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When in fact nothing can be blamed but our overconsumption of almost everything but vegetables and fruits. I eat about 70% from my calories in carbs (some are

When in fact nothing can be blamed but our overconsumption of almost everything but vegetables and fruits. I eat about 70% from my calories in carbs (some are refined), but it's just 2500kcal calories per day. I'm pretty sure the fact that average US citizen eats 3500kcal daily has more to do with anything than what particular ingredient one eats. edit: some irrational unscientific and anegdotal statements require me to remove myself from discussion. thanks.. for the downvotes, I'm outta here boys! :wink:

kentor 10y ago
Then the question is why do they eat 3500kcal? The hypothesis is that sugar does not make people feel full whereas fat does, so they eat more. A calorie is not a calorie.
- fastoptimizer 10y ago
  > The hypothesis is that sugar does not make people feel full whereas fat does, so they eat more. They still eat about 1500kcal of fat and protein - of which I eat about half the amount. If you were really talking about feeling full, nothing makes you feel more full than a belly and guts filled with lovely starch/fiber from fruits and vegetables, which an average US eats little if not any.
  - mobiuscog 10y ago
    Depends on the person. I can eat stupid amounts of fruit and vegetables... Low-carb is the only way I can not feel hungry. Of course, the general population does like their carbs to be the refined type.
  - hx87 10y ago
    I can easily get full from starchy/fibrous foods, but then I feel hungry again 1 hour later. Fat/protein rich foods, in contrast, keep me full for 4-8 hours.
  - GordonS 10y ago
    Yes, they make you feel full... until your blood glucose level drops 1-3 hours later, then you feel very hungry again. By contrast, if I eat a fat and protein based meal, there is no blood sugar drop to instigate a 'fake' hunger signal, so I don't begin to feel hungry for 4-7 hours or so.
- mobiuscog 10y ago
  It would seem that calories don't provide any metric with respect to psychological effect, whether caused by the food or otherwise. If only people had tried to point this out for many years...
- xurukefi 10y ago
  I didn't check the science, but I'm pretty confident that "feeling full" is a matter of volume and not of calories. At least in my personal experience a really dumb and easy way to lose fat without feeling hungry was to eat food with a low calorie density.
  - gohrt 10y ago
    Not just volume, but the biochemical process of digestion. For example, food that takes longer to digest has more volume for longer time in your body. There are also complex interactions of chemical secretions to regulate chemistry in digestion.
  - hx87 10y ago
    The goal isn't to "feel full", but to feel full and good for a long period of time. Otherwise, I might as well gorge myself on isotonic water.
    - xurukefi 10y ago
      I wasn't suggesting that feeling full is the goal. I was just trying to argue that calorie density is an important issue when it comes to obesity and overeating. Eating healthy food is, of course, important. But eating too much healthy food is not healthy ;). If I had to choose between eating too much healthy food and eating enough unhealthy food, I would probably choose the latter. I think obesity is a bigger problem than poor nutrition.
      - hx87 10y ago
        Why would I eat too much if I eat calorie-dense foods? How full I feel in the long term has little to do with volume and more to do with how many calories I eat and how quickly they are digested.
  - Practicality 10y ago
    What foods are you referring to as "low calorie density foods"? I can imagine that most vegetables fit this classification... but why would you state it this way unless you are referring to something else?
UweSchmidt 10y ago
Individual food components can always be "blamed" relatively to their impact. You may be accidentaly shifting blame to overconsumption. Something the sugar industry would do :-)
jbb555 10y ago
I think that fruits have an issue too. The fruit we get today has been bred to contain a lot more sugar than they did originally. I'm not convinced that lots of fruit all the time is as good for you as it ought to be.
- fastoptimizer 10y ago
  There hasn't been a study showing that calorie controlled fruit diet will cause you any harm (except potential malnutrition if fruit selection is not as varied). Just like excessive consumption of protein (but with a calorie cap) in healthy people shows no harm, or similar studies on healthy, physically active people. Diet is just a part of a healthy lifestyle and a huge variety of diets can be healthy. This blaming of particular ingredient or macronutrients is unscientific, I as a skeptic dislike it very much. Fruits are rich in fiber which slows down the absorption of their more "potent" sugars, not to mention that digestion of that fiber is far more taxing than digestion of something else. Of course, if I were to eat excessive amount of calories it's quite probable I'd get the same symptoms as those people consuming the equivalent in refined sugars.
- tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
  and don't forget about vegetables, I swear every year carrots get sweeter and sweeter, it feels with some carrot cultivars they are nearly as sweet as corn used to be (now corn often just tastes like candy basically to me, some varieties I can't stomach due to them tasting way too sweet) note I do not eat any sugar or sweeteners and haven't for years, so maybe that's why I am more sensitive to this
  - XorNot 10y ago
