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Consumed fats induce a broad range of hormonal satiety signals, so your total caloric consumption is often less. The French and Mediterranean countries are famo
by niels_olson 16y ago
Consumed fats induce a broad range of hormonal satiety signals, so your total caloric consumption is often less. The French and Mediterranean countries are famous for a few things, two being healthy living and high fat diets (butter in France, olive oil in the Med). Know any fat French people? Butter is not the problem.
Carbs are rapidly burned, or rapidly converted to fat. Fat in the blood stream can still be metabolized, what's especially hard is liberating fat from adipocytes once it's in them.
Among carbs, fructose is a particularly nasty problem. Fructose entirely bypasses the insulin pathway, which is the only major inhibitory signals for monosaccharides, but is is easily converted to fat, and there's some evidence it induces some inflammatory markers along the way. Observational studies of my two kids suggest they could eat oranges or candy all day without pause.
Here's a little experiment: pick a day where you're not going to be exposed to huge external stimuli to eat (eg, it's not the company picnic day). Weigh out 3 oz of unsalted nuts and 3 oz of cooked rice. Eat the rice for breakfast. Time yourself until you're hungry for those nuts. Eat the nuts. All of them. Time yourself until you're hungry again. I'll bet you make it past lunch. Eat 3 more ounces of nuts. You'll probably make it until dinner.
- nkurz 16y agoI'm pretty skeptical of traditional calorie counting, but wouldn't your experiment be simply explained by the 5x difference in caloric content between the two? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+walnuts http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+walnuts http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+white+rice http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+oz+white+rice Wouldn't it be more fair to compare equal calories rather than equal weights? I'd have to guess that eating 15 oz of rice might have a significant appetite suppressing effect as well. Or maybe I'm not understanding the point of the experiment. Are you simply suggesting that by eating a strangely distributed 1200 calories you can 'make it until dinner'? :)
- niels_olson 16y ago1 oz ~ 15 g 1 g carb ~ 3.4 kcal 1 g fat ~ 9 kcal 3 oz fat ~ 405 kcal 3 oz carb ~ 153 kcal 405 / 153 ~ 2.65 That's assuming the nuts are pure fat. They're actually about 1:1:1 fat:protein:carb => 246 kcal, or a ratio of about 1.6 Ah, wait, yes, fair enough, the cooked rice would be much less calorically dense. Do let me withhold the water. Please cook 3 oz of rice. My basic point remains: fats satisfy, calorie for calorie, faster than carbs.
- nkurz 16y agoMy basic point remains: fats satisfy, calorie for calorie, faster than carbs. OK, I'd agree with that. I wasn't sure if that was the point you were trying to make, or whether you were saying something more subtle. And obviously there is a limit: eating 1250 kcal of cooked white rice (1 kg) would be rather a feat and would probably physically prevent you from eating any thing else for a while, whereas the same number of calories in the form of nuts (200 g) could sneak up on you! ps. Your numbers above are quite a bit off, as 1 oz is actually closer to 28 g, but you are forgiven as I'm guessing you are European and don't use ounces that often.
- makmanalp 16y agoThank you for this explanation, I've always wondered how this whole deal works. This also sort of explains why "eat whatever, but just in reasonable amounts and with reasonable variety" sort of diets seem to be a good approximation.