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What's interesting is that most of the population of this planet does not even realize that glucose is not the only source of energy and that we can be powered

What's interesting is that most of the population of this planet does not even realize that glucose is not the only source of energy and that we can be powered entirely by beta-hydroxybutyrate (which comes from fats); our carbohydrate requirement is zero because our body can synthesize all the glucose it needs. Here is a pretty good and scientific talk about what is happening (warning > 1 hour long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Edit: just noticed this y/t has already been cited in another comment - evermore reason to pay attention to it :)

amelius 10y ago
I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source? How difficult is it to incorporate this in your diet? And is it expensive?
- koolba 10y ago
  > I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source? Your body will handle that naturally. If it doesn't have enough of resource A, it'll try resource B, then C, ... It happens automatically.
- jacamat 10y ago
  I did Keto for a month in September. It requires a good deal of self-control to stick to it (you'll quickly realize that only about 1% of the grocery store is food you can eat on Keto - resisting that temptation constantly is a trial) but it's not particularly expensive. You do have to be "in ketosis" to get the full benefits of Keto, but I've also found that just sticking to a low carb diet (under 100 carbs p/d) is a good start to ease into it. For Keto you will need to stay under 50...some people stay under 20. I lost about 15 lbs during the process and my diet mostly consisted of salads with lots of chicken + cheese + high fat dressing. I was a vegan before I switched to Keto so eating my veggies was not difficult, but some of my friends struggled to keep a "healthy" diet during the process. The most difficulty you will have doing Keto is your own self-control. Finding recipes & food to buy is easy.
  - IndianAstronaut 10y ago
    Keto was the only diet I could lose weight with. One thing a lot of other diet plans ignore is satiety. If you are hungry or crave food, it is basically an addiction. You will not stop till satieted. Sugars and starches spike glucose levels and thus trigger insulin responses which puts one back in a hungry state.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
calvano915 10y ago
There are costs to gluconeogenesis (glucose via protein catabolism), kidney issues to name one (deamination producing ammonia). The body does not synthesize glucose from fatty acids (beta-oxidation occurs producing aceytl-coA in the mitochondria, thus producing energy, but aceytl-CoA cannot be converted upwards in the pathway to glucose). A small amount of glucose can/does get created from glycerol. Nutrition recommendations up to this point still recommend high ratio of carbs (45-65% of kcals) because they are the most direct metabolic pathway. Also incredibly important for gut health is fiber, which is a complex carbohydrate (and prebiotic). The concern of carbs is non-complex ones as a high percentage of intake. They have found that the brain runs on ketones (for a long time it was thought that it required glucose specifically) but long term research is non-existent. So yes, the body can live off of "no carbs", but stating that our carbohydrate requirement is zero is just false according to the literature and nutritional history of the majority of humans.
- lucisferre 10y ago
  So you're saying HN comments are not a good source of my daily nutritional information?
  - calvano915 10y ago
    :) Like everything else in life, nutrition as a science is incredibly more complicated than we want to believe or describe. A seriously good place to start is MyPlate (their nutrition AND physical activity recommendations).
- overgard 10y ago
  I'm always skeptical when I hear "Nutrition recommendations" because it implies some sort of authority. Nutrition recommendations from who? The USDA? It's worth reading the history of the food pyramid. Here's a quote from wikipedia: "The first chart suggested to the USDA by nutritional experts in 1992 featured fruits and vegetables as the biggest group, not breads. This chart was overturned at the hand of special interests in the grain, meat, and dairy industries, all of which are heavily subsidized by the USDA.[10] If Americans followed the chart suggested, they would buy much less meat, milk, and bread. On the other hand, if they ate as the revised chart suggested, it "could lead to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes," as original composer of the food Pyramid, Louise Light warned. " I know from a personal standpoint, once I removed refined carbohydrates from my diet I dropped 25 pounds in two months (without bothering to excersize.) So the idea that somehow the diet that made me fat is somehow the "good" diet because the USDA says so strikes me as being silly.
sametmax 10y ago
Yes we evolve from a common ancestor with the monkey, which used to eat mainly fruit, hence sugar.
- overgard 10y ago
  Fruit tends to be healthy because the sugar (fructose) is wrapped in protein and fiber. In other words, it's very very distilled. That's the reason why eating an orange is a lot healthier than drinking orange juice. But we do know that fructose is VERY bad for you (high fructose corn syrup is much worse than sucrose alone).
  - JamesBarney 10y ago
    I don't think there exists any evidence that high fructose corn syrup is much worse than sucrose. They are pretty close to the same thing. HFCS is 45-58% glucose, and 42-55% fructose, and sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. There is one more bond in sugar, but enzymes in your gut break that bond apart very quickly.
    - overgard 10y ago
      Well, I'm not exactly saying your should eat a bunch of sucrose either, so I might have overstepped by saying it's MUCH worse. But I do think the evidence points to fructose not being good for you, and it's certainly not better than other sugars.
      - PepeGomez 10y ago
        Why are you lying like that? Are you trying to hurt people?
        overgard 10y ago
        Huh? I'm a liar for saying "sugar is bad and certain sugars are worse"?
pier25 10y ago
I've switched to a low carb / high protein / high fat diet and it's great. I'm eating lots of food and losing weight along the way. Each Saturday is cheat day and I eat anything I want. Breaking the sugar / carbs dependency was really difficult for the first weeks but now I'm "fat adapted" as they call it. I've been doing this diet for a year or so and broken it a few times for weeks at a time. Getting back was super easy and I didn't gain much weight. In 2016 I've lost more than 20 kilos, or about 6 belt notches. I even had to buy a new smaller belt. If you want to know more about this look for the Atkins diet, 4 hour body diet, keto diet, etc. Those are all variations on the same idea of reducing or eliminating carbs from your diet.

