5 ms·

Good job, you've expounded on the obvious short-coming of "simplification". Most people have a hard enough time with algebra, how do you expect them to handle

by jtuente 10y ago

Good job, you've expounded on the obvious short-coming of "simplification". Most people have a hard enough time with algebra, how do you expect them to handle the many complexities of human biology and the digestive process. CICO is meant as a starting point in a diet, not a be-all, end-all encompassing idea. The spherical cow exists to simplify ideas so they can be more easily grasped and learned.

jessaustin 10y ago
The spherical cow is a useful approximation in many contexts. However one wouldn't find many aerospace engineers using it to predict the performance of an aircraft. CICO would be an appropriate approximation for e.g. an ecologist studying food chains. That it's used in the context of human nutrition, however, is nearly as severe an indictment of the field as the fact that all of its studies are sponsored by industry.
- jtuente 10y ago
  Again most people aren't trying to engineer their diets, what they need is simple concepts that provide a good outline of what they need to do to meet their goals. Self-monitoring and self-correction are far more useful than knowing a precise formula of how much meat, dairy, fruits and veggies one should be eating.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Again... Yes you are certainly persistent but we are talking about the state of nutrition as a science not about rules of thumb that average people can use when thinking about diets. The former and the latter are different things.
    - jtuente 10y ago
      Then what point are you actually trying to make here? The original comment I made was that this research is irrelevant in regards to CICO. I stand by that a precise formula for what to eat is largely useless in the everyday sense, unless you're developing something akin to Soylent, which could be considered an engineering endeavor.
WorldMaker 10y ago
The problem with an over-simplification, especially one that leads to a false equivalence (in this case calories != calories because it's an indirect measurement of energy by way of an energy by-product heat), is that it leads to drawing the wrong conclusions. Using CICO as a starting point in a diet is, best case, mostly harmless. On the other hand, it has been shown to be actually harmful to people's self-esteems and generally leads exactly to where we are with a steady stream of CICO "fad of the month diets" that don't produce general, reproducible results and can easily victim blame because "they weren't counting right". Great, CICO might be a useful superstition for you. I'm not going to stop you from using it just as I'm not going to stop people from consulting their astrology charts. I do take umbrage at anyone that thinks CICO is good science; it really is about as much science as astrology.
- jtuente 10y ago
  > harmful to people's self-esteems Hoo boy, that's what we need, more people with self-inflated self-esteem issues. I think what you mean is that it's harmful to their immediate gratification response. > CICO "fad of the month diets" Could you point one of those out to me, because the only CICO diets I'm aware of are things like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers (oh and maybe Nutrisystem). Shit like South Beach, Atkins, Low-GI, Keto aren't focused on CICO, but on some other aspect of nutritional content.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    From what I've read, and I know I'm veering towards stuff I don't have the place to discuss, both Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers seem to go through fad periods themselves, measurement revamps, have different scoring systems between each other, etc. There are blogs and tumblrs devoted to the cycles that Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers tend to go through and the abusive victim blaming to people that occurs within their programs, especially to "repeat customers". You might not care anything about that sort of abuse (and in fact from many of your responses seem more than happy to fat shame), but it is a real problem that is hurting real people, compassion would go a long way...
    - 10y ago

by jtuente 10y ago

jessaustin 10y ago

The spherical cow is a useful approximation in many contexts. However one wouldn't find many aerospace engineers using it to predict the performance of an aircraft. CICO would be an appropriate approximation for e.g. an ecologist studying food chains. That it's used in the context of human nutrition, however, is nearly as severe an indictment of the field as the fact that all of its studies are sponsored by industry.

jtuente 10y ago
Again most people aren't trying to engineer their diets, what they need is simple concepts that provide a good outline of what they need to do to meet their goals. Self-monitoring and self-correction are far more useful than knowing a precise formula of how much meat, dairy, fruits and veggies one should be eating.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Again... Yes you are certainly persistent but we are talking about the state of nutrition as a science not about rules of thumb that average people can use when thinking about diets. The former and the latter are different things.
  - jtuente 10y ago
    Then what point are you actually trying to make here? The original comment I made was that this research is irrelevant in regards to CICO. I stand by that a precise formula for what to eat is largely useless in the everyday sense, unless you're developing something akin to Soylent, which could be considered an engineering endeavor.

WorldMaker 10y ago

The problem with an over-simplification, especially one that leads to a false equivalence (in this case calories != calories because it's an indirect measurement of energy by way of an energy by-product heat), is that it leads to drawing the wrong conclusions. Using CICO as a starting point in a diet is, best case, mostly harmless. On the other hand, it has been shown to be actually harmful to people's self-esteems and generally leads exactly to where we are with a steady stream of CICO "fad of the month diets" that don't produce general, reproducible results and can easily victim blame because "they weren't counting right". Great, CICO might be a useful superstition for you. I'm not going to stop you from using it just as I'm not going to stop people from consulting their astrology charts. I do take umbrage at anyone that thinks CICO is good science; it really is about as much science as astrology.

jtuente 10y ago
> harmful to people's self-esteems Hoo boy, that's what we need, more people with self-inflated self-esteem issues. I think what you mean is that it's harmful to their immediate gratification response. > CICO "fad of the month diets" Could you point one of those out to me, because the only CICO diets I'm aware of are things like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers (oh and maybe Nutrisystem). Shit like South Beach, Atkins, Low-GI, Keto aren't focused on CICO, but on some other aspect of nutritional content.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  From what I've read, and I know I'm veering towards stuff I don't have the place to discuss, both Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers seem to go through fad periods themselves, measurement revamps, have different scoring systems between each other, etc. There are blogs and tumblrs devoted to the cycles that Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers tend to go through and the abusive victim blaming to people that occurs within their programs, especially to "repeat customers". You might not care anything about that sort of abuse (and in fact from many of your responses seem more than happy to fat shame), but it is a real problem that is hurting real people, compassion would go a long way...
  - 10y ago