10 ms·

The Fats You Don’t Need to Fear, and the Carbs That You Do

62 points by sonabinu 11y ago

joekim29 11y ago
How about we stop "fearing" certain foods and just eat a reasonably varied diet that is calorie restricted? Or if you want to simply lose weight, just calorie restricted. Or do I have to bring up the people who have lived on nothing but twinkies or McD for a month and stil lost weight?
- mirsadm 11y ago
  That is poor advice and doesn't work for most people.
  - mdpopescu 11y ago
    Yes. My issue is not losing weight - that's easy, I'll just not eat anything for a week. (I've lost weight before, usually when being violently sick.) My issue is keeping the weight down. I've been in Dublin for three months and lost about 10 kgs (nasty commute, stressful job and so on). I've been back for two weeks and gained back two kgs. Wife's a great cook :)
    - mathgeek 11y ago
      "Wife's a great cook " I think you've succinctly expressed one of the core issues that we have as individuals and as a society: we love tasty food more than we love healthy food. We generally consider meals that derive flavor from fats and sugars as great/tasty/enjoyable while we relegate more healthy options as that which we only eat to either make up for or "save calories for" the meals that we really enjoy.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Not necessarily - overeating is the real issue. Wife may cook those alfalfa sprouts to perfection. He just eats a bushel.
        mathgeek 11y ago
        I'd like to hear from someone who got fat eating too many vegetables that weren't covered in oils or other toppings.
    - cubancigar11 11y ago
      I am in no way related to this but have you tried https://www.noom.com/ https://www.noom.com/ ? It not only helps in counting calories it also gives daily articles and a set of TO-DOs. I was 275 lbs around 2.5 months ago but since then have lost 22 lbs. Regarding 'keeping the weight down', I learned from this app itself why it is difficult: 1. Not eating anything for a week is not only a bad strategy to lose weight it is actually a good strategy to gain weight afterwards. In my own experience whenever I tried to lose weight by eating less I lost a lot of weight but gained more than what I lost afterwards. You cannot stay hungry forever and if you lose more than 2 lbs per week your body goes into starvation mode, burning any stored energy rapidly, and rapidly storing anything you eat afterwards as fat just in case you don't get food again. Body is more intelligent than we think. 2. Once a fat cell is born it craves fat and that makes you hungry. Rapidly losing weight by staying hungry will only remove fat from fat cells but won't kill them. Weight loss must be sustained for longer time to have any permanent effect. 3. I have replaced white rice with brown rice, white bread with whole grain wheat bread and started eating sprouts and corn, oranges, guava etc. other fruits. Sprouts are killer deal man - you eat 200g of it you will hardly feel hungry for hours. 4. You need to do some physical exercise everyday - not intense, just walking is okay. But you have to be consistent so your body learns how much energy you are going to lose anyway and doesn't store much fat. I have yet to start heavy exercises but I like the effect on my body :)
  - anon4 11y ago
    I have a feeling that if most people are exposed to a varied enough diet for a long enough time, they'll start eating more healthily. Your stomach has a complicated neural system of its own which seems to be entirely for learning and recognizing what food contains what nutrients, so that you can get everything your body needs.
- nkuttler 11y ago
  How about eating a diet where you don't have to count calories to get to or maintain a healthy weight? Fat is very satiating.
  - CuriouslyC 11y ago
    Maybe for you. I could easily put down 6000 calories worth of peanut butter in one shot, but if I tried that with pasta I probably wouldn't break 4000, and with veggies I probably wouldn't break 1500.
    - vidarh 11y ago
      6000 kcal of peanut butter is about 1kg. I'd be tempted to pay to see you do that. But how much you are able to stuff yourself with isn't the full story without knowing how long it takes you to get hungry again.
      - nrhtr 11y ago
        > I'd be tempted to pay to see you do that. How much? > But how much you are able to stuff yourself with isn't the full story without knowing how long it takes you to get hungry again. Certainly less than 2 days.
    - visakanv 11y ago
      > 6000 calories worth of peanut butter in one shot WHAT?! Please make a YouTube video. I will show all my friends and family. The amazing Peanut Butter Eating Hero.
      - CuriouslyC 11y ago
        I bodybuild and I'm trying to get contest lean currently. If that wasn't a concern I would certainly have a furious-pete level youtube channel; even among powerlifters and football players I've always been notorious for my appetite.
  - mvanvoorden 11y ago
- smtddr 11y ago
  >>"eat a reasonably varied diet that is calorie restricted?" Define "reasonably" and "restricted". Otherwise, you might as well say "If everyone just did the right thing, everything would be as it should!" which has no actionable component. >>"people who have lived on nothing but twinkies or McD for a month and stil lost weight?" ....but suffered dozens of other health problems that'll lead to an early grave. "Super size me" -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/
  - joekim29 11y ago
    http://sploid.gizmodo.com/man-loses-37-pounds-by-eating-exclusively-at-mcdonalds-1496972541 http://sploid.gizmodo.com/man-loses-37-pounds-by-eating-excl...
    - comrh 11y ago
      This is basically the same thing as the Subway guy. He restricted his calories, fulfilled his nutrient goals and, most importantly, started walking a lot more.
  - kbutler 11y ago
    Super size me has been (politely) not reproducible, or less politely, shown to be shockingly full of crap. http://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-under-lab-conditions http://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-un... http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-... Moral: popular media is a horrible source of scientific knowledge
