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There's a moderate amount of evidence that the type of food plays a significant role in overconsumption of calories. One factor is differing satiation for the s

There's a moderate amount of evidence that the type of food plays a significant role in overconsumption of calories. One factor is differing satiation for the same number of calories, i.e. 300 calories of some foods make you feel fuller than 300 calories of other foods. There is also something specifically weird going on with a handful of foods that seem to promote ongoing consumption to degrees seen much less often with other kinds of food. Soda and salty/fat snacks are two where people are observed consuming huge numbers of calories in kind of a chain-consumption binge, which is much less often seen with, say, pork chops or broccoli.

balabaster 11y ago
What about the fact that our chemical laden foods feeds into addiction that perpetuates the cycle? We become addicted to the types of food we consume which causes us to want more than we should. This in combination with increasing portion sizes is exacerbating the problem.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Also quite often documentaries shows (or at least claim-suggest) how much the """"food"""" industry loves to put sugar on top of the remains the sell as meals so it doesn't taste like sand.
  - balabaster 11y ago
    and corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, BHT, Red dye number whatever it is (Tartrazine) and other chemicals that by all accounts do everything from feed addiction and provoke ADHD and cause cancer, all in the name of profit.
    - munificent 11y ago
      I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
      - balabaster 11y ago
        I wasn't, but I've gotta be honest, it doesn't appear to matter in the context of this specific topic. With the amount of information and disinformation out there regarding food and nationwide obesity levels, it's tough to tell what is and isn't true or to what degree. It's somewhat akin to the propaganda campaigns run by tobacco companies in the 50's, 60's and 70's.
    - DougMerritt 11y ago
      I'm not sure what you have in mind; Tartrazine is lemon yellow (although of course often mixed to create other colors) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine The famously banned "red dye number whatever" I think was red dye number 2, banned in 1976 due to suspected carcinogenicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye) But there are so many dyes that I can't be sure what you meant. I will say, though, that although many food additives are ultimately a bad idea in one way or another, historically most of the suspected carcinogens are not, because humans are resilient in ways that mice are not (in part due to two million years of cooked food, and in part due to testing using cancer-prone inbred mice for decades).
      - balabaster 11y ago
        Thanks for the clarification. I was mixing up E102 as it is labelled int the UK (Tartrazine) which was banned in 2013 due to being linked to aggravating/causing ADHD and Red Dye Number 2 which was banned in North America in 1976 due to being a Carcinogen. [One of the downfalls of being an immigrant is that after a while you can never remember (or perhaps just lose the inclination to care) which news applied in which jurisdiction and not the other and which numbering systems belong where]
- redthrowaway 11y ago
  >chemical laden foods feeds into addiction Care to explain what you mean by this?
  - balabaster 11y ago
    There are many articles on the internet - with varying levels of credibility. A quick Google for such things as chemical food addiction should yield many of this type of thing: http://www.alternet.org/5-unhealthy-foods-engineered-be-addictive http://www.alternet.org/5-unhealthy-foods-engineered-be-addi... Obviously you will be able to discern which are credible and which are not. That was sarcasm/cynicism, because it's really hard to discern what is credible, to what degree and what the motive of the author was. There is much propaganda on both sides of the fence, so at this point, it's pretty tough, beyond a religious debate to have any objective discussion.
RIMR 11y ago
>One factor is differing satiation for the same number of calories >a handful of foods that seem to promote ongoing consumption >people are observed consuming huge numbers of calories in kind of a chain-consumption binge As I said: It has absolutely nothing to do with the foods or how they are processed; it has everything to do with how much people eat of these foods. Fatty/Salty foods can promote overconsumption, but blaming the foods for a person's lack of self-control is, as I said previously, incredibly foolish. Sure, food trends may have increased the amount of fatty/salty foods on the market in the past 30 years, and this certainly would contribute to the obesity epidemic. However, the burden ultimately rests on the consumer to ensure that they are not only consuming healthy foods, but that they are consuming healthy portions of these foods compared to the amount of exercise they get daily. I could easily eat 3 Big Macs for lunch, but I am aware that that would be 1600+ calories, so I don't.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- balabaster 11y ago
  > As I said: It has absolutely nothing to do with the foods or how they are processed; it has everything to do with how much people eat of these foods. > Fatty/Salty foods can promote overconsumption, but blaming the foods for a person's lack of self-control is, as I said previously, incredibly foolish. Not everyone has the same self-control/discipline. Exploitation of this fact by food companies is becoming more visible as time goes on. One that immediately springs to mind are the slogans for products such as Pringles: "Once you pop, you can't stop!" Certain foods cater to, nay exploit, addiction and human behavioral traits. You can't exploit weaknesses in the human psyche and then say "it's their own fault," without assuming any responsibility or blame. That's like blaming a drug addict entirely for becoming addicted to crack and not apportioning any of the blame to the dealer... not everything is entirely the fault of the... I'm struggling for a better word than victim, but that's not really the word I mean. Most addicts are at first desensitized, then conditioned and then coerced into trying what they become addicted to long before they become addicted. Food companies have been slated to add chemicals into their food that have been found to correlate with addiction, to keep people coming back for their product. The media desensitizes, conditions and coerces people into trying their product. Portions are decided not based on what is a scientifically proportionate amount of food, but what is most profitable or will make the "client" keep coming back for more - to feed the addiction - in exactly the same way that dealers cut their drugs with chemicals that feed addiction and keep the addict coming back for more - even though many of them want desperately to quit.
pyre 11y ago
> There is also something specifically weird going on with a handful of foods The food industry specifically targets the "bliss point"[1] when figuring out the formula for snack foods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

balabaster 11y ago

What about the fact that our chemical laden foods feeds into addiction that perpetuates the cycle? We become addicted to the types of food we consume which causes us to want more than we should. This in combination with increasing portion sizes is exacerbating the problem.

