, put in
| cereal, remember the weight, press button, pour milk,
| remember the weight. The same for everything you put on a
| pan. Don't forget to include the cooking oil, it makes a
| surprisingly large contribution to the total calories of
| the meal. If you're sharing meals, then you know the "total
| calories" you put in it, weigh the final product (it
| generally will be significantly different than what you put
| in) and weigh what's on your plate - so you know that _you_
| ate e.g. 40% of the total. It doesn 't take much time
| (unless your scales suck), but it does take much attention
| and looks weird. It's a pain in the ass when starting out,
| but becomes easier when I can just reuse the numbers from
| when I made the same thing last week.
|
| Some types of meals are easier than others, though - e.g.
| if you make a large pot of "non-uniform" soup for the whole
| family for multiple meals, then it's going to be an
| estimate. It's socially inappropriate to do it at some
| situations (e.g. if you're visiting your grandma who's
| providing a meal), but on most days you should be able to
| track how much calories you got on that single day.
|
| Some restaurants will provide numbers for their dishes,
| some won't. For takeaway/home orders weighing gives a good
| estimate - if you don't have the numbers for some kebab or
| sushi or pizza, then you can assume that it's going to be
| the same per unit of weight as someone else's similar
| product, what matters is _how much_ of double cheese
| pepperoni pizza you eat, not the particular pizza maker.
| pif wrote:
| > Mystery 8: Diets Don't Work
|
| As an obese person who tried several times to follow medical
| advise, this does not surprise me, not at all!
|
| Every diet is about calories and sport, which cannot hurt. But
| every diet completely misses the elephant in the room: hunger!
|
| Any medical procedure is only worth pursuing if it gives you a
| higher quality of life in the long term. A constant hunger cannot
| compensate for any weight loss.
| gadders wrote:
| >> Any medical procedure is only worth pursuing if it gives you
| a higher quality of life in the long term. A constant hunger
| cannot compensate for any weight loss.
|
| As long as you're consciously making that trade off. Hunger vs
| shorter life, health conditions etc. I think that's a personal
| choice for the individual.
| garganzol wrote:
| Constant hunger is a hallmark sign of insulin resistance. The
| good thing is you can actually measure it in HOMA-IR test.
| Ueland wrote:
| > But every diet completely misses the elephant in the room:
| hunger!
|
| And this is why a new drug just approved in the US for obesity
| is hailed as a game changed, NovoNordisk's semaglutide.
| (Wegovy) The "only" thing it does is mange the hunger levels in
| your body so you dont feel hungry all the time.
|
| I think there was a study back in February for it which gave
| something like a 15% weight loss after a year, *on average*.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| One such study is here:
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032183
| LQexplanation wrote:
| Metformin and myo-inositol solved this issue for me. Only after
| solving issues with pre-diabetes I was able to start losing
| weight without constant hunger.
| treeman79 wrote:
| The Satiety Index is for measuring how satisfied you are with
| various food. Enter the humble potato.
| https://scottabelfitness.com/potato-and-the-satiety-index/
|
| I did a sweet potato diet for a month a couple of years ago for
| medical reasons.
|
| I was never hungry.
| wickoff wrote:
| I've always been a somewhat active person (at least 10 hours
| spent walking/cycling every week). Did it just because I liked
| it, but it never helped with weight loss.
|
| Switching cardio for resistance training (5x5) helped immensely
| with no changes in diet. My weight has dropped slightly, but my
| body composition changed a lot. Cardio became much easier after
| building some muscle mass.
|
| There is also something addictive to increasing the weight you
| can lift, fits right in with gamer/nerd mentality.
| handrous wrote:
| I've found most cardio to have practically no weight-loss
| benefit for me, while weight lifting has _way_ more than it
| should according to e.g. calorie-burn calculators or tables.
| All I can figure is that lifting does something to my
| metabolism, on the order of hours to days after, that running
| or cycling doesn 't.
