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Very interesting article. I continue to be amazed at how primitive our nutrition science is but I guess that's what happens when you combine a tough problem wi

Very interesting article. I continue to be amazed at how primitive our nutrition science is but I guess that's what happens when you combine a tough problem with market distortions. The tough problem: there are a million variables to control for, people's environment (work, health, happiness, etc.) confounds everything, accurate reporting is difficult, food quality varies (e.g., apple nutrients have changed over time), etc. The market distortions: huge subsidies and entrenched interests for factory farming with a heavy emphasis on grains, cereals and legumes, particularly wheat, corn, and soybeans. I've found that substituting lots of fat and protein for carbohydrates while emphasizing food quality (little processed foods) produces lots of satiety, and improvement in physical performance, a better lipid profile and loss of body fat. But YMMV.

Watts 17y ago
Your last sentence hits the nail on the head. I started eating this way in mid-January and have lost almost 30lbs since then.
matrix 17y ago
The science of nutrition and biochemistry in general is anything but primitive. Unfortunately though, there is probably no single field that has a greater amount of psuedo-scientific nonsense published about it in the mainstream media (not to mention crackpot blogs, books etc). Anyone can publish a book or a blog and pretend to have expertise on the topic. For example, I remember seeing one that was proudly emblazoned with the author's name appended with "PhD". It was complete fluff. Turns out her PhD was in English literature. Like all sensationalist issues, the fructose thing is more nuanced than the fruitcakes on either side would have you believe. But where's the fun in that? I've been considering starting some sort of site for publishing the real truth on this stuff, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be to other people. The truth just isn't link-baity and sensationalist enough, y'know?
- nixme 17y ago
  > the fructose thing is more nuanced than the fruitcakes on either side would have you believe Can you enlighten us on these nuances? By "fruitcakes" I assume you're referring to Aragon and Lustig?
  - matrix 17y ago
    In terms of fruitcakes, I was thinking more of the people that bring a political agenda or talk about "toxins" or what not. Long story short: fructose is only problematic if you are consuming it without dietary fiber (e.g. as fruit) for glycemic control, as well as all the other modulating effects fiber has. Fructose (and HFCS) sweetened foods are really just a sideshow to the the main issue: people making bad nutrition and lifestyle choices over the long term, e.g. drinking sodas every day. There's no easy, magic bullet that takes away one's responsibility for making good choices. Magically eliminating fructose or HFCS from our diets won't reverse the obesity trend. It'll help a bit, of course, but ultimately humans will need to find a way to adapt to over-abundance of temping, high-calorie foods. Meanwhile, a modicum of education and self-discipline are the keys.
    - Goladus 17y ago
      The Lestig talk offers some fairly convincing arguments that what you say is not the case. Fructose is inherently problematic. Fiber merely mitigates the effects, which are still there and wouldn't have happened at all had you eaten something without sugar at all. Furthermore, while drinking sodas every day is perhaps a choice, what about the example of walking down the bread aisle and finding that something like 95% of the varieties listed HFCS as an ingredient? It's not just that sodas and juice drinks are ubiquitous, heavily-marketed, cheap, tasty, and designed to maximize consumption and therefore profit through use of diuretics and sodium and therefore people find themselves making the dietary choice to drink them with meals instead of water, but also the fact that HFCS is used in an enormous number of processed foods. Bread, pizza dough, tomato sauce, cookies, candy bars, chocolate, yogurt, sports drinks, salad dressing, BBQ sauce, chocolate milk... HFCS is everywhere because it's cheap, because it makes food taste better, and because it doesn't fill you up so people will consume (and therefore buy) more of it. On the one hand, fats are more calorie-dense, but sugar doesn't fill you up (and in my experience salt has a similar effect but I work out and sweat a lot so that could be why). So the combination of sugar and fat is the killer combination. Try this experiment: for a single day, try to eat 4,000 calories of nothing but a simple starchy food (like white rice) with some fat, like olive oil. This is a low fiber, high calorie diet. My guess is that you'll feel incredibly full after all the rice and oil. You may not even be able to reach 4,000 calories in 16 hours. You'll have to force yourself to eat by the end. Then, a few days later after you've sent some fiber through your digestive system to clear out any blockage you caused eating so much rice, try the same thing with soda and cookies. Get a couple boxes of your favorite HFCS-sweetened cookies and a couple of 2-liter bottles of your favorite soda or better yet, juice drink. See how hard it is to reach 4,000 calories now. My guess is that you'll have no trouble, although you may feel a bit ill by the end of the day.
- jacobolus 17y ago
  > The science of nutrition and biochemistry in general is anything but primitive. Really? Given a particular food item/meal/diet, can we accurately predict all of the effects it will have on a particular person? As far as I can tell, our knowledge of nutrition (even the most “scientific” bits I’ve seen) are largely based on a few stabs in the dark, lots of hearsay/anecdote, and either exaggeration or lots of hedging. Add in questions about which food items are most useful when eaten at the same time, what part of our daily schedule should have which foods, how nutrition intersects/interacts with sleep/exercise/mental activity, etc., and I’ve never read anything that leads me to believe we have even the beginnings of an “advanced” understanding. We can make some broad suggestions: eat a varied diet; hold off on the sugar; try to get some aerobic exercise; sleep enough; get enough sunshine; etc. But human bodies seem to be pretty tolerant of many possible diets: which can we tolerate, and under which do we thrive? Our daily diets – for example eggs and cereal for breakfast, sandwiches at midday, a piece of meat and some mixed vegetables or some pasta or whatever at night – are basically culturally specific, driven by historical accident: in different parts of the world, diets, work schedules, types of physical exercise, &c. vary substantially; which of these differences are because of legitimately different needs, and which are arbitrary?

