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I'll trade you an anecdote, for whatever it's worth: One of my earlier memories was learning in school that your daily intake should be mostly grain. But recent

• teej 9y ago
  The food pyramid in the US wasn’t devised by nutritionists. It was designed by the farm lobby. It was published by the Department of Agriculture.
• nathancahill 9y ago
  It's absolutely data-driven. By food and farm lobbies that do not have your health as their priority.
• eridius 9y ago
  That doesn't surprise me in the least. Grain is very caloric. Cutting grain out of your diet almost certainly means you're eating fewer calories per day. That said, current nutritional recommendation is 45–65% of your caloric intake should be complex carbohydrates. Now that doesn't necessarily mean grain, but grain is an easy source.
  • drdrey 9y ago
    Why would cutting grains somehow not trigger hunger until the calories have been replaced?
    • eridius 9y ago
      In general, in the modern world (or at least, in the US) we tend to overeat. We're not just eating to satisfy hunger, we're eating for many reasons. Furthermore, it takes your body some time to react to putting food in your stomach (this is why you eat more if you eat fast than if you take your time). Basically what I'm saying is, eating fewer calories doesn't necessarily mean you're hungry, because putting food into your mouth isn't just a reaction to being hungry, and because we tend to eat more than is necessary to satisfy hunger anyway.
      • drdrey 9y ago
        I'm not contesting the other points you bring up, but hunger is the major challenge in calorie-restricted diets.
        • eridius 9y ago
          As someone who's currently on a calorie-restricted diet, yes, hunger is a big problem. However, eating fewer calories by cutting out grains is not the same thing as being on a calorie-restricted diet.
          • drdrey 9y ago
            Isn't it automatically a calorie-restricted diet if you are eating fewer calories than you normally would? FWIW I also have cut out grains but my weight is very stable, so it seems fair to assume I now just eat more of other things.
            • eridius 9y ago
              Define "normally would", because people's calorie intake varies from day to day. Also, previously I claimed that people have a tendency to eat more than they should, so scaling back on that isn't calorie restriction, it's just the absence of extra calories. More generally, it's just a bit pedantic to say that eating fewer calories than you would otherwise should be called a "calorie-restricted diet". The first reason is because the phrase "calorie-restricted diet" implies a significant restriction instead (for example, I'm only 1200 calories per day right now; that's a significant restriction compared to what I would be eating if I wanted to maintain my current weight). The second reason is because "calorie-restricted diet" implies a diet focused around tracking calories. Cutting out grains isn't a diet focused on calorie intake (heck, it's not tracking calories at all), it's just a diet that has the side effect of likely reducing calorie intake.
    • k3d 9y ago
      Hunger is not perfectly tied to caloric intake- part of the problem with, say, sugary sodas is that they won't fill you up no matter how much you drink.
    • pixl97 9y ago
      Switch to a very high fiber diet, like lots of leafy greens. They slow digestion and can help lower your glycemic index. Most grains are simple carbohydrates, which mean you'll have a rapid increase in your blood sugar, this causes an insulin response. High insulin causes your body to convert said sugar to fat. Over time and weight gain your body can become resistant to the insulin, so it stays in your blood stream longer. Ask any diabetic that has taken too much insulin, that insulin hanging around is a bad thing. You will feel extremely hungry, causing an overeating response, which again raises ones blood sugar. Another insulin shot is needed, and if not dosed correctly puts too much insulin the blood stream. You can see who this leads to a very destructive cycle.
  • mikekchar 9y ago
    > Grain is very caloric. That's kind of a misleading sentence. Fat is about 9 kcal per g. Carbohydrates and proteins are about 4 kcal per g (it's slightly more complicated than that because proteins have slightly higher caloric content, but take energy to absorb, while larger carbohydrates are can not be absorbed at all, but let's just take these as rough values). Grain isn't very "caloric" at all compared to, say, butter. 10g of white flour is 36 kcal, while 10g of butter is 72 kcal. Compared to lettuce it's quite "caloric". 10g of lettuce gives you only 2 kcal. But that's because lettuce is all water. Although I really like eating grains, I'm also a pretty big fan of vegetables. If you imagine that a meal is about 600 kcal (give or take), I think it's instructive to assemble a variety of food and see what quantity of food that is. 3/4 of a stick of butter; or half a loaf of bread (assuming a 1 lb loaf); or 6 large heads of iceberg lettuce. You can see pretty easily that if you want to eat more food, while maintaining the same caloric intake, then vegetables are the way to go -- because they have a lot of water. But you can also have soups, etc to get the same effect. Even grains work well: a bowl of porridge made with 250 ml of semi skimmed milk is only 254 kcal according to google -- but that tablespoon of brown sugar is going to bump it up to over 300 kcal. So that's really the thing: if you remove water from stuff (flour, sugar, oil, butter) it's pretty calorie dense -- especially oils and fats. Eating things that are essentially dried out conglomerations of these things (potato chips, cookies, muffins, cheese, granola, etc, etc) means that you can only eat a ridiculously small amount of food if you are trying to hit a calorie target. Virtually all of our "convenience foods" fall into that category -- even sandwiches are often bread, meat, mayonnaise and a token slice of greenery. The secret is to cook so as to maintain flavour while keeping the water content up (or to enjoy eating more intense foods, with much smaller portions).
• namelost 9y ago
  In the past, "nutrition" meant "getting enough calories", as in the opposite of malnutrition. Grains are plentiful, cheap calories and so they are "nutritious". Of course if you cut them out of your diet and still eat the same amounts of everything else you will lose weight, that's just thermodynamics!
  • stanleydrew 9y ago
    Well technically you could just gain weight more slowly.
  • SubiculumCode 9y ago
    Exactly. In the past, calorie intake was probably the most important aspect of food nutrition. We live in good times.
• matwood 9y ago
  > It's weird to realize that pretty much no one knows what's up with nutrition. It's the opposite of data-driven. Did you track your calories? Dropping grains almost certainly means you cut your calories and thus lost weight. Exercise doesn't burn as many calories as people think. The adage 'abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym' rings true.
  • pixl97 9y ago
    Eh, Abs are made in the gym. Fat is made in the kitchen. You can be both skinny and not ripped at the same time.
    • matwood 9y ago
      > You can be both skinny and not ripped at the same time. Of course, the point is there is almost no amount of exercise (8 hours/day in the pool like Phelps maybe) that can make up for a bad diet when it comes to abs. Abs are almost strictly a function of body fat percentage.
• colechristensen 9y ago
  Yeah, it is just difficult to eat enough calories when you eliminate grains. That doesn't really mean it's better or worse nutrition.