    - smtddr 11y ago
      Well that's interesting! I'm still convinced that living on Twinkies & McD's isn't going to result in quality health, but it's good to know the super-size-me person had to lie in his documentary.
- geofft 11y ago
  Nutrition isn't just about calories. They're important, but if all we needed were calories, we'd just measure out 2000 kcal of sugar each day. Fats, proteins, etc. are all important. Within eating a reasonable number of calories, make sure that the portion of calories from each source is appropriate. If you focus solely on calories, you will lose weight but you will also lose other aspects of your health.
- justaman 11y ago
  Fear is American. Watch Good Morning America just once and you'll understand what I mean.
- lsniddy 11y ago
  The twinkie diet guy was funded by coca cola http://observer.com/2015/10/here-are-the-people-coca-cola-has-paid-to-manufacture-health-claims/ http://observer.com/2015/10/here-are-the-people-coca-cola-ha...
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    > You probably saw the compelling story on CNN that a nutrition professor ate only Twinkies for 10 weeks and lost 27 pounds! Except they didn’t disclose one important fact — he got paid by Coca-Cola. Perhaps “Coke-Funded Nutrition Professor Tries to Prove Junk Food Healthy” is now a more appropriate title. And his surprising finding that junk food can be eaten without consequence: perfectly on message for Coca-Cola. And? Did he did he supplement the diet by eating Coca-Cola's money as a source of fiber? Because it still sounds like he only ate twinkies and lost weight. Or are you suggesting that his data was falsified?
    - code_sterling 11y ago
      I'd suggest a conflict of interest makes his results suspect.
      - wlesieutre 11y ago
        I'd be more inclined to agree if it were a complicated subject with a lot of data to be cherry-picked and "interpreted." In this case, "lost 27 pounds" and "only ate twinkies" would be pretty hard to play games with. But hey, maybe 20 different scientists ran the same experiment and only the one time when it was successful got published. No way to know for sure.
        mvanvoorden 11y ago
        If you lose weight but end up with diabetes, or a serious vitamin deficiency, would you still think this research is legit? Eating only one type of food for weeks will almost always result in losing weight, because it would disrupt the gut flora, as well as deprive one of necessary vitamins/minerals.
- johnward 11y ago
  Calories in and out is the basic but bodies react to certain macronutrients differently in diabetes. Macronutrients belong in the conversation. Calories in/out may always work but might not be the most efficient.
- visakanv 11y ago
  Very often, broad calorie restriction leads to constant hunger and even malnutrition, and isn't sustainable over a lifetime. It makes a lot more sense usually to restrict sugary/refined carbs– soda, donuts, bread, buns, etc.
  - CuriouslyC 11y ago
    If you are smart about what you eat, you can run a large calorie deficit and still feel just fine. My typical day has me eating about 2400 calories and burning anywhere from 3400-3700, and I feel absolutely fine (even though I'm quite lean). I never get hunger-related cravings, when I go off my diet it's more about desire for variety. My diet is primarily comprised of vegetables, beans, eggs and whey protein with a moderate amount of lean meat. I easily clear 225g/protein/day and ~120g/fiber/day, and I consume a lot of fermented vegetables (which definitely have a strong satiating effect).
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  The thermodynamic hypothesis is correct to the extent that the change in chemical energy potential retained in the body will be equal to energy absorbed from food minus energy expended by metabolism. It tends to ignore the fact that energy expended by metabolism is a black-box function that takes energy absorbed from food as just one of its input parameters. If you restrict calories below a threshold (that varies by individual), the body will flip genetic switches to enter famine survival mode. It will adjust metabolic functions to slow down weight loss by any means possible. When the restriction ends, some of those switches do not get toggled back to their previous state. So if you have ever tried a diet that included severe calorie restrictions or extended fasting, you may forevermore find it much easier to gain weight than lose it. So if you want to go by the thermodynamic hypothesis, it is far safer for you in the long run to hold your diet constant and either increase exercise or thermogenesis (i.e. live through a winter at one of the poles). Channel swimmers burn about 40 Mcal of energy. Marathon runners burn about 3 Mcal. But their bodies will prefer to use up all glycogen stores before digging in to body fat, and now some will eat glycogen gel during the event to avoid "hitting the wall" entirely. Fat-burning is maximized only after depleting glycogen, or when exercising below the aerobic threshold (and possibly also below the lactate threshold), between 60% and 70% of your maximum heart rate. Obviously, this would ordinarily set a hard limit on the number of kcal you can reasonably expend via exercise to lose body fat. Thus, the uncanny effectiveness of ketogenic diets and "bonk training". Those practices intentionally deplete glycogen stores beforehand, so any exercise done in that state burns more body fat, regardless of your exercise intensity. Ordinarily, you could have 1500 kcal or more of glycogen stores. That's enough for 15 miles of running, or 2 hours of cycling. And that's a lot of exercise to do before you start to get more permanent fat-loss results. It is much easier to eat just enough protein to serve the short-term needs of your body, eat the remaining caloric requirement to avoid switching to starvation mode as fat, and avoid all carbohydrates like the plague. Your body converts only as much protein as it needs into sugars, but not enough to replenish its glycogen, and switches to using fat as its primary energy supply, so any additional kcal you expend are coming directly from adipose reserves. (This sort of lifestyle may have unintended side effects.) People don't want to just "lose weight". When they say that, they usually mean "lose fat". And that goal is a lot more complex than just kcal in minus kcal out. We still don't fully understand how diet, exercise, metabolism, and appetite work together to produce visible effects on the body. But we do know that a single dietary strategy will not work for everybody, particularly the "just reduce calorie count" strategy.