|
| Swimming also seems very effective, though I've not checked
| whether that effect's outside what's expected, or just
| normal.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| I thought we already figured out at least part of the problem or
| the main problem
|
| Sugar
|
| Yutkin Lufkin Etc
|
| Book: Pure, White, and Deadly
| EMM_386 wrote:
| The article covers this, and sugar is not the root cause:
|
| > A Tanzanian hunter-gatherer society called the Hadza get
| about 15 percent of their calories from honey. Combined with
| all the sugar they get from eating fruit, they end up eating
| about the same amount of sugar as Americans do. Despite this,
| the Hadza do not exhibit obesity.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| you have a lot of confidence in a theory that sugar is not a
| main or the root cause of obesity, all based on...a single
| tribe?
|
| that eats unprocessed sugar? including that found in fruits??
| EMM_386 wrote:
| The article clearly explains all of this. It's more than
| one tribe.
|
| Part II is equally interesting.
|
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/11/a-chemical-
| hunger-p...
|
| > We can further cite the fact that many cultures, such as
| the Hadza of Tanzania, the Mbuti of the Congo, and the Kuna
| of Panama all eat diets relatively high in sugar (sometimes
| as high at 80%), and yet none of these cultures have
| noticeable rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular
| disease, etc.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| ok, _multiple_ tribes, that -- unlike us
| westernized/modernized/uncivilized people -- eat
| _un_processed sugars, _un_processed foods, etc.
|
| i'm all for looking at populations of folks and then
| looking at the effects of their new diets -- whether they
| moved to the food, or the food moved to them -- but i
| don't even see the beginnings of an apples-to-apples
| comparison here.
|
| to me, a layman, i don't see Nutrasweet and sugar and
| honey and cookies and apples to be all the same in terms
| of the effects of their 'sugars' on the body.
|
| i must be missing something.
| brazzy wrote:
| The article cites evidence showing that this is simply not
| true.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| bold statement. i wonder why you're so completely convinced?
|
| is it that the author is The Smahtest Guy To Evah Live?
|
| or....i mean, s/he has a long list of Nobel Prizes in
| Physiology?
|
| or maybe just some long history of unbelievably incredibly
| insightful comments/writing/literature/research on this or
| any other topic?
|
| i figure i've read and listened to at least dozens but
| probably hundreds of articles, books, youtubes, etc. over the
| past few years, and i'm not convinced i have the answer, but
| one blog post citing one tribe and you're all in? seems
| strange to me.
|
| i suspect a plurality of folks would say that there are
| multiple contributing factors to obesity, something like:
| - sugar (in particular, highly processed sugar in all its
| forms/delivery mechanisms), - highly processed foods
| generally (don't send 'full' signals to the brain, lack of
| fiber, etc.), - modern lifestyle/quick eating/lack of
| exercise, cheap sugary/processed/fatty foods, etc.
|
| ...but to rule out sugar....bold.
| fithisux wrote:
| Fantastic series of articles. I tend to believe that food has
| become some kind of additive drug that cheats the way homeostasis
| work in order to sustain spending. Can't wait to read all.
| syamilmj wrote:
| What about stress?
|
| Elevated cortisol level induces over-eating; moreover, increases
| craving for high-sugar, high-fat foods.
|
| The big change in human behavior in the last 2 decades is that
| now people consume more information that leads to depression,
| anxiety and stress.
| fredophile wrote:
| The article also talks about changes in the weight of zoo and
| lab animals. Stress may be a factor in weight gain in humans
| but it wouldn't explain the animal data so I don't think it's
| the only, or primary, factor.
| syamilmj wrote:
| The article pointed out a paper on an increase of 1.4%
| overweight horses. It does not seem to have a meaningful
| relationship with the steep increase of overweight population
| in human (~24%).
| helloworld11 wrote:
| The obesity epidemic, as the author describes it, isn't a good
| thing, and for us to have BMI tendencies similar to those of late
| 19th century Americans would probably be better (excepting of
| course their other major health problems from that time) but in
| relative terms, I'd consider today's obesity problems in most of
| the population much better than the near starvation that most of
| humanity lived in during the vast majority of history, even up to
| the early 20th century.