amelius 10y ago

I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source? How difficult is it to incorporate this in your diet? And is it expensive?

koolba 10y ago
> I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source? Your body will handle that naturally. If it doesn't have enough of resource A, it'll try resource B, then C, ... It happens automatically.
jacamat 10y ago
I did Keto for a month in September. It requires a good deal of self-control to stick to it (you'll quickly realize that only about 1% of the grocery store is food you can eat on Keto - resisting that temptation constantly is a trial) but it's not particularly expensive. You do have to be "in ketosis" to get the full benefits of Keto, but I've also found that just sticking to a low carb diet (under 100 carbs p/d) is a good start to ease into it. For Keto you will need to stay under 50...some people stay under 20. I lost about 15 lbs during the process and my diet mostly consisted of salads with lots of chicken + cheese + high fat dressing. I was a vegan before I switched to Keto so eating my veggies was not difficult, but some of my friends struggled to keep a "healthy" diet during the process. The most difficulty you will have doing Keto is your own self-control. Finding recipes & food to buy is easy.
- IndianAstronaut 10y ago
  Keto was the only diet I could lose weight with. One thing a lot of other diet plans ignore is satiety. If you are hungry or crave food, it is basically an addiction. You will not stop till satieted. Sugars and starches spike glucose levels and thus trigger insulin responses which puts one back in a hungry state.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

calvano915 10y ago

There are costs to gluconeogenesis (glucose via protein catabolism), kidney issues to name one (deamination producing ammonia). The body does not synthesize glucose from fatty acids (beta-oxidation occurs producing aceytl-coA in the mitochondria, thus producing energy, but aceytl-CoA cannot be converted upwards in the pathway to glucose). A small amount of glucose can/does get created from glycerol. Nutrition recommendations up to this point still recommend high ratio of carbs (45-65% of kcals) because they are the most direct metabolic pathway. Also incredibly important for gut health is fiber, which is a complex carbohydrate (and prebiotic). The concern of carbs is non-complex ones as a high percentage of intake. They have found that the brain runs on ketones (for a long time it was thought that it required glucose specifically) but long term research is non-existent. So yes, the body can live off of "no carbs", but stating that our carbohydrate requirement is zero is just false according to the literature and nutritional history of the majority of humans.

lucisferre 10y ago
So you're saying HN comments are not a good source of my daily nutritional information?
- calvano915 10y ago
  :) Like everything else in life, nutrition as a science is incredibly more complicated than we want to believe or describe. A seriously good place to start is MyPlate (their nutrition AND physical activity recommendations).
overgard 10y ago
I'm always skeptical when I hear "Nutrition recommendations" because it implies some sort of authority. Nutrition recommendations from who? The USDA? It's worth reading the history of the food pyramid. Here's a quote from wikipedia: "The first chart suggested to the USDA by nutritional experts in 1992 featured fruits and vegetables as the biggest group, not breads. This chart was overturned at the hand of special interests in the grain, meat, and dairy industries, all of which are heavily subsidized by the USDA.[10] If Americans followed the chart suggested, they would buy much less meat, milk, and bread. On the other hand, if they ate as the revised chart suggested, it "could lead to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes," as original composer of the food Pyramid, Louise Light warned. " I know from a personal standpoint, once I removed refined carbohydrates from my diet I dropped 25 pounds in two months (without bothering to excersize.) So the idea that somehow the diet that made me fat is somehow the "good" diet because the USDA says so strikes me as being silly.

sametmax 10y ago

Yes we evolve from a common ancestor with the monkey, which used to eat mainly fruit, hence sugar.

overgard 10y ago
Fruit tends to be healthy because the sugar (fructose) is wrapped in protein and fiber. In other words, it's very very distilled. That's the reason why eating an orange is a lot healthier than drinking orange juice. But we do know that fructose is VERY bad for you (high fructose corn syrup is much worse than sucrose alone).
- JamesBarney 10y ago
  I don't think there exists any evidence that high fructose corn syrup is much worse than sucrose. They are pretty close to the same thing. HFCS is 45-58% glucose, and 42-55% fructose, and sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. There is one more bond in sugar, but enzymes in your gut break that bond apart very quickly.
  - overgard 10y ago
    Well, I'm not exactly saying your should eat a bunch of sucrose either, so I might have overstepped by saying it's MUCH worse. But I do think the evidence points to fructose not being good for you, and it's certainly not better than other sugars.
    - PepeGomez 10y ago
      Why are you lying like that? Are you trying to hurt people?
      - overgard 10y ago
        Huh? I'm a liar for saying "sugar is bad and certain sugars are worse"?

pier25 10y ago

I've switched to a low carb / high protein / high fat diet and it's great. I'm eating lots of food and losing weight along the way. Each Saturday is cheat day and I eat anything I want. Breaking the sugar / carbs dependency was really difficult for the first weeks but now I'm "fat adapted" as they call it. I've been doing this diet for a year or so and broken it a few times for weeks at a time. Getting back was super easy and I didn't gain much weight. In 2016 I've lost more than 20 kilos, or about 6 belt notches. I even had to buy a new smaller belt. If you want to know more about this look for the Atkins diet, 4 hour body diet, keto diet, etc. Those are all variations on the same idea of reducing or eliminating carbs from your diet.