    About a year ago I switched over to buying unsweetened, unsalted peanut butter. For about ... 2 days, I actually could tell the difference. Then it was fine. Then about 2 weeks later it tasted pretty much as I remembered peanut butter always tasting. This gave me a serious moment of pause about how much sugar is added to manufactured foods.
- redwards510 10y ago
logicallee 10y ago
this is almost certainly wrong. (That nothing can be blamed.) I can't eat much sugar for medical reasons, so that means that entire aisles are basically unavailable to me. things like cereals, cookies, cakes, lots of delicious stuff. But there is something or someone (or some process or some state of affairs) to blame here. Because check it out: stevia is delicious, and with splenda and all sorts of other zero-calorie artificial sweetener choices (going back to saccharine) it would be trivial to make almost all of those food choices in varieties that are artificially sweetened. what do you want to bet that the high fructose corn syrup or sugar industry has a say in directing the conversation that leads to these foods simply not existing? They literally don't exist in supermarkets: you make them at home. why the fuck would an expensive premium food like this - https://www.specialk.com/en_US/products/protein-cereal.html https://www.specialk.com/en_US/products/protein-cereal.html have 20% by weight in sugar! Generally speaking what I've just linked is a great food, and it's premium and expensive and for those who are very health-conscious. It hardly has any calories, converting by multiplying the suggested serving by 3, it has only 360 calories in 100 grams, which contains 30g of protein (so that if you further multiply by three to get to your daily intake, you get to 90g of protein, enough for just about anyone, reaching only 1080 calories - so it seems great to me. you could literally consider this diet food.) But it has 21 grams of sugar in those 100 grams. (I happened to find someone weighing 100 grams of cereal, though a denser one - here is what that looks like: http://blog.belm.com/wp-content/uploads/cerealpannacotta1.jpg http://blog.belm.com/wp-content/uploads/cerealpannacotta1.jp... -- * EDIT: also found someone who happened to weigh 20 grams of sugar, this is what that looks like: http://alcademics.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553b3da20883401a3fb6599c2970b-pi http://alcademics.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553b3da20883401a3fb659... (that's about 5 cubes of sugar.)). Why does it have 21% by weight sugar! Why not use an artificial sweetener? Like, it's not even an option. You can't really find stevia alternatives. The third ingredient in what I just linked was Sugar. Here is someone asking them to include stevia: https://community.kelloggs.com/kelloggs/topics/special-k-protein-stevia-not-sugar https://community.kelloggs.com/kelloggs/topics/special-k-pro... Like, what gives? I realize that stevia might be expensive compared with sugar, but some people would likely pay for that. You can't get foods made that way though, unless you make it yourself. why is that? There is someone to blame here. It's a dichotomy: you eat the 21 grams of sugar, or you don't eat the 100 grams of Special K Protein. It's not about overconsumption: it's about a lack of choice. Why doesn't the artificial-sweetener version exist, at all? There is something, or someone (or an abstract economic process, or something) to blame here. While "blaming" an economic process (or a lack of FDA mandate, or ... whatever) might sound bitter due to the phrasing, we can still ask what leads to this state of affairs. I don't usually like to play the "blame game" or put things in those terms, but in this case, I'm missing out on a lot of foods, so yes, I'll do it. If Coca Cola can do it, and get it everywhere, why can't dessert "foods" like oreos or breakfast cereal, do it? They simply don't exist in artificially sweetened versions. Why not?
brandon272 10y ago
This is one aspect of sugar and fat that I find confusing. Is sugar in and of itself bad? If I like to eat sugar but am otherwise healthy (healthy weight, plenty of fruits and vegetables, plenty of exercise, etc.), am I still damaging my cardiovascular system?
- fastoptimizer 10y ago
  Of course not. Is sunlight bad because it can give you cancer? Are apples bad because they contain cyanide in seeds you can accidentally consume? Is red meat bad because it causes cancer? Is alcohol bad because it causes cancer? If you feel you're living a healthy lifestyle, you can easily check that by doing some medical tests. No diet related disease is going to invisibly attack you at a random moment in life. Atherosclerosis is fairly visible. Diabetes too. With regular checks you can be sure you're fine.
- romanr 10y ago
  Sugar is poison. Search YouTube for Lustig lecture video.
  - fastoptimizer 10y ago
    Lustig is unfortunately a scientific crackpot. His lecture has many untruthful statements (like those about Japanese) and puts blame mostly on fructose. As much as fructose does cause some interesting metabolic problems, unlike glucose, it still cannot be characterized as unhealthy (because the very Japanese he praises eat a lot of fructose and the studies are done on fructose extracts which can't even be reproduced with equivalent fruits in fructose amounts). He makes equivalent claims to those made by Campbell in his China study that casein from milk causes cancer - of course it does if it's 20 freaking percent of your caloric intake (which is practically impossible to consume long-term).
    - brandon272 10y ago
      http://www.stats.org/glaring-flaws-in-sugar-toxicity-study/ http://www.stats.org/glaring-flaws-in-sugar-toxicity-study/
sridca 10y ago
For the record I up-voted you for sensibly pointing out that the amount of food one eats matters (in regards to health) more than the particular ingredients. I guess it will take another 50 years before people begin to realize this.