agumonkey 11y ago
Also quite often documentaries shows (or at least claim-suggest) how much the """"food"""" industry loves to put sugar on top of the remains the sell as meals so it doesn't taste like sand.
- balabaster 11y ago
  and corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, BHT, Red dye number whatever it is (Tartrazine) and other chemicals that by all accounts do everything from feed addiction and provoke ADHD and cause cancer, all in the name of profit.
  - munificent 11y ago
    I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
    - balabaster 11y ago
      I wasn't, but I've gotta be honest, it doesn't appear to matter in the context of this specific topic. With the amount of information and disinformation out there regarding food and nationwide obesity levels, it's tough to tell what is and isn't true or to what degree. It's somewhat akin to the propaganda campaigns run by tobacco companies in the 50's, 60's and 70's.
  - DougMerritt 11y ago
    I'm not sure what you have in mind; Tartrazine is lemon yellow (although of course often mixed to create other colors) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine The famously banned "red dye number whatever" I think was red dye number 2, banned in 1976 due to suspected carcinogenicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_(dye) But there are so many dyes that I can't be sure what you meant. I will say, though, that although many food additives are ultimately a bad idea in one way or another, historically most of the suspected carcinogens are not, because humans are resilient in ways that mice are not (in part due to two million years of cooked food, and in part due to testing using cancer-prone inbred mice for decades).
    - balabaster 11y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. I was mixing up E102 as it is labelled int the UK (Tartrazine) which was banned in 2013 due to being linked to aggravating/causing ADHD and Red Dye Number 2 which was banned in North America in 1976 due to being a Carcinogen. [One of the downfalls of being an immigrant is that after a while you can never remember (or perhaps just lose the inclination to care) which news applied in which jurisdiction and not the other and which numbering systems belong where]
redthrowaway 11y ago
>chemical laden foods feeds into addiction Care to explain what you mean by this?
- balabaster 11y ago
  There are many articles on the internet - with varying levels of credibility. A quick Google for such things as chemical food addiction should yield many of this type of thing: http://www.alternet.org/5-unhealthy-foods-engineered-be-addictive http://www.alternet.org/5-unhealthy-foods-engineered-be-addi... Obviously you will be able to discern which are credible and which are not. That was sarcasm/cynicism, because it's really hard to discern what is credible, to what degree and what the motive of the author was. There is much propaganda on both sides of the fence, so at this point, it's pretty tough, beyond a religious debate to have any objective discussion.

RIMR 11y ago

>One factor is differing satiation for the same number of calories >a handful of foods that seem to promote ongoing consumption >people are observed consuming huge numbers of calories in kind of a chain-consumption binge As I said: It has absolutely nothing to do with the foods or how they are processed; it has everything to do with how much people eat of these foods. Fatty/Salty foods can promote overconsumption, but blaming the foods for a person's lack of self-control is, as I said previously, incredibly foolish. Sure, food trends may have increased the amount of fatty/salty foods on the market in the past 30 years, and this certainly would contribute to the obesity epidemic. However, the burden ultimately rests on the consumer to ensure that they are not only consuming healthy foods, but that they are consuming healthy portions of these foods compared to the amount of exercise they get daily. I could easily eat 3 Big Macs for lunch, but I am aware that that would be 1600+ calories, so I don't.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
balabaster 11y ago
> As I said: It has absolutely nothing to do with the foods or how they are processed; it has everything to do with how much people eat of these foods. > Fatty/Salty foods can promote overconsumption, but blaming the foods for a person's lack of self-control is, as I said previously, incredibly foolish. Not everyone has the same self-control/discipline. Exploitation of this fact by food companies is becoming more visible as time goes on. One that immediately springs to mind are the slogans for products such as Pringles: "Once you pop, you can't stop!" Certain foods cater to, nay exploit, addiction and human behavioral traits. You can't exploit weaknesses in the human psyche and then say "it's their own fault," without assuming any responsibility or blame. That's like blaming a drug addict entirely for becoming addicted to crack and not apportioning any of the blame to the dealer... not everything is entirely the fault of the... I'm struggling for a better word than victim, but that's not really the word I mean. Most addicts are at first desensitized, then conditioned and then coerced into trying what they become addicted to long before they become addicted. Food companies have been slated to add chemicals into their food that have been found to correlate with addiction, to keep people coming back for their product. The media desensitizes, conditions and coerces people into trying their product. Portions are decided not based on what is a scientifically proportionate amount of food, but what is most profitable or will make the "client" keep coming back for more - to feed the addiction - in exactly the same way that dealers cut their drugs with chemicals that feed addiction and keep the addict coming back for more - even though many of them want desperately to quit.

pyre 11y ago

> There is also something specifically weird going on with a handful of foods The food industry specifically targets the "bliss point"[1] when figuring out the formula for snack foods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)