|
| For all but our most very recent ancestors, periods of chronic
| hunger was just a missed crop or bad harvesting season away and
| mass starvation was only slightly more distant. Famines were
| common in most of the world and often killed many millions per
| year, almost every year during millennia, of all ages, including
| children and infants. Obesity-caused deaths are still deaths but
| at least they tend far more towards killing later in life and are
| much more in the hands of any given individual to avoid, as
| opposed to starving because your whole region no longer has
| enough food to keep you living regardless of your dietary
| choices.
|
| Generations of people prior to all but the last century or so of
| history would be amazed, and possibly even envious at how
| abuntantly and cheaply most of the population can feed itself
| today, even to the point of chronic obesity.
| briefcomment wrote:
| > "Something seems to have changed. But surprisingly, we don't
| seem to have any idea what that thing was."
|
| We have ideas. Polyunsaturated fats (shortening, margarine,
| soybean oil, canola oil, even chicken fat) is a promising
| culprit. Consumption of those have skyrocketed in the last half
| of the 20th century [1]. Full study here [2].
|
| It seems that polyunsaturated fats induce hibernation like
| symptoms, which could explain weight gain. This blog is a
| fascinating look at some of the literature [3]. Good summary post
| [4].
|
| [1]
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3076650/figure/...
|
| [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3076650/
|
| [3] https://fireinabottle.net/every-fire-in-a-bottle-post-
| from-t...
|
| [4] https://fireinabottle.net/are-you-in-deep-torpor-
| scd1-theory...
| jpitz wrote:
| I thought polyunsaturated fats ( fish, soybean ) were fairly
| prevalent in Japanese diets?
|
| How does that square up with the lower prevalence of obesity
| there?
| briefcomment wrote:
| Eating isolated oils is decidedly different from eating whole
| foods, as there are compounds that counteract each other when
| taken as a whole. For example, fish have long chain fatty
| acids which counter some effects of the Omega oils.
|
| I think it's much easier to consume large portions of soybean
| oil if you're using it as an all purpose oil, than if you
| were just eating tofu, bean curd, natto, etc.
| Pyramus wrote:
| This series of blog posts is a fascinating read into conjectured
| factors behind the obesity epidemic.
|
| I wish the author had continued their rigor in reasoning
| throughout the two blog posts. Step by step the author is lured
| into proving a single factor explains the rise in obesity. That
| maybe a futile attempt from the outset.
|
| To make an example, the author notes, correctly and to the point,
|
| > "Calories are involved in the math but it's not as simple as
| "weight gain = calories in - calories out"."
|
| but then moves on to claim that "X provides evidence against
| CICO" when in fact the article cites numerous examples where an
| increase/decrease in calories results in a (short-term)
| increase/decrease in body weight. So what the author really meant
| was "X provides evidence against CICO as the single factor".
|
| I'm not an expert in nutrition science but it seems very unlikely
| that a single factor (sugar! trans-fats! exercise! genetics!)
| will explain a real-world, highly non-linear phenomenon. I
| personally find the paragraphs where the interactions of factors
| are discussed the weakest and least convincing.
|
| That is not to say the article is excellent and hammers home two
| very important points: Firstly the idea of the lipostat and as a
| result a short and a long-term time scale ('system') for body
| weight gain/loss. Secondly that factors relevant on one time
| scale may not be relevant to the other time scale. And of course
| that there is still a lot we simply don't understand (yet).
| msteffen wrote:
| My interpretation was: "what is responsible for the inflection
| point that occurred in 1980?"
|
| Perhaps it's still not a single factor (which, I agree, would
| make a lot of sense) but IIUC that does raise the question of
| why there seems to be a single inflection point.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| The short term overeating studies produce what we might call
| highly nonlinear results, which also undermines CICO (which is
| a linear equation). It's pretty obvious the body has other ways
| to dump exceeds calories than turning them into fat stores.
| Those studies, and the obvious tendency of diets to fail in the
| long term, are strong support for some kind of lipostat system,
| to my mind.