Watts 17y ago

Your last sentence hits the nail on the head. I started eating this way in mid-January and have lost almost 30lbs since then.

matrix 17y ago

The science of nutrition and biochemistry in general is anything but primitive. Unfortunately though, there is probably no single field that has a greater amount of psuedo-scientific nonsense published about it in the mainstream media (not to mention crackpot blogs, books etc). Anyone can publish a book or a blog and pretend to have expertise on the topic. For example, I remember seeing one that was proudly emblazoned with the author's name appended with "PhD". It was complete fluff. Turns out her PhD was in English literature. Like all sensationalist issues, the fructose thing is more nuanced than the fruitcakes on either side would have you believe. But where's the fun in that? I've been considering starting some sort of site for publishing the real truth on this stuff, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be to other people. The truth just isn't link-baity and sensationalist enough, y'know?

nixme 17y ago
> the fructose thing is more nuanced than the fruitcakes on either side would have you believe Can you enlighten us on these nuances? By "fruitcakes" I assume you're referring to Aragon and Lustig?
- matrix 17y ago
  In terms of fruitcakes, I was thinking more of the people that bring a political agenda or talk about "toxins" or what not. Long story short: fructose is only problematic if you are consuming it without dietary fiber (e.g. as fruit) for glycemic control, as well as all the other modulating effects fiber has. Fructose (and HFCS) sweetened foods are really just a sideshow to the the main issue: people making bad nutrition and lifestyle choices over the long term, e.g. drinking sodas every day. There's no easy, magic bullet that takes away one's responsibility for making good choices. Magically eliminating fructose or HFCS from our diets won't reverse the obesity trend. It'll help a bit, of course, but ultimately humans will need to find a way to adapt to over-abundance of temping, high-calorie foods. Meanwhile, a modicum of education and self-discipline are the keys.
  - Goladus 17y ago
    The Lestig talk offers some fairly convincing arguments that what you say is not the case. Fructose is inherently problematic. Fiber merely mitigates the effects, which are still there and wouldn't have happened at all had you eaten something without sugar at all. Furthermore, while drinking sodas every day is perhaps a choice, what about the example of walking down the bread aisle and finding that something like 95% of the varieties listed HFCS as an ingredient? It's not just that sodas and juice drinks are ubiquitous, heavily-marketed, cheap, tasty, and designed to maximize consumption and therefore profit through use of diuretics and sodium and therefore people find themselves making the dietary choice to drink them with meals instead of water, but also the fact that HFCS is used in an enormous number of processed foods. Bread, pizza dough, tomato sauce, cookies, candy bars, chocolate, yogurt, sports drinks, salad dressing, BBQ sauce, chocolate milk... HFCS is everywhere because it's cheap, because it makes food taste better, and because it doesn't fill you up so people will consume (and therefore buy) more of it. On the one hand, fats are more calorie-dense, but sugar doesn't fill you up (and in my experience salt has a similar effect but I work out and sweat a lot so that could be why). So the combination of sugar and fat is the killer combination. Try this experiment: for a single day, try to eat 4,000 calories of nothing but a simple starchy food (like white rice) with some fat, like olive oil. This is a low fiber, high calorie diet. My guess is that you'll feel incredibly full after all the rice and oil. You may not even be able to reach 4,000 calories in 16 hours. You'll have to force yourself to eat by the end. Then, a few days later after you've sent some fiber through your digestive system to clear out any blockage you caused eating so much rice, try the same thing with soda and cookies. Get a couple boxes of your favorite HFCS-sweetened cookies and a couple of 2-liter bottles of your favorite soda or better yet, juice drink. See how hard it is to reach 4,000 calories now. My guess is that you'll have no trouble, although you may feel a bit ill by the end of the day.
jacobolus 17y ago
> The science of nutrition and biochemistry in general is anything but primitive. Really? Given a particular food item/meal/diet, can we accurately predict all of the effects it will have on a particular person? As far as I can tell, our knowledge of nutrition (even the most “scientific” bits I’ve seen) are largely based on a few stabs in the dark, lots of hearsay/anecdote, and either exaggeration or lots of hedging. Add in questions about which food items are most useful when eaten at the same time, what part of our daily schedule should have which foods, how nutrition intersects/interacts with sleep/exercise/mental activity, etc., and I’ve never read anything that leads me to believe we have even the beginnings of an “advanced” understanding. We can make some broad suggestions: eat a varied diet; hold off on the sugar; try to get some aerobic exercise; sleep enough; get enough sunshine; etc. But human bodies seem to be pretty tolerant of many possible diets: which can we tolerate, and under which do we thrive? Our daily diets – for example eggs and cereal for breakfast, sandwiches at midday, a piece of meat and some mixed vegetables or some pasta or whatever at night – are basically culturally specific, driven by historical accident: in different parts of the world, diets, work schedules, types of physical exercise, &c. vary substantially; which of these differences are because of legitimately different needs, and which are arbitrary?