lukasm 11y ago
It sill blows my mind how little we know about our body. We are aiming to sent someone to Mars, but we can't figure out what to eat. It seems the best default is to try to simulate what we've been eating for a past 50000 years and modify accordingly. When I first tried slow carb diet I lost 5kg in 3 weeks and my general well being improved. I tried it again, but the effect wasn't that strong.
- debacle 11y ago
  There's a massive amount of politics and bias involved in "what to eat."
  - visakanv 11y ago
    Correct. Big sugar in particular is the major influence to watch out for. They used to literally have ads suggesting that people eat sugar as a pick-me-up: http://cf.collectorsweekly.com/uploads/2012/08/sugar-ads1.jpg http://cf.collectorsweekly.com/uploads/2012/08/sugar-ads1.jp...
    - hga 11y ago
      That's a total misrepresentation of those advertisements. The concept, which on its face is worthy of consideration, and is explained in the ads, is to consume a small amount of sugar an hour or so before your main meal to trick your body into feeling satiated before you reach for "those extra helpings at mealtime". Judging by the items they show being consumed, they're talking about ~100 calories. And when they came out, I found them useful to put the calorie content of sugar into context, "18 calories per teaspoon". Given the insane anti-sugar propaganda of the time (and ever since), the ads provided some real value. Now, I don't know if the theory is correct, it doesn't address my eating issues, but it's very much not "eat sugar as a pick-me-up".
- CuriouslyC 11y ago
  The problem is that nutrition research is very fragmented, and most researchers study diseased states. Thus, you have people who study nutritional metabolism related to diebetes, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, etc. Additionally, most of the researchers know a few metabolic pathways relevant to their research extremely well, but have very limited knowledge of the metabolic network as a whole. It is unfortunate that very few researchers study nutrition as it relates to longevity or optimal human performance. There's very little money available for that type of work, and well-controlled nutrition studies on humans are expensive.
zappo2938 11y ago
The role of liver function and glycogen should be included in this conversation.[1] There might be a lot more at work than just elevated blood sugar levels. In most normal people, meaning without diabetes and other metabolism problems, the liver doesn't immediately convert sugar to fat. Rather extra sugar is converted to glycogen which can be easily accessed for energy. What happens when a runner carbo loads the night before a race? The pasta she eats is coveted to glycogen and stored in the liver not to fat. However, when the liver storage of energy is full, it then converts the excess to fat. Think about this for a second. The glycemic index and load don't apply because most people convert excess blood sugar to a readily available energy stored in the liver as glycogen not fat. The problem is that Americans culturally never deplete the storage of energy in the liver because of two reasons; first, Americans snack all the time and drink sugary drinks, and, second, which I don't understand, we have developed an idea that we should eat huge third meals at night. A big dinner will completely replenish the energy stores in the liver leaving excess sugar that will be converted into fat during sleep. Perhaps, it is smarter to eat a decent breakfast that contains simple sugars which are absorbed faster into the blood stream, a big lunch which will provide energy for the rest of the day, and a small dinner to satiate hunger. For a person who wakes up around 7am the fast should begin around 5pm in order to let the sugars deplete around bed time. There is no reason to have readily available sugars while sleeping. And then in the morning break the fast. There is no reason to have big dinners which are ridiculous. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen
- pjc50 11y ago
  the fast should begin around 5pm .. which requires that lunch be the main meal, which could be difficult in countries where eating at your desk is normalised.
- bad_user 11y ago
  > ... the fast should begin around 5pm ... there is no reason to have big dinners which are ridiculous Actually there is a very big reason for why your advice is harmful, for me at least, but I suspect that for others as well. At 5pm I'm still at work, which means that whatever meal I'll have will be fast food and not a home cooked meal. But even more problematic is that dinner is also the perfect opportunity to sit together with your family, as in that moment during the day that can be shared without feeling rushed and if you want to sit together with your wife and kids, anything less than 8pm is not doable, as afternoons are usually unpredictable, as for example that's also the time of day when people go shopping or solve other chores. The family dinner is a matter of cultural inheritance that we've been forgetting and I'm willing to bet that this trait of modern life is much more harmful than fats, carbohydrates or whatever identified nutritional element is the enemy du-jour.
sageabilly 11y ago
I am particularly excited for the rise of easier genome sequencing and the role that will play in nutritional advice for individuals. The more we learn about genes and how people react differently to different foods the more intrigued I am by the idea of an "optimal" diet only being achieved on a person-by-person level.