|
| Others have mentioned gut biomes... My uneducated guess is
| plastics or some other chemical that was introduced into
| industrial use in the 20th century. The cross species effect
| (lab and zoo animals getting father on the same controlled
| diets) is also a really big clue that were dealing with a
| molecule. And, as with lead poisoning from gasoline, perhaps a
| hard to pinpoint one due to prevalence.
| heax wrote:
| I think the simple truth is we simply eat too much.
|
| Possible the worldwide most known modern food product is the Big
| Mac. Named Big Mac, not Best Mac, think about it. And it doesn't
| stop there, large pizzas, pizzas with a lot on top, XXL
| Schnitzels, All you can eat Chinese.
|
| A lot people make quantity a priority over quality, guess what
| happens :)
| frabjoused wrote:
| This. There's so many ideas and theories on diets, but it seems
| the bottom line is, are you eating more than you're burning?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > we simply eat too much
|
| Hear, hear. I dropped ~70 pounds just by learning my portions.
| It took about 6 months, but now I can just look at a plate of
| food and separate out the amount that will fill me, before I
| even start to eat (the 2-fist rule is a good start). I can make
| 2-3 meals out of a typical restaurant dinner portion, or I can
| just order an appetizer as my meal if I'm not taking leftovers.
|
| I dropped another ~20 pounds by cutting out processed foods,
| preservatives, and chemicals. I likely won't eat something that
| I couldn't otherwise make a home using whole ingredients.
|
| Restrictive diets never worked for me. I eat whatever I want,
| whether it be loaded with carbs or fried. I just make sure to
| include plenty of fiber in my diet, only eat when hungry, and
| never over eat. It's the only diet that I've been able to
| sustain for more than a year (~5 years now, to be exact).
| elil17 wrote:
| The whole point of the article is that this is an inadequate
| explanation. First, the author points out that the increase in
| calorie consumption has been modest compared to the amount of
| weight gained. Second, why are we eating more? Moral failure
| and weak will are the popular explanations, but this fails to
| explain a variety of observations (Why now - haven't humans
| always wanted to eat delicious food? Why do some hunter
| gatherer societies with surplus food not experience the same
| thing? Why are wild animals also effected?).
| oezi wrote:
| I wouldn't say 400 extra calories is modest, if you consider
| Calories in/Calories Out then even a modest increase in
| calories is leading to a continued accumulation.
|
| By the authors examples eating 1.000 calories extra for 10
| days gives you 1kg of weight gain. Assuming that the average
| diet went from 2.000 to 2.400 calories, it makes sense that
| people should gain 400*365/10.000 = 15kg per year until that
| extra body mass is increasing base level energy need or
| people are more physically active (but 1 hour of physical
| exercise is only 600 calories for many sports).
| mads wrote:
| There is something I dont understand about this. Is it really
| true that carb consumption has gone down? My own anecdotal
| experience is that people are drinking way more sodas and eating
| way more candy than they used to (in 70/80'ies my childhood).
|
| Like where I live now every other street corner has those "mix-
| your-own candy bag" shops, where you pay by the 100g. There must
| be someone buying that stuff, since they keep popping up.
| ginko wrote:
| >My own anecdotal experience is that people are drinking way
| more sodas and eating way more candy than they used to (in
| 70/80'ies my childhood).
|
| This doesn't seem to match the data:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-are-drinking-less-...
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Maybe "energy drinks" (Monster et al) aren't counted as soda?
| There are also several other sugary non-soda drinks I now see
| in most convenience stores: sweet tea, Frappuccinos & other
| cold coffee drinks, slurpees, hot sugary coffee and cocoa,
| etc.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
|
| This popped in my mind since everything seemed to go off the
| rails with an abrupt change in obesity in the mid 70s...
| magneticnorth wrote:
| This is fascinating, thanks for sharing.
|
| Many (most?) of these plots have known, and different
| explanations - e.g. the wage stagnation at the top is due to
| public policy changes in the 70s; the rise in marriage age is
| probably due to birth control becoming prevalent in the 60s,
| but it is really interesting to see all the effects gathered in
| one place of the repercussions in the past 50+ years from all
| the societal and political changes that happened in the 60s and
| 70s.