kentor 10y ago

Then the question is why do they eat 3500kcal? The hypothesis is that sugar does not make people feel full whereas fat does, so they eat more. A calorie is not a calorie.

fastoptimizer 10y ago
> The hypothesis is that sugar does not make people feel full whereas fat does, so they eat more. They still eat about 1500kcal of fat and protein - of which I eat about half the amount. If you were really talking about feeling full, nothing makes you feel more full than a belly and guts filled with lovely starch/fiber from fruits and vegetables, which an average US eats little if not any.
- mobiuscog 10y ago
  Depends on the person. I can eat stupid amounts of fruit and vegetables... Low-carb is the only way I can not feel hungry. Of course, the general population does like their carbs to be the refined type.
- hx87 10y ago
  I can easily get full from starchy/fibrous foods, but then I feel hungry again 1 hour later. Fat/protein rich foods, in contrast, keep me full for 4-8 hours.
- GordonS 10y ago
  Yes, they make you feel full... until your blood glucose level drops 1-3 hours later, then you feel very hungry again. By contrast, if I eat a fat and protein based meal, there is no blood sugar drop to instigate a 'fake' hunger signal, so I don't begin to feel hungry for 4-7 hours or so.
mobiuscog 10y ago
It would seem that calories don't provide any metric with respect to psychological effect, whether caused by the food or otherwise. If only people had tried to point this out for many years...
xurukefi 10y ago
I didn't check the science, but I'm pretty confident that "feeling full" is a matter of volume and not of calories. At least in my personal experience a really dumb and easy way to lose fat without feeling hungry was to eat food with a low calorie density.
- gohrt 10y ago
  Not just volume, but the biochemical process of digestion. For example, food that takes longer to digest has more volume for longer time in your body. There are also complex interactions of chemical secretions to regulate chemistry in digestion.
- hx87 10y ago
  The goal isn't to "feel full", but to feel full and good for a long period of time. Otherwise, I might as well gorge myself on isotonic water.
  - xurukefi 10y ago
    I wasn't suggesting that feeling full is the goal. I was just trying to argue that calorie density is an important issue when it comes to obesity and overeating. Eating healthy food is, of course, important. But eating too much healthy food is not healthy ;). If I had to choose between eating too much healthy food and eating enough unhealthy food, I would probably choose the latter. I think obesity is a bigger problem than poor nutrition.
    - hx87 10y ago
      Why would I eat too much if I eat calorie-dense foods? How full I feel in the long term has little to do with volume and more to do with how many calories I eat and how quickly they are digested.
- Practicality 10y ago
  What foods are you referring to as "low calorie density foods"? I can imagine that most vegetables fit this classification... but why would you state it this way unless you are referring to something else?