- mathgeek 11y ago
  "The more we learn about genes and how people react differently to different foods the more intrigued I am by the idea of an "optimal" diet only being achieved on a person-by-person level." For me, it's implicit that optimizing diet can only be done on an individual basis. It's pretty obvious, at least to me, that taking maternal twins and having one be active while the other remains inactive for most of their lives leads to the need for different diets between the two.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Ok I was going to say something about genetic clustering and how there're probably just a few diets needed to cover most people. Then, behavior. Right, it also depends on where you are in your life (age, exercise, previous diet, health issues). It's fair to say an optimal diet is an individual thing.
- hga 11y ago
  I would say that's maybe 1/3 of what we need to know to accomplish your objective. The other thirds are the 100 trillion microbes that make up your microbiome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota), and the fact that we still don't know hardly anything about the relationship of various foods and how we eat them to health. Especially since different genomes and microbiomes make this particularly difficult for quality research.
- CuriouslyC 11y ago
  The problem with this is that the majority of your response to a given diet is actually a result of your gut microbial ecosystem. Not only does that mean an order of magnitude more genes are in play, but the microbial ecosystem is dynamic, and adapts to changes in diet, stress levels and a variety of other factors.
mathgeek 11y ago
"the fat in French fries slows the process only slightly" Tomorrow's blog headline: SCIENCE PROVES FRENCH FRIES ARE THE HEALTHIEST WAY TO EAT POTATOES
bad_user 11y ago
> It’s really important to distinguish between healthy fats and bad fats, healthy carbs and bad carbs What a bunch of crap. They said the same thing about cholesterol after fucking up monumentally and the history repeats itself over and over again. Just man up, recognize how incompetent you are, how your non-scientific advice has been hurting people over the past 50 years and switch jobs because the science you're practicing is nothing more than a cult. > He explained that saturated fat, found in fatty animal foods like meats and dairy products, raises blood levels of cholesterol and is not healthy There is zero evidence that saturated fats are unhealthy. Fats don't make you sick. Neither do carbohydrates. Humans have been eating fats and carbohydrates ever since the dawn of men. It's part of our identity as omnivores. What actually changed is making food an industrial process whose output is processed/synthetic food, which is much more profitable, while riding the waves of crap coming from nutritionists, coinciding perfectly with the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Low-fat milk for example is still on sale with health claims, even though it's a well known fact that it's much more unhealthy than normal milk.
- mathgeek 11y ago
  Can you link the sources for your claims? I'm asking sincerely, as I'm sure people interested in the topic will want to see the research.
  - tldrlol 11y ago
    I can't find a link for that now, especially since most sources on the internet claim otherwise. But I do recall reading something like that. The gist of it was, that there is no observable correlation between the intake of saturated fats consumed, and heart disease. There is however correlation between consumption of meat products and heart disease. A point was made specifically that balancing the diet with vegetables specifically counteracts these negative effects.
  - wdewind 11y ago
    Not OP but I think the burden of proof is on the people saying an entire macronutrient group is bad.
mannimow 11y ago
Every article on fats vs. carbs dilemma stresses out weight management issue, none of them mention any other effects, but weight. As a skinny guy, what are the dangers of say french fries, honey, and fast food? What about when coupled with active life style and moderate exercise?
- visakanv 11y ago
  Fellow skinny guy here who's working my way out of it. I don't know if you relate to this, but when I used to eat french fries and fast food, I would have bouts of lethargy and mental dullness. I just sort of thought that's how life is. When I started eating healthier, I enjoy much better mental clarity. It's a world of difference, and it gives me 2-5x more quality time to do my best work.
- briHass 11y ago
  As with everything, it depends largely on your genetics and natural inclination to becoming insulin resistant. Insulin resistance (IR) can occur in normal-BMI individuals. This is typically accompanied (caused?) by a large amount of visceral fat (internal, around your organs), which isn't what we typically see when we look at an overweight individual. IR is really just the first step to full type 2 diabetes. Exercise and youth can negate much of a bad diet, but it will likely catch up to you eventually. Better markers than your weight might be HDL (should be high), triglyceride levels (should be low), and fasting blood sugar. If those are optimal, you're probably doing fine, but there isn't really a case to be made that you should continue to eat poor food choices if you can avoid it.
amelius 11y ago
The problem with moving to a diet richer in fat is that it can cause digestive problems, such as GERD.
agumonkey 11y ago
Having reached limits my body starts to reject anything fatty, salty, sweet ... basically most processed food. I thus was forced to eat raw vegies, raw, no sauce, not cooked, nothing, and it was a revelation. They're full of subtle taste, texture that tickle your senses just enough and will make you feel full very very quick, without any strings attached [1]. I miss the sophistication of traditional meals (spices, sauces) though, and am seeking for an in between solution. [1] junk food satisfies you 10x more but leaves after taste, or sugar heavy, fat heavy feel in you. <anecdote/>