| djmips wrote:
| I alarms went off when the author used a rather poor analogy and
| very little science to hand wave past the effectiveness of
| gastric bypass surgery.
| ajuc wrote:
| > Kitavans didn't even seem to gain weight in middle age. In
| fact, BMI was found to decrease with age. Many lived into their
| 80s or 90s, and Lindeberg even observed one man who he estimated
| to be 100 years old. None of the elderly Kitavans showed signs of
| dementia or memory loss. The Kitavans also had no incidence of
| diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, or cardiovascular disease, and
| were unfamiliar with the symptoms of these diseases. "The only
| cases of sudden death they could recall," he reports, "were
| accidents such as drowning or falling from a coconut tree."
|
| Maybe it's survivorship bias? Without modern medicine only
| healthiest people survive to adulthood so later they live long
| healthy lives. In modern society these people would be healthy
| too, but they would be a small percentage of the whole society.
|
| This would also explain why domesticated animals show similar
| problems. Because we keep them alive :/
|
| And then since it's at least partially inheritable - the effect
| would compound with each generation. With unsettling
| implications.
| swamp40 wrote:
| The sad part is, there exists some tight-lipped 90+ year old
| former Philip Morris chemist, who moved over to General Foods and
| discovered/invented some chemical that inhibits satiety, just to
| increase their bottom line. And now every big food company uses
| it.
| neonnoodle wrote:
| Are you serious about this? Or just dark humor?
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| I'm assuming dark humor.
|
| But prob also true.
|
| Or, truthy.
|
| Think something like 'HFCS', or 'remove all the fiber', etc.
|
| If you put enough power/money/ideology behind something,
| people will believe it, or not question it, etc. Probably,
| they/we, won't even be able to 'see' it.
| runnerup wrote:
| Enough people read all the ingredients on every food package
| that if there was a common theme like this, it would be common
| knowledge. I don't know of a singular ingredient in common
| among the category of foods which would be targeted for this
| enhancement. Charitably, perhaps you are thinking of the
| "ingredient" of complex food engineering, which is any
| concerted effort by food engineers/scientists to modify
| "cafeteria food" to be more addictive and harder to stop
| eating.
|
| This focuses more on ingredients, which is relatively common
| knowledge. But it does go into some history with interesting
| backstories from board rooms to flesh it out: "NYT: The
| Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" -
| https://archive.is/DJ0fC
|
| This one I find super fascinating. It focuses less on
| ingredients and more on the physical forces/sensations of the
| foods: sound, crunchiness, meltiness, airiness, and how those
| drive compulsion to grab another handful: "Food cravings
| engineered by industry" https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/food-
| cravings-engineered-by-i...
| yissp wrote:
| Details? This sounds interesting.
| petemir wrote:
| And the 2nd. part:
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/author/slimemoldtimemold/
| amelius wrote:
| > A popular theory of obesity is that it's simply a question of
| calories in versus calories out (CICO).
|
| > (...) I think at this point, few people in the research world
| believe the CICO model.
|
| It is popular on HN too, as evidenced by the replies I got
| here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27777157
| imtringued wrote:
| It's popular because it's thermodynamics but it completely
| ignores that our body doesn't know how to count calories. It
| only knows how to count macro nutrients and how full your
| stomach is and palatable food is engineered to avoid the
| feeling of satiation.
| tomxor wrote:
| So much this.
|
| Simple self experiment: If you are super hungry, try
| compare:
|
| 1. Eat a bowl of plain steamed rice (in hot water can make
| it go down easier) - you will very very quickly become
| satiated and stay that way, probably on less than a small
| bowl.
|
| 2. Eat cake, croissants, stuff that is sweet but not too
| sweet that you can keep eating it... initially you will
| stop, but then you will feel hungry again and keep going
| back for more - you can just keep eating on this stuff,
| even though the energy density is way higher.
|
| The other difference is the speed at which the energy is
| released, the rice will keep you going through the day,
| your body gradually extracting energy from it... the cake
| and stuff get's absorbed almost instantly and so your body
| has nothing to do but make fat with it - the only way your
| getting that energy back is through ketosis, which wont
| happen so long as you keep eating cake.