UweSchmidt 10y ago

Individual food components can always be "blamed" relatively to their impact. You may be accidentaly shifting blame to overconsumption. Something the sugar industry would do :-)

jbb555 10y ago

I think that fruits have an issue too. The fruit we get today has been bred to contain a lot more sugar than they did originally. I'm not convinced that lots of fruit all the time is as good for you as it ought to be.

fastoptimizer 10y ago
There hasn't been a study showing that calorie controlled fruit diet will cause you any harm (except potential malnutrition if fruit selection is not as varied). Just like excessive consumption of protein (but with a calorie cap) in healthy people shows no harm, or similar studies on healthy, physically active people. Diet is just a part of a healthy lifestyle and a huge variety of diets can be healthy. This blaming of particular ingredient or macronutrients is unscientific, I as a skeptic dislike it very much. Fruits are rich in fiber which slows down the absorption of their more "potent" sugars, not to mention that digestion of that fiber is far more taxing than digestion of something else. Of course, if I were to eat excessive amount of calories it's quite probable I'd get the same symptoms as those people consuming the equivalent in refined sugars.
tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
and don't forget about vegetables, I swear every year carrots get sweeter and sweeter, it feels with some carrot cultivars they are nearly as sweet as corn used to be (now corn often just tastes like candy basically to me, some varieties I can't stomach due to them tasting way too sweet) note I do not eat any sugar or sweeteners and haven't for years, so maybe that's why I am more sensitive to this
- XorNot 10y ago
  About a year ago I switched over to buying unsweetened, unsalted peanut butter. For about ... 2 days, I actually could tell the difference. Then it was fine. Then about 2 weeks later it tasted pretty much as I remembered peanut butter always tasting. This gave me a serious moment of pause about how much sugar is added to manufactured foods.
redwards510 10y ago