62 points by sonabinu 11y ago

How about we stop "fearing" certain foods and just eat a reasonably varied diet that is calorie restricted? Or if you want to simply lose weight, just calorie restricted. Or do I have to bring up the people who have lived on nothing but twinkies or McD for a month and stil lost weight?

mirsadm 11y ago
That is poor advice and doesn't work for most people.
- mdpopescu 11y ago
  Yes. My issue is not losing weight - that's easy, I'll just not eat anything for a week. (I've lost weight before, usually when being violently sick.) My issue is keeping the weight down. I've been in Dublin for three months and lost about 10 kgs (nasty commute, stressful job and so on). I've been back for two weeks and gained back two kgs. Wife's a great cook :)
  - mathgeek 11y ago
    "Wife's a great cook " I think you've succinctly expressed one of the core issues that we have as individuals and as a society: we love tasty food more than we love healthy food. We generally consider meals that derive flavor from fats and sugars as great/tasty/enjoyable while we relegate more healthy options as that which we only eat to either make up for or "save calories for" the meals that we really enjoy.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Not necessarily - overeating is the real issue. Wife may cook those alfalfa sprouts to perfection. He just eats a bushel.
      - mathgeek 11y ago
        I'd like to hear from someone who got fat eating too many vegetables that weren't covered in oils or other toppings.
  - cubancigar11 11y ago
    I am in no way related to this but have you tried https://www.noom.com/ https://www.noom.com/ ? It not only helps in counting calories it also gives daily articles and a set of TO-DOs. I was 275 lbs around 2.5 months ago but since then have lost 22 lbs. Regarding 'keeping the weight down', I learned from this app itself why it is difficult: 1. Not eating anything for a week is not only a bad strategy to lose weight it is actually a good strategy to gain weight afterwards. In my own experience whenever I tried to lose weight by eating less I lost a lot of weight but gained more than what I lost afterwards. You cannot stay hungry forever and if you lose more than 2 lbs per week your body goes into starvation mode, burning any stored energy rapidly, and rapidly storing anything you eat afterwards as fat just in case you don't get food again. Body is more intelligent than we think. 2. Once a fat cell is born it craves fat and that makes you hungry. Rapidly losing weight by staying hungry will only remove fat from fat cells but won't kill them. Weight loss must be sustained for longer time to have any permanent effect. 3. I have replaced white rice with brown rice, white bread with whole grain wheat bread and started eating sprouts and corn, oranges, guava etc. other fruits. Sprouts are killer deal man - you eat 200g of it you will hardly feel hungry for hours. 4. You need to do some physical exercise everyday - not intense, just walking is okay. But you have to be consistent so your body learns how much energy you are going to lose anyway and doesn't store much fat. I have yet to start heavy exercises but I like the effect on my body :)
- anon4 11y ago
  I have a feeling that if most people are exposed to a varied enough diet for a long enough time, they'll start eating more healthily. Your stomach has a complicated neural system of its own which seems to be entirely for learning and recognizing what food contains what nutrients, so that you can get everything your body needs.
nkuttler 11y ago
How about eating a diet where you don't have to count calories to get to or maintain a healthy weight? Fat is very satiating.
- CuriouslyC 11y ago
  Maybe for you. I could easily put down 6000 calories worth of peanut butter in one shot, but if I tried that with pasta I probably wouldn't break 4000, and with veggies I probably wouldn't break 1500.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    6000 kcal of peanut butter is about 1kg. I'd be tempted to pay to see you do that. But how much you are able to stuff yourself with isn't the full story without knowing how long it takes you to get hungry again.
    - nrhtr 11y ago
      > I'd be tempted to pay to see you do that. How much? > But how much you are able to stuff yourself with isn't the full story without knowing how long it takes you to get hungry again. Certainly less than 2 days.
  - visakanv 11y ago
    > 6000 calories worth of peanut butter in one shot WHAT?! Please make a YouTube video. I will show all my friends and family. The amazing Peanut Butter Eating Hero.
    - CuriouslyC 11y ago
      I bodybuild and I'm trying to get contest lean currently. If that wasn't a concern I would certainly have a furious-pete level youtube channel; even among powerlifters and football players I've always been notorious for my appetite.
- mvanvoorden 11y ago
smtddr 11y ago
>>"eat a reasonably varied diet that is calorie restricted?" Define "reasonably" and "restricted". Otherwise, you might as well say "If everyone just did the right thing, everything would be as it should!" which has no actionable component. >>"people who have lived on nothing but twinkies or McD for a month and stil lost weight?" ....but suffered dozens of other health problems that'll lead to an early grave. "Super size me" -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/
- joekim29 11y ago
  http://sploid.gizmodo.com/man-loses-37-pounds-by-eating-exclusively-at-mcdonalds-1496972541 http://sploid.gizmodo.com/man-loses-37-pounds-by-eating-excl...
  - comrh 11y ago
    This is basically the same thing as the Subway guy. He restricted his calories, fulfilled his nutrient goals and, most importantly, started walking a lot more.
- kbutler 11y ago
  Super size me has been (politely) not reproducible, or less politely, shown to be shockingly full of crap. http://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-under-lab-conditions http://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-un... http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-... Moral: popular media is a horrible source of scientific knowledge
  - smtddr 11y ago
    Well that's interesting! I'm still convinced that living on Twinkies & McD's isn't going to result in quality health, but it's good to know the super-size-me person had to lie in his documentary.
geofft 11y ago
Nutrition isn't just about calories. They're important, but if all we needed were calories, we'd just measure out 2000 kcal of sugar each day. Fats, proteins, etc. are all important. Within eating a reasonable number of calories, make sure that the portion of calories from each source is appropriate. If you focus solely on calories, you will lose weight but you will also lose other aspects of your health.
justaman 11y ago
Fear is American. Watch Good Morning America just once and you'll understand what I mean.
lsniddy 11y ago
The twinkie diet guy was funded by coca cola http://observer.com/2015/10/here-are-the-people-coca-cola-has-paid-to-manufacture-health-claims/ http://observer.com/2015/10/here-are-the-people-coca-cola-ha...
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  > You probably saw the compelling story on CNN that a nutrition professor ate only Twinkies for 10 weeks and lost 27 pounds! Except they didn’t disclose one important fact — he got paid by Coca-Cola. Perhaps “Coke-Funded Nutrition Professor Tries to Prove Junk Food Healthy” is now a more appropriate title. And his surprising finding that junk food can be eaten without consequence: perfectly on message for Coca-Cola. And? Did he did he supplement the diet by eating Coca-Cola's money as a source of fiber? Because it still sounds like he only ate twinkies and lost weight. Or are you suggesting that his data was falsified?
  - code_sterling 11y ago
    I'd suggest a conflict of interest makes his results suspect.
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      I'd be more inclined to agree if it were a complicated subject with a lot of data to be cherry-picked and "interpreted." In this case, "lost 27 pounds" and "only ate twinkies" would be pretty hard to play games with. But hey, maybe 20 different scientists ran the same experiment and only the one time when it was successful got published. No way to know for sure.
      - mvanvoorden 11y ago
        If you lose weight but end up with diabetes, or a serious vitamin deficiency, would you still think this research is legit? Eating only one type of food for weeks will almost always result in losing weight, because it would disrupt the gut flora, as well as deprive one of necessary vitamins/minerals.
johnward 11y ago
Calories in and out is the basic but bodies react to certain macronutrients differently in diabetes. Macronutrients belong in the conversation. Calories in/out may always work but might not be the most efficient.
visakanv 11y ago
Very often, broad calorie restriction leads to constant hunger and even malnutrition, and isn't sustainable over a lifetime. It makes a lot more sense usually to restrict sugary/refined carbs– soda, donuts, bread, buns, etc.
- CuriouslyC 11y ago
  If you are smart about what you eat, you can run a large calorie deficit and still feel just fine. My typical day has me eating about 2400 calories and burning anywhere from 3400-3700, and I feel absolutely fine (even though I'm quite lean). I never get hunger-related cravings, when I go off my diet it's more about desire for variety. My diet is primarily comprised of vegetables, beans, eggs and whey protein with a moderate amount of lean meat. I easily clear 225g/protein/day and ~120g/fiber/day, and I consume a lot of fermented vegetables (which definitely have a strong satiating effect).
logfromblammo 11y ago
The thermodynamic hypothesis is correct to the extent that the change in chemical energy potential retained in the body will be equal to energy absorbed from food minus energy expended by metabolism. It tends to ignore the fact that energy expended by metabolism is a black-box function that takes energy absorbed from food as just one of its input parameters. If you restrict calories below a threshold (that varies by individual), the body will flip genetic switches to enter famine survival mode. It will adjust metabolic functions to slow down weight loss by any means possible. When the restriction ends, some of those switches do not get toggled back to their previous state. So if you have ever tried a diet that included severe calorie restrictions or extended fasting, you may forevermore find it much easier to gain weight than lose it. So if you want to go by the thermodynamic hypothesis, it is far safer for you in the long run to hold your diet constant and either increase exercise or thermogenesis (i.e. live through a winter at one of the poles). Channel swimmers burn about 40 Mcal of energy. Marathon runners burn about 3 Mcal. But their bodies will prefer to use up all glycogen stores before digging in to body fat, and now some will eat glycogen gel during the event to avoid "hitting the wall" entirely. Fat-burning is maximized only after depleting glycogen, or when exercising below the aerobic threshold (and possibly also below the lactate threshold), between 60% and 70% of your maximum heart rate. Obviously, this would ordinarily set a hard limit on the number of kcal you can reasonably expend via exercise to lose body fat. Thus, the uncanny effectiveness of ketogenic diets and "bonk training". Those practices intentionally deplete glycogen stores beforehand, so any exercise done in that state burns more body fat, regardless of your exercise intensity. Ordinarily, you could have 1500 kcal or more of glycogen stores. That's enough for 15 miles of running, or 2 hours of cycling. And that's a lot of exercise to do before you start to get more permanent fat-loss results. It is much easier to eat just enough protein to serve the short-term needs of your body, eat the remaining caloric requirement to avoid switching to starvation mode as fat, and avoid all carbohydrates like the plague. Your body converts only as much protein as it needs into sugars, but not enough to replenish its glycogen, and switches to using fat as its primary energy supply, so any additional kcal you expend are coming directly from adipose reserves. (This sort of lifestyle may have unintended side effects.) People don't want to just "lose weight". When they say that, they usually mean "lose fat". And that goal is a lot more complex than just kcal in minus kcal out. We still don't fully understand how diet, exercise, metabolism, and appetite work together to produce visible effects on the body. But we do know that a single dietary strategy will not work for everybody, particularly the "just reduce calorie count" strategy.