|
| It makes a lot of sense when you start to think about how
| things have been modified from their natural state, even
| orange juice is kinda bad in this sense - you can drink a
| glass of orange juice pretty easily, but there is no way
| you will be able to eat the number of oranges it took to
| make it in a single day.
| getlawgdon wrote:
| Not explanatory. White rice has a high GI and brown rice
| still has a moderately high GI.
| pedrocr wrote:
| _> It's true that people eat more calories today than they did
| in the 1960s and 70s, but the difference is quite small.
| Sources have a surprisingly hard time agreeing on just how much
| more we eat than our grandparents did, but all of them agree
| that it's not much. Pew says calorie intake in the US increased
| from 2,025 calories per day in 1970 to about 2,481 calories per
| day in 2010. The USDA Economic Research Service estimates that
| calorie intake in the US increased from 2,016 calories per day
| in 1970 to about 2,390 calories per day in 2014. Neither of
| these are jaw-dropping increases._
|
| A 20% increase in food intake seems huge. The data I could find
| on weight over the same period puts people at only 15% heavier,
| so this seems to be underselling the difference.
| imtringued wrote:
| Increased calorie intake and conversion to fat is the problem
| but why do humans increase their calorie intake and decide to
| convert their calories into fat? What button are they
| pressing that says "I want to be fat!".
| garganzol wrote:
| An average consumer good contains tons of sugar by default
| nowadays. Being a fast carbohydrate, it fools the mind of a
| human into believing he/she is still hungry and thus needs
| more. This leads to inadequate glucose overshoots on daily
| basis.
|
| When the time of insulin comes (approx. 2 hours after food
| intake), the insulin curve is sharp and overshoots over the
| peak in response to monstrous amounts of glucose in the
| blood. Despite clearly peaking, no amount of insulin can
| cover all previously consumed glucose at this stage, and
| the rest of it gets transformed into the fat.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Funny Wild speculation time: In ancient times, when the
| times got rough, there was always a pre-crisis-phase, aka
| you witnessed something traumatic, but were not yet
| impacted by it yourself.
|
| Stressing yourself out and triggering that "horror"-phase
| (movies/ evening news) makes your body go into the "binge"
| for reserves during crisis mode.
|
| Testable Hypothesis: End of the World screaming makes you
| fat, Continuous bored calm and mental safety feelings make
| you thin.
| taneq wrote:
| Should be able to see a significant uptick in BMI across
| the population between 2019 and now if this is the
| case...
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| A correlation between BMI and media consumption would be
| rather blatantly obvious i guess.
| taneq wrote:
| I'd expect one of those regardless of stress levels /
| doom and gloom levels, purely due to most media
| inherently lowering aerobic activity.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Not to mention that jobs are more sedentary on average than
| they were in the 60s and 70s. So not only did we increase
| intake but also likely reduced expenditure.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| It seems like a VERY significant increase, yet the author
| glided right by it. How much would he have considered to be
| 'jaw-dropping'?
| dobin wrote:
| If people before 1970 eaten approximately their TDEE (2000
| calories?), than a 20% increase in calories eaten means
| something like 400 calories over TDEE per day - every day,
| all your life. Of course people get fat like this.
| Pyramus wrote:
| This issue caught my eye as well, and I find the
| argumentation quite sloppy in some parts. Also see my other
| post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27808936
|
| Now take several of these "insignificant" factors, add
| interaction effects, and we potentially get a much richer
| picture.
| RobertoG wrote:
| That was an interesting read.
|
| I just left this comment in the site (maybe it would interest
| somebody here too):
|
| "Have somebody checked a correlation between breast feeding vs.
| infant formula in early infancy and hungry feelings in
| adulthood (or weight as a proxy of that)?
|
| It's just an random idea, but it seems to me that the timeline
| of increasing obesity and increasing of use of infant formula
| could be correlated."
| eukaryote wrote:
| It is an interesting idea, but Australia has a breast feeding
| rate of around 90% and a large obesity problem
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