logicallee 10y ago

this is almost certainly wrong. (That nothing can be blamed.) I can't eat much sugar for medical reasons, so that means that entire aisles are basically unavailable to me. things like cereals, cookies, cakes, lots of delicious stuff. But there is something or someone (or some process or some state of affairs) to blame here. Because check it out: stevia is delicious, and with splenda and all sorts of other zero-calorie artificial sweetener choices (going back to saccharine) it would be trivial to make almost all of those food choices in varieties that are artificially sweetened. what do you want to bet that the high fructose corn syrup or sugar industry has a say in directing the conversation that leads to these foods simply not existing? They literally don't exist in supermarkets: you make them at home. why the fuck would an expensive premium food like this - https://www.specialk.com/en_US/products/protein-cereal.html https://www.specialk.com/en_US/products/protein-cereal.html have 20% by weight in sugar! Generally speaking what I've just linked is a great food, and it's premium and expensive and for those who are very health-conscious. It hardly has any calories, converting by multiplying the suggested serving by 3, it has only 360 calories in 100 grams, which contains 30g of protein (so that if you further multiply by three to get to your daily intake, you get to 90g of protein, enough for just about anyone, reaching only 1080 calories - so it seems great to me. you could literally consider this diet food.) But it has 21 grams of sugar in those 100 grams. (I happened to find someone weighing 100 grams of cereal, though a denser one - here is what that looks like: http://blog.belm.com/wp-content/uploads/cerealpannacotta1.jpg http://blog.belm.com/wp-content/uploads/cerealpannacotta1.jp... -- * EDIT: also found someone who happened to weigh 20 grams of sugar, this is what that looks like: http://alcademics.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553b3da20883401a3fb6599c2970b-pi http://alcademics.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553b3da20883401a3fb659... (that's about 5 cubes of sugar.)). Why does it have 21% by weight sugar! Why not use an artificial sweetener? Like, it's not even an option. You can't really find stevia alternatives. The third ingredient in what I just linked was Sugar. Here is someone asking them to include stevia: https://community.kelloggs.com/kelloggs/topics/special-k-protein-stevia-not-sugar https://community.kelloggs.com/kelloggs/topics/special-k-pro... Like, what gives? I realize that stevia might be expensive compared with sugar, but some people would likely pay for that. You can't get foods made that way though, unless you make it yourself. why is that? There is someone to blame here. It's a dichotomy: you eat the 21 grams of sugar, or you don't eat the 100 grams of Special K Protein. It's not about overconsumption: it's about a lack of choice. Why doesn't the artificial-sweetener version exist, at all? There is something, or someone (or an abstract economic process, or something) to blame here. While "blaming" an economic process (or a lack of FDA mandate, or ... whatever) might sound bitter due to the phrasing, we can still ask what leads to this state of affairs. I don't usually like to play the "blame game" or put things in those terms, but in this case, I'm missing out on a lot of foods, so yes, I'll do it. If Coca Cola can do it, and get it everywhere, why can't dessert "foods" like oreos or breakfast cereal, do it? They simply don't exist in artificially sweetened versions. Why not?

brandon272 10y ago

This is one aspect of sugar and fat that I find confusing. Is sugar in and of itself bad? If I like to eat sugar but am otherwise healthy (healthy weight, plenty of fruits and vegetables, plenty of exercise, etc.), am I still damaging my cardiovascular system?

fastoptimizer 10y ago
Of course not. Is sunlight bad because it can give you cancer? Are apples bad because they contain cyanide in seeds you can accidentally consume? Is red meat bad because it causes cancer? Is alcohol bad because it causes cancer? If you feel you're living a healthy lifestyle, you can easily check that by doing some medical tests. No diet related disease is going to invisibly attack you at a random moment in life. Atherosclerosis is fairly visible. Diabetes too. With regular checks you can be sure you're fine.
romanr 10y ago
Sugar is poison. Search YouTube for Lustig lecture video.
- fastoptimizer 10y ago
  Lustig is unfortunately a scientific crackpot. His lecture has many untruthful statements (like those about Japanese) and puts blame mostly on fructose. As much as fructose does cause some interesting metabolic problems, unlike glucose, it still cannot be characterized as unhealthy (because the very Japanese he praises eat a lot of fructose and the studies are done on fructose extracts which can't even be reproduced with equivalent fruits in fructose amounts). He makes equivalent claims to those made by Campbell in his China study that casein from milk causes cancer - of course it does if it's 20 freaking percent of your caloric intake (which is practically impossible to consume long-term).
  - brandon272 10y ago
    http://www.stats.org/glaring-flaws-in-sugar-toxicity-study/ http://www.stats.org/glaring-flaws-in-sugar-toxicity-study/

sridca 10y ago

For the record I up-voted you for sensibly pointing out that the amount of food one eats matters (in regards to health) more than the particular ingredients. I guess it will take another 50 years before people begin to realize this.