lukasm 11y ago

It sill blows my mind how little we know about our body. We are aiming to sent someone to Mars, but we can't figure out what to eat. It seems the best default is to try to simulate what we've been eating for a past 50000 years and modify accordingly. When I first tried slow carb diet I lost 5kg in 3 weeks and my general well being improved. I tried it again, but the effect wasn't that strong.

debacle 11y ago
There's a massive amount of politics and bias involved in "what to eat."
- visakanv 11y ago
  Correct. Big sugar in particular is the major influence to watch out for. They used to literally have ads suggesting that people eat sugar as a pick-me-up: http://cf.collectorsweekly.com/uploads/2012/08/sugar-ads1.jpg http://cf.collectorsweekly.com/uploads/2012/08/sugar-ads1.jp...
  - hga 11y ago
    That's a total misrepresentation of those advertisements. The concept, which on its face is worthy of consideration, and is explained in the ads, is to consume a small amount of sugar an hour or so before your main meal to trick your body into feeling satiated before you reach for "those extra helpings at mealtime". Judging by the items they show being consumed, they're talking about ~100 calories. And when they came out, I found them useful to put the calorie content of sugar into context, "18 calories per teaspoon". Given the insane anti-sugar propaganda of the time (and ever since), the ads provided some real value. Now, I don't know if the theory is correct, it doesn't address my eating issues, but it's very much not "eat sugar as a pick-me-up".
CuriouslyC 11y ago
The problem is that nutrition research is very fragmented, and most researchers study diseased states. Thus, you have people who study nutritional metabolism related to diebetes, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, etc. Additionally, most of the researchers know a few metabolic pathways relevant to their research extremely well, but have very limited knowledge of the metabolic network as a whole. It is unfortunate that very few researchers study nutrition as it relates to longevity or optimal human performance. There's very little money available for that type of work, and well-controlled nutrition studies on humans are expensive.

zappo2938 11y ago

The role of liver function and glycogen should be included in this conversation.[1] There might be a lot more at work than just elevated blood sugar levels. In most normal people, meaning without diabetes and other metabolism problems, the liver doesn't immediately convert sugar to fat. Rather extra sugar is converted to glycogen which can be easily accessed for energy. What happens when a runner carbo loads the night before a race? The pasta she eats is coveted to glycogen and stored in the liver not to fat. However, when the liver storage of energy is full, it then converts the excess to fat. Think about this for a second. The glycemic index and load don't apply because most people convert excess blood sugar to a readily available energy stored in the liver as glycogen not fat. The problem is that Americans culturally never deplete the storage of energy in the liver because of two reasons; first, Americans snack all the time and drink sugary drinks, and, second, which I don't understand, we have developed an idea that we should eat huge third meals at night. A big dinner will completely replenish the energy stores in the liver leaving excess sugar that will be converted into fat during sleep. Perhaps, it is smarter to eat a decent breakfast that contains simple sugars which are absorbed faster into the blood stream, a big lunch which will provide energy for the rest of the day, and a small dinner to satiate hunger. For a person who wakes up around 7am the fast should begin around 5pm in order to let the sugars deplete around bed time. There is no reason to have readily available sugars while sleeping. And then in the morning break the fast. There is no reason to have big dinners which are ridiculous. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycogen

pjc50 11y ago
the fast should begin around 5pm .. which requires that lunch be the main meal, which could be difficult in countries where eating at your desk is normalised.
bad_user 11y ago
> ... the fast should begin around 5pm ... there is no reason to have big dinners which are ridiculous Actually there is a very big reason for why your advice is harmful, for me at least, but I suspect that for others as well. At 5pm I'm still at work, which means that whatever meal I'll have will be fast food and not a home cooked meal. But even more problematic is that dinner is also the perfect opportunity to sit together with your family, as in that moment during the day that can be shared without feeling rushed and if you want to sit together with your wife and kids, anything less than 8pm is not doable, as afternoons are usually unpredictable, as for example that's also the time of day when people go shopping or solve other chores. The family dinner is a matter of cultural inheritance that we've been forgetting and I'm willing to bet that this trait of modern life is much more harmful than fats, carbohydrates or whatever identified nutritional element is the enemy du-jour.

sageabilly 11y ago

I am particularly excited for the rise of easier genome sequencing and the role that will play in nutritional advice for individuals. The more we learn about genes and how people react differently to different foods the more intrigued I am by the idea of an "optimal" diet only being achieved on a person-by-person level.

mathgeek 11y ago
"The more we learn about genes and how people react differently to different foods the more intrigued I am by the idea of an "optimal" diet only being achieved on a person-by-person level." For me, it's implicit that optimizing diet can only be done on an individual basis. It's pretty obvious, at least to me, that taking maternal twins and having one be active while the other remains inactive for most of their lives leads to the need for different diets between the two.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Ok I was going to say something about genetic clustering and how there're probably just a few diets needed to cover most people. Then, behavior. Right, it also depends on where you are in your life (age, exercise, previous diet, health issues). It's fair to say an optimal diet is an individual thing.
hga 11y ago
I would say that's maybe 1/3 of what we need to know to accomplish your objective. The other thirds are the 100 trillion microbes that make up your microbiome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota), and the fact that we still don't know hardly anything about the relationship of various foods and how we eat them to health. Especially since different genomes and microbiomes make this particularly difficult for quality research.
CuriouslyC 11y ago
The problem with this is that the majority of your response to a given diet is actually a result of your gut microbial ecosystem. Not only does that mean an order of magnitude more genes are in play, but the microbial ecosystem is dynamic, and adapts to changes in diet, stress levels and a variety of other factors.

mathgeek 11y ago

"the fat in French fries slows the process only slightly" Tomorrow's blog headline: SCIENCE PROVES FRENCH FRIES ARE THE HEALTHIEST WAY TO EAT POTATOES

bad_user 11y ago

> It’s really important to distinguish between healthy fats and bad fats, healthy carbs and bad carbs What a bunch of crap. They said the same thing about cholesterol after fucking up monumentally and the history repeats itself over and over again. Just man up, recognize how incompetent you are, how your non-scientific advice has been hurting people over the past 50 years and switch jobs because the science you're practicing is nothing more than a cult. > He explained that saturated fat, found in fatty animal foods like meats and dairy products, raises blood levels of cholesterol and is not healthy There is zero evidence that saturated fats are unhealthy. Fats don't make you sick. Neither do carbohydrates. Humans have been eating fats and carbohydrates ever since the dawn of men. It's part of our identity as omnivores. What actually changed is making food an industrial process whose output is processed/synthetic food, which is much more profitable, while riding the waves of crap coming from nutritionists, coinciding perfectly with the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Low-fat milk for example is still on sale with health claims, even though it's a well known fact that it's much more unhealthy than normal milk.

mathgeek 11y ago
Can you link the sources for your claims? I'm asking sincerely, as I'm sure people interested in the topic will want to see the research.
- tldrlol 11y ago
  I can't find a link for that now, especially since most sources on the internet claim otherwise. But I do recall reading something like that. The gist of it was, that there is no observable correlation between the intake of saturated fats consumed, and heart disease. There is however correlation between consumption of meat products and heart disease. A point was made specifically that balancing the diet with vegetables specifically counteracts these negative effects.
- wdewind 11y ago
  Not OP but I think the burden of proof is on the people saying an entire macronutrient group is bad.

mannimow 11y ago

Every article on fats vs. carbs dilemma stresses out weight management issue, none of them mention any other effects, but weight. As a skinny guy, what are the dangers of say french fries, honey, and fast food? What about when coupled with active life style and moderate exercise?

visakanv 11y ago
Fellow skinny guy here who's working my way out of it. I don't know if you relate to this, but when I used to eat french fries and fast food, I would have bouts of lethargy and mental dullness. I just sort of thought that's how life is. When I started eating healthier, I enjoy much better mental clarity. It's a world of difference, and it gives me 2-5x more quality time to do my best work.
briHass 11y ago
As with everything, it depends largely on your genetics and natural inclination to becoming insulin resistant. Insulin resistance (IR) can occur in normal-BMI individuals. This is typically accompanied (caused?) by a large amount of visceral fat (internal, around your organs), which isn't what we typically see when we look at an overweight individual. IR is really just the first step to full type 2 diabetes. Exercise and youth can negate much of a bad diet, but it will likely catch up to you eventually. Better markers than your weight might be HDL (should be high), triglyceride levels (should be low), and fasting blood sugar. If those are optimal, you're probably doing fine, but there isn't really a case to be made that you should continue to eat poor food choices if you can avoid it.

amelius 11y ago

The problem with moving to a diet richer in fat is that it can cause digestive problems, such as GERD.

agumonkey 11y ago

Having reached limits my body starts to reject anything fatty, salty, sweet ... basically most processed food. I thus was forced to eat raw vegies, raw, no sauce, not cooked, nothing, and it was a revelation. They're full of subtle taste, texture that tickle your senses just enough and will make you feel full very very quick, without any strings attached [1]. I miss the sophistication of traditional meals (spices, sauces) though, and am seeking for an in between solution. [1] junk food satisfies you 10x more but leaves after taste, or sugar heavy, fat heavy feel in you. <